advice for my speech this evening?

[cos]

My friend Jesse Gordon is running for Cambridge City Council. His announcement party is this evening and I'm one of the speakers - I have five minutes, right after Jesse. I'm going to talk about how campaigns work, and how volunteering fits in. My theory is that a lot of people who support candidates would volunteer more, if they understood what a campaign does and how what they do fits in. I think a lot of people who do volunteer for a campaign and spend a day or two canvassing, come away feeling like they haven't done a lot of good, and are less motivated to return.

So, help me out. I basically know how campaigns work. I volunteered a bunch of times for campaigns before I understood, so I remember some of the things I didn't know. And I've talked to people about it. But I'm sure there are things I'm missing.

What do you find mysterious about campaigns, particularly smaller ones for local/state office?

Have you ever volunteered for a campaign, even for one day? What value did you think you were giving? What did you know about, and what did you wonder about, how your work fit in?

(Oh, hey, if you know anyone who lives around here, send them the link, and if you're here, come!)

Comments

[lil-brown-bat.livejournal.com]

Unless you have plenty of practice at public speaking, keep it simple, and have your main message in the very first sentence. You have five minutes; don't make the common mistake of the inexperienced speaker and overstay your welcome.

[weegoddess.livejournal.com]

Sorry, hon, won't be able to make it. But I know two folks who did a lot on the Dean front and others who might be interested. I'll send them the info.

[agnosticoracle.livejournal.com]

A couple of negative experiences from the couple campaigns I've volunteered for:

1. Often find myself calling people who have been called before, often only hours before. Very demoralizing to listen to angry folks tell you to leave them alone.

2. Even during a full day of canvasing I often feel I've reached at most one or two people. Given victory margins are usually in the 100s or 1000s this has left me wondering if I was wasting my time.

It would be very useful to get an idea how the repeated phone calls and long days canvasing actually help.

[mattblum.livejournal.com]

I started volunteering in political campaigns when I was eight years old. At the time, all I did was hand out fliers urging people to vote for Chuck Robb for Governor of Virginia.

I worked on a whole bunch more campaigns for the next ten years, including many local ones (for the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, for instance). The work I did ranged from stuffing envelopes to going door-to-door to writing database applications for keeping track of donations to calling people up on Election Day to remind them to vote to (pretty much every year) standing outside the polling place handing out pamphlets and such. Not knowing much about Massachusetts politics, I gave up doing that when I went to college, and then picked it up again to work on Sen. Kerry's campaign website in 1996. After that, I didn't do anything much again until last year, when I worked on the Kerry campaign in Virginia.

Even when I was in high school and didn't have that much time to devote to the campaigns I was working on, it really felt good to be part of the political process, even if in small measure. It didn't feel so great when the candidates I was supporting lost, of course, but the feeling when they won made up for the losses by giving me a feeling that I had, in a small way, changed the world. Even if you can't change the whole world at once, you can at least change a part of it, and who knows what might happen if you do?

Huh. I actually sounded kind of idealistic there, didn't I? I may have to give up my Offical Cynic Society membership if I keep this up. <grin>

[cos]

I do have lots of practice. Mostly to smaller groups, but some for medium sized groups like this. I know how to time. I'm not really looking for general public speaking advice, I'm looking specifically for suggestions about the content.

[cos]

I never knew you had a cynic society membership in the first place :)

As someone who has volunteered for a lot of campaigns, do you have any suggestions? things that you wish other volunteers would know about campaigns, so they understand how their effort really does make a difference.

[cos]

Thanks! If they come, suggest they say hi to me and say they're Lori's friends?

We'll get Jesse's piece about the Grace site up on his web site soon.

[cos]

Yup! I'll definitely talk about that.
You coming?

[daltong.livejournal.com]

This probably isn't appropriate for a 5-minute speech, but:

How can a disabled person help out in a campaign office? Of course, all disabilities are different. Mine involve not being able to sit in a straight-backed chair and having trouble using regular computer workstations or raising my arms to do things on a table (like stuff envelopes). Is it possible to help out from a home computer?

More generally:
I follow politics and the news, but I feel like I can't make a difference, especially since my party seems too fractured to challenge the dominant party. What can one ordinary person do to contribute?

[mattblum.livejournal.com]

I think people need to understand that every vote is important (though I think that, after the 2000 Florida debacle, most people know this), and that it would be an awful shame to lose a vote when a little more effort would've gotten it. You never know what will get someone to vote for your candidate--most times, you won't change anyone's mind about the issues, but you can inform them so they know that your candidate agrees with them. Or, especially in local elections, you can inform them so they know there is an election to vote in. A person who doesn't vote is almost as bad for you as a person who votes for your opponent.

Everyone knows that campaigns are fueled by money. You have to have signs, bumper stickers, pamphlets, buttons--not to mention office space and phone lines and such. Campaigns are fueled by money, but they're driven by volunteers. Signs don't put themselves up, envelopes don't stuff themselves, and people hate being called by computers (and computers that call people cost money!). Even if you only help a little bit, that's a little bit someone else doesn't have to do, so they can do something else, so more gets done. Since no campaign anywhere, ever, has done as much as they wanted to do, it's important that you do as much as you can.

That's why every volunteer is important.

[mattblum.livejournal.com]

Would you be able to call registered voters on Election Day to remind them to go vote?

[cos]

The party issues aren't so relevant here - Cambridge is a heavily Democratic city and City Council elections are nonpartisan anyway. And Jesse is exactly the sort of candidate who has a realistic chance of winning, but is not assured of it.

However, the point you make about disability is a great one. When working with campaigns to get more volunteers for them, I always ask for as many ways as they can think of for people to help, because some people won't make phone calls, others won't (or can't) go door to door, and so on - but we can always find something for each person to do, that is helpful.

And yet, I didn't think of addressing that in this speech. I'll put in something brief about it. Thanks!

[lil-brown-bat.livejournal.com]

So, whadja say and how'd it go???

How did it go?

[lena-a-mermaid.livejournal.com]

How did the evening go? Alas, I have been home sick since Wednesday and couldn't go out to the event.

Re: How did it go?

[cos]

Awww. Feeling any better?
If you'd gone, would you have said hi and told me who you were? :)

[cos]

I felt pretty good about it, I'm usually comfortable speaking to groups, but I also felt that I left out some of the things I wanted to say at the end, and some of the lines I wanted to use (especially Matt's line about no campaign ever having done as much as it wanted to). I don't write down speeches and don't speak well from written speeches, but this is probably one of those occasions where a brief list of 1-2 word reminder notes on a small piece of paper would have helped me not skip some things (it's rare that I need that, so sometimes I neglect to do it). Afterward, a number of people came up to me throughout the night to tell me that they liked my speech, that it was effective and well delivered, and so on. Including people I didn't know. From asking some of them questions, I discovered that I probably conveyed what I wanted to convey, so I think it was a success.

Re: How did it go?

[lena-a-mermaid.livejournal.com]

I'm still waiting for you to figure it out and ask me! :-)
Throat still sore.

Re: How did it go?

[cos]

Oh. I'm not likely to do that. I mean, if it becomes obvious by accident or coincidence, sure I'll figure it out. But I'm not likely to make an effort to try to.

(I already did try asking you, but that didn't work :)