Campaign Action

I learned that the phone calls would be done at home, using your own phone. We had a landline as well as a cell phone, as did most people back then. 

Volunteers were given a list of folks to call, and most of the people on my list happened to live in Florida. 

I sat on our oversized black leather sofa in our “TV room” with my 13-year-old son sitting next to me. 

My son is biracial and growing up, he was one of the only children of color in our predominantly white neighborhood in San Diego, California. Most of his classmates’ parents were vocal about voting Republican, so he was excited about the possibility of a president that looked like him. 

The first few calls I made were pretty uneventful. Most people said they were voting Democrat or Republican and they knew where and when to vote, etc. Then things got weird. I dialed the next number and a man answered. I would say he sounded middle-aged, white, and had a deep southern drawl. He listened attentively and allowed me to finish my spiel. 

It went something like this: “Hi. My name is Rebekah and I’m volunteering with Barack Obama’s campaign. I’m calling today to offer any help or information I can about your polling place and to make sure that you’re registered to vote. Also, if you have any questions I can answer about Mr. Obama, please let me know.” 

The white guy on the other end of the line paused for a second and then said, without missing a beat: “I wouldn’t vote for that n***er if my life depended on it,” and slammed the phone down. 

A minute went by and the phone rang—it’s him again. He told me that he hates n***ers and he’s going to kill me. 

Now he’s in Florida and I’m in California, so I wasn’t too worried. But my son was still pretty child-like for a teenager at 13, and he heard all of this. He was sitting next to me as I proudly made my calls, and this guy was screaming, so it wasn’t too difficult for him to listen in. 

“He’s going to come here and get us,” my son said. “We can’t use our own phone anymore,” he added, looking terrified. I told him that the guy is just a loud-mouthed racist and he’s thousands of miles away, and it’s fine. There’s nothing to be afraid about. 

A few minutes later, undeterred, I resumed my calls. Again, the next few calls were pretty predictable. There were several hang-ups and one grumble about Obama being a Democrat, but nothing too scary. 

Then on my last call of the day, an older woman answered. She sounded older, and she sounded Black. I asked her if she’s registered to vote. She told me it’s her first time and she’s giddy about voting for Obama. I asked her if she knows where she’s going to go to vote. She told me she got the information and she knew the place. It was a church a few miles away. I asked her if she knows how she’s going to get there on Nov. 3, and she admitted that she had no idea. 

This is when things got good. I was able to get online despite the fact that Google wasn’t nearly as accessible then as it is today, and I found her polling place. I asked her if anyone could drive her. She told me she didn’t have anyone. Now this is before Uber, and I’m not even sure she would have been able to download an app and manage that anyway.

I asked her how she got around and she told me she used the public bus. I was able to figure out which bus she needed and navigate her to the polling place. She carefully wrote down every piece of direction I gave and thanked me repeatedly before we hung up. It was a small thing, but it felt huge at the time. 

It meant that every vote counted. That small acts lead to big outcomes. We know that Obama won in Florida and that it was in large part due to the immense grassroots efforts he mobilized. He worked hard to win that state and volunteers worked hard to help him. 

Fast-forward to today and we face the passage of two monumental voting rights bills—the landmark Voting Rights Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act—along with the 2022 midterms and the next presidential election. 

Between Trump’s four-year reign of terror, a violent insurrection on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, and the last two years of a pandemic, it might feel daunting to imagine getting involved in your local election or even in the presidential election, but as my phone-banking work showed, even one small act can impact big outcomes. 

Republicans are counting on us to be tired and afraid. They’re hoping that Democrats are daunted and won’t have the energy to fight every step Republicans make in the wrong direction, every effort they make to keep Black and brown people from voting. But I’m here to say I’m not going to stop fighting, and you shouldn’t either. 

As President Joe Biden said on the one-year anniversary of Jan. 6, Trump and his MAGA crew may have “a dagger at the throat of American democracy,” but they lost and we won. And we can win again and again, but only if we keep holding their feet to the fire. We have to get involved, support down-ballot candidates both financially and with our time, and keep pushing our lawmakers to follow through on the promise of signing these important voting rights bills. 

And I know I don’t have to tell you the most important part, but voting is our right and duty as Americans, so we can never allow anyone to take that away from us.