Category — Life

True to my word, I visited the Obama headquarters here in Columbus, Ohio last Saturday. It was absolutely incredible! Not being one to become involved in politics, I had a preconceived notion of what to expect. I’m generally a shy person when in comes to crowds, not to mention that being in a wheelchair can put most people ill at ease. I thought that I would feel very uncomfortable, that people would do their best to “not see” me or look right through me, but this just wasn’t the case.

First of all, there was on street parking which was awesome. Then as we approached the building, there were several people walking in and out, most looked like myself. Jeans, sweatpants, t-shirts and the like. They were all happy and friendly. The windows of the building were decorated with handwritten signs announcing “yes we can”, “Obama ‘08″ and other encouraging words. We went inside and there was a mass of people signing up, finding their precinct for volunteering, working on laptops, organizing papers, gathering signatures; everyone was busy and happy. The walls were decorated with the same handwritten signs as the windows, each enthusiastically proclaiming “win Ohio”, “make the calls to win Ohio”, “Obama 08″ and so forth. We felt very much at home and at the same time couldn’t wait to jump in and help out.

As it turns out the call center for the Obama campaign is at the SEIU local headquarters in Columbus. This is the place where many organizations use their phones for phone banking purposes and it is also not wheelchair accessible. It was pretty disappointing to say the least. I’ve been doing this long enough (living life in a wheelchair) that I don’t get angry like I used to. However I do feel a great deal of disappointment in the lack of access STILL TODAY. Sure I can phone bank from home (and am doing so), but I won’t get to feel the comraderie and team spirit of the phone bank volunteers at the headquarters.

For the entire week I’ve been making phone calls from home. Most campaigns make this pretty easy to do, computer databases allow a person to access phone numbers and call scripts. I find it easy talking to strangers, especially about my enthusiasm about Barack Obama. It is very surprising to me how many voters are undecided and have paid little or no attention to the race thus far. Those people are challenging to me. I rely on some bit of knowledge of the race thus far to educate the people I call. For those with no interest, or not enough interest to pay attention it can be difficult. I usually direct them to the barackobama.com website and I educate them about his legislative and civil rights experience in Il.

So today begins a day of calling.