It was parents weekend at the University this past weekend, and my mom came out to visit. On Friday night, we went down to the Loop to go to a Fieldhands get-together thrown by Al Giordano's Fieldhand group. The Fieldhands are a grassroots organization founded by readers of Giordano's blog The Field to both work to get Barack Obama elected and continue to fight for important causes after the election is over.
The meeting was held at the Billy Goat Tavern on (or actually, under) Michigan Avenue. We got there at about a quarter to seven, and a few minutes later Al arrived. He was not alone. With him was Nate Silver, the UC grad and polling expert behind the site fivethirtyeight.com. They sat down with the couple dozen Fieldhands who had assembled for the event and we talked politics, post-election plans, and even a little baseball. Nate Silver is a baseball analyst as well as a political one, and he had the foresight to predict the Rays would make the playoffs.
I hope his election predictions are just as accurate-- currently on his site Barack has over a 95% chance to win.
Unfortunately, we had to leave early to go get dinner in Greektown. Big mistake. Especially because Greek food does not sit well at a hot, crowded costume party. But that's a story for another time.
I had been in touch with Al a little bit in the week before the meet-up, and had told him that the UC Dems and Students for Barack Obama would be going to Gary, IN on Saturday. He came too, but we didn't see him-- we were out canvassing, I guess.
He reported his story (and mentioned me and my mom!) that night on his site, and I can't ofer any better insight than he can.
But I can give some anecdotes from the ground. The Gary office was packed; we had to be sent to a satellite office to get our walk packets. My mom and I took half our packet and two other UC Students, Mark and Sean, took the other half. We finished quick, and while Mark and Sean went out to do another packet, my mom and I went back to the central Gary office to phonebank.
Lots of phonecalls. Mainly we were calling for GotV (IN has early voting going on now) and to recruit volunteers. It was pretty successful. I signed up a GotV volunteer, got a bunch of people early voting information, and managed to only get hung up on once (and for an hour and a half of calling, I thought that was good).
I also got some Obama signs.
That's really all for now-- not too much else has been going on. Lots of panicking over the election, lots of Sarah Paling jokes (the Halloween party I was at not only featured yours truly as Agamemnon, Lord of Men, but had a John McCain, a Palin, a Barack, and a Cindy McCain).
Oh, and I've been signing up a lot of volunteers on campus. The sales pitch?
"Do YOU want Sarah Palin to be the next Vice-President?"
...we must have signed up over 50 people like that...
peace
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