Blue Beginning
Where we are
We are shocked. We are angry. We are saddened. We are sick. We are afraid. We are hopeful. And we are sure of this: Nothing will change if we don’t elect new leaders in November. So we are keeping on.
Join the Text Team
Texting is a great way to connect with voters—especially young voters—especially in a pandemic. Some of you have waded in already, and many of you have expressed interest. So we’re glad to announce the launch of the Indivisible Chicago Text Team. We’re doing our first training class on Tuesday, June 30, and our first group texting session Thursday July 2.
The training is important. Campaign texting is not like sending a message to your friend. It’s highly automated and uses software that takes some getting used to. Different campaigns use different platforms and procedures. And some campaigns are waiting until later in the cycle to get started. We want to be ready when texting opportunities become plentiful later in the summer. So we’re starting now with the national office of Indivisible and their program called IndivisiText.
After training on Tuesday, we’ll get you set up with IndivisiText and then use it on Thursday to reach Michigan voters, encouraging and helping them to vote by mail. As usual, our approach will be to train you up, get you confident, stick with you while you work, and share our experiences to learn from each other. Just as we do for phone banking, we’ll meet on Zoom and brief you before we start texting; afterward we’ll meet again to swap stories and compare notes. Once you have the hang of it, you’ll be able to text on your own time and with different campaigns and platforms. But we’ll keep scheduling group events because for a lot of us they’re the most fun and satisfying.
Sign up here for our training class, Introduction to Campaign Texting, 6-7:30 PM on Tuesday June 30. Then join us for our Text Bank for Michigan Dems (another signup required) starting at 12:30 on Thursday July 2. And watch this space for more dates to come.
And don’t forget to call
Meanwhile, our phone banking effort rolls on and picks up steam. We’re getting 30-40 callers on our good nights, making upwards of 1,500 calls. Phone banking is funny this way: it’s true that most calls go unanswered, and this is sometimes discouraging to newbies. But you can make a lot of calls in the time it would take you to knock three or four doors—and your travel time is negligible: sit down at your computer and you’re there! So although canvassing is the gold standard of voter contact (as we’ve told you a million times), it’s hard to beat the efficiency of phone banking. That’s why campaigns have been doing it for decades.
Maybe we’ll be able to get back to canvassing later in the season. But for now, phone banking is the best tool we have for winning in November. You do want to win in November, don’t you?
We’re doing phone banks on Monday afternoons to Michigan, Wednesday evenings to Wisconsin, and at various times on Thursdays to activate our Indivisible comrades in Chicago. Coming soon: phone banks for Lauren Underwood in the 14th congressional district and to support the Fair Tax here in Illinois. Go here for our current phone bank schedule. If you’re a raw rookie, or feel rusty, or want to enlist a few friends (good idea!), consider our schedule of phone bank training classes, guaranteed to transform dubious newbies into cool, confident phone bankers.
Visit us at bluebeginning.org. Email us at bluebeginning2017@gmail.com. Check in with our Facebook group for news, events, and action opportunities posted by our members.
