Why Sunday’s phone bank in Parma is so important - Listen up Dennis
Thu, Jul 17, 2008
I don’t usually post volunteer requests, let alone for one phone bank in Parma. But this phone bank is at the top of my blog for a reason.
Parma is a microcosm of the problem facing Barack Obama in Ohio. First, there is the electoral problem. Barack lost Parma huge on March 4. I perused the precinct results at the Cuyahoga BOE site (which is awful, btw), and it looks like he lost by AT LEAST 2-1 in Parma. (If someone has time to tally it up, please post in a comment). In addition, Parma is a swing suburb, and usually leans Republican in statewide races. It’s easy to assume that because they vote for Dennis Kucinich, they vote straight ticket D. Wrong.
Second, there is the race issue. It wasn’t long ago that Parma had precisely ZERO black people living there. Parma had to be forced by a federal judge to hire a black police officer. Parma is the poster child for those Hillary voters the media so euphamistically “describes as blue collar ethnic working class voters.” Parma voters are older, largely senior citizens, very Catholic, very ethnic (Italian, Polish, etc.), and white. Very.
On first glance, one might think Barack doesn’t have a chance there.
That’s where this one, single, solitary phone bank comes in.
Parma voters need to be shown that Barack isn’t going anywhere, his campaign isn’t shying away, and that Barack is a good Democrat, more like Dennis than John McCain, and this phone bank is the beginning for that. It’s the beginning of a massive effort to canvass and meet these voters on the doorstep. It’s the first step in getting people to feel comfortable going into an environment that seems hostile, but is more likely just kinda frozen in place.
Once this ball gets rolling, my instinct is that the flood gates will open in a place like Parma. But the ball has to get rolling, and that’s why I hope my readers in Cleveland will show up Sunday and make a few calls.
Sunday, July 20, starting at 3 pm, going until 9pm, volunteers are needed to make persuasion calls out of the Parma office.
5580 Ridge Rd. Just south of the Pearl Rd. intersection. Easily accessible via I-480.
Please Call Katie on 860-450-6234, or email her at jhryder@gmail.com, for more info and to COMMIT! Kinda need a hard count. Bring your CELL PHONE, free weekend minutes users are needed, as phone lines are still being installed.
Map.
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Tags: barack obama, parma
July 17th, 2008 at 9:20 am
I’m sincerely interested in what you don’t like about the BOE site. We nearly killed ourselves for 2 months completely redesigning and reprogramming it to get it out before the March 4th primary. What could be improved? What is missing that you’d like to see? Any input you have will be appreciated (by me at least). And I’ll see whether or not I can get buy-in from other folks.
July 17th, 2008 at 9:36 am
here’s what i found was the problem. for this post, i went there for March 4 primary results in Parma. go and try that.
you’ll find that there is no clear indication as to what link you should click on, that you often end up clicking on irrelevant PDF files, and when you finally do find the results, they are only broken down by precinct, so for me to get the full result for Parma, i’d have to break out a calculator and add em all up (120 precincts or so?).
it’s not useful in this regard.
July 17th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Okay, I’m in agreement with you there. I’m not sure why BOE puts the results out in those formats, but I know they are very intent that they remain in those formats. It’d be nice to have a web application that would let you refine the results for…marketing data, basically. You might want to fire off an email to them asking about that.
BTW, I voted an issues ballot on March 4, but somehow the Republican box got checked next to my name in the poll book and I’m now a registered Republican until the next primary (2010?). I called to try and get it changed, but apparently I can only do that in a primary. Now I’m going to start receiving candidate junk mail!