Life of Wry

Upping my game here.

I’ve been a consistent political action volunteer for a full three years now–attending weekly postcard writing gaggles; canvassing and participating in GOTV efforts around elections; text banking, phone banking; showing up for town halls, marches, rallies and celebrations; and of course giving lots of money to candidates whose elections, or reelections, would make a difference.

As I’ve said numerous times, it’s about channeling my rage into something constructive, being part of the solution… all that.

With the opening next week of the Volunteer Center (is that what we’re calling it?) — a joint effort of Sister District CA-3 and Indivisible Yolo — shit’s getting real. Realer than ever.

Just gotta say.. there are a whole bunch–like dozens and dozens–of smart, committed people in this town who know how to organize and who are consolidating their considerable energy and talents into quite a thing. We raised $25,000 in a matter of days (I say we like I had something to do with it, I didn’t, just contributed) to fund office space for the year, collected an eye-popping amount of furniture and supplies, and mobilized a veritable ant colony of happy labor that put it all together over the course of about a week. It’s a work in progress, but when you walk into the large, two-story, multi-room space and see an operation that looks like it’s been humming along for years… it’s just impressive as hell.

There’s a leadership team comprising committee heads (committees include things like post carding, phone banking, text banking, canvassing, voter registration, volunteer care & feeding, promotion and social media, center staffing, etc.).  There are meetings like crazy and all kinds of ongoing events that will take place in the center. It’ll be the hub of all election-related volunteer activity for the next year.

It’s fantastic.

There’s a kickoff rally next week at Veteran’s Memorial (after the California primary/Super Tuesday) and an official open house for the new Volunteer Center. The purpose of all of that is to energize, recruit and mobilize hundreds of new volunteers for the coming year. And we have the wherewithal to handle that, what with all that amazing infrastructure.

That amazing infrastructure’s been taking shape for three years, but as I said above, shit’s now getting real, and the game’s been upped significantly. MY game’s been upped significantly.

I just Sign-Up Genius’d and/or blocked out dates in my calendar for regular stints of voter registration, post carding, volunteer center staff shifts, trips to Arizona and leadership meetings. That’s some serious time commitment and is only the basic stuff. I imagine I’ll add countless other meetings and activities as the year unfolds.

I did some home office organizing this evening as I prepare myself to integrate this stuff into my days/weeks/months.

And I’m a small cog! There are too-many-to-count folks who are doing far, far more.

Anyway.

Today was a trip down to Modesto Junior College for more voter reg. The pic is today’s group. It was a good day.

Note: Related, I watched the democratic debate tonight. Good lord. The field’s narrowed to Sanders, Buttigieg, Warren, Biden, Klobachar, Stuyer and Bloomberg, in about that order, and we are nowhere near a nominee. Sanders is well ahead, but it’s too early to know where this is going. After tonight, I just don’t know. It was painful to watch. And that’s why we do this (the above). Distracting and sanity saving.