The Frontlines of Hope Continued part 2
More about working for Obama. In the fall I was training in Denver for Four day. I shared a hotel room with 6 guys from all over the country. One of the guys in that room was John P. who I would run into again in another state. There was also Clait F. who organized much of the volunteer model that we would be using to organize tens of thousand of people across the country for turn out votes for Obama.
Trainings started at 9 am and went all day till about 9 am. It was exhausting and often overwhelming. Lots of code was thrown around, Rap, CMDs, Turf, Obs, T1's, T2's. Week 1's, week 2's. And also lots of questions were asked that I did not understanding, Like: What's the difference between a Contact and a Door? or Do Obs count as CMDs and are they paid from their first Knock? The learning curve was very high. The worst part was that I was told over and over that I would be responsible for every bit of the information "on day one" to make sure that my office ran smoothly, that it met it's goals and that my hired staff got paid. We were also told very often by our trainers that new staff often refer to running a campaign office as one of the most challenging experience of their lives.
In four days I went in and out of roll plays to prepare for hiring, managing, motivating and firing staff. We roll played every interaction that we would encounter, from taking calls from perspective hires, to group overviews with newly hired staff. Every detail of the office had a script, a word for word dialogue of how the interaction would go, in canvasser organizing this was called the Rap.
So essentially I spent 4 day memorizing a number of Raps that would enable me to run my office and interact with my staff efficiently. on the forth day at midnight I found out that I was headed to Philly to begin my campaign experience. My plane was leaving at 6am and I need to go pack and be on a bus at 4am.