This is probably the last piece I'll send before the election, but I thought
it might help keep you and others going during these critical final weeks.
Do please pass it on to any lists where it might be useful.

PL
>From www.Workingforchange.com
THE HUNDREDTH PHONE CALL
By Paul Rogat Loeb

We never quite know when that last bit of effort will make the difference.
On the eve of the 2000 election, I distributed door-hangers for a closely
fought US Senate race in Washington State. I walked four precincts, and by
the four hundredth house, was cold, tired, and thought of quitting. Climbing
stair after stair on block after block, I kept hearing the classic Nirvana
line, "Grandma take me home." But there were more houses to visit, more
materials to give out, more people to talk with, when they were in. So I
continued till the end, though my voice was already raw from spending every
night the previous week calling endless phone lists to recruit more
volunteers. On Election Day, there were 15,000-20,000 of us statewide,
holding up signs during morning rush hour, calling and recalling voters who
hadn't cast their ballots, watching the polls to check off who had voted. As
a result of everything we did, and all our previous efforts, not only did Al
Gore carry the state by an ample margin, but after a recount, Democrat Maria
Cantwell defeated hard-right Republican Senator Slade Gorton by 2,229 votes
out of more than 2.5 million cast. If each volunteer accounted for just a
fraction of a vote, our actions changed the outcome.

It's easy to think of our individual efforts as so insignificant and
inconsequential that they're hardly worth the effort. But when enough of us
act in small ways, our combined impact can change history. That's true even
when our actions seem mundane and prosaic, yielding minuscule fruits for the
labor we put in. We can spend an entire day calling voters, distributing
literature, knocking on doors, and signing people up for rides to the
polls-and produce only a handful of additional votes. Yet if 15,000 others
do the same, or 50,000, or several million, working all across America, our
impact can be literally world changing. That was true last election, where a
hundred additional volunteers could have swung Florida even with all the
Republican machinations. It's never been more true than in this
neck-and-neck race.

We've done part of the key work already. Grassroots canvassers have
registered record-breaking numbers of likely Democratic voters, particularly
in key battleground states. Americans Coming Together (ACT), which has
coordinated many of the progressive efforts, together with MoveOn, expects
to end up with 2.5 million new voters. Rock the Vote, less partisan, has
registered close to a million young voters. The League of Independent Voters
has been registering young voters at bars and clubs-then going back again
with guides to an entire slate of progressive local and national candidates.
A Cleveland professor had her students register voters at a jail where
people were awaiting trial, working with a local prisoner's rights group
that registered 700 new voters. In Miami, the League of Independent Voters
put out a CD with songs about the issues by local hip-hop artists and placed
their local and national endorsements inside. It's been decades since so
many people involved themselves in progressive electoral activism.

But the Republicans are also registering voters, particularly through
fundamentalist churches. They're organized, well-funded, and have skillfully
cultivated a politics of backlash and fear. Combining both parties, a
million new voters have registered in Florida alone. Since new registrants
traditionally turn out far less often than those for whom voting is routine,
how many and which voters show up will depend on what the rest of us do,
from now through the election.

We can never predict the precise impact of these actions. A few years ago, a
young environmental activist registered 300 voters at her Connecticut
college, then saw her congressman win by 27 votes. Before she began, she so
doubted her efforts would make a difference that she almost didn't try. My
model for an engaged volunteer effort comes from 1992, the last time we
ended the reign of a Bush. On that Election Day, I joined five other
volunteers helping get out the vote in a precinct 25 miles south of my
Seattle home, in a suburban swing district that also affected a key
congressional race. Thanks to roughly 50,000 volunteers, we had a similar
presence in nearly every remotely Democratic area of the state. Our efforts
turned out enough supporters that we not only helped carry Washington for
Clinton and Gore, but also elected our first woman senator, captured eight
out of nine House seats for the Democrats, and elected a strong populist
governor.

Yet two years later, 1994, Washington state's volunteers stayed home, as did
their counterparts nationwide. There weren't enough to canvass even the most
liberal precincts in the heart of Seattle. Dismal voter turnout allowed
Republicans to recapture all but two of nine Congressional seats, elect a
regressive Republican to the Senate, and make Newt Gingrich Speaker of the
House. The same thing happened in 2002. Grassroots support melted away in
the face of anger at Democratic capitulation on Iraq, and Republicans won
race after race by the narrowest of margins. Had those voters who'd turned
out the previous election just participated, surveys in both cases suggested
the results would have been reversed.

For the moment, enough of us are united enough against Bush's destructive
arrogance that we'll have decent numbers of volunteers.  And most of us will
recognize that just as when French voters united behind conservative Jacques
Chirac to reject the threat of the ulra-rightist Jean-Marie Le Pen, this is
no time for above-it-all purism, like voting for Ralph Nader.  But do we
recognize how much our individual electoral actions can matter when they're
sufficiently multiplied?  What would happen if every environmentalist or
union member, every MoveOn member, everyone who feels that Bush has led this
country down destructive paths, worked in some way to get out the vote?  Or
worked with groups like the Election Protection Coalition to ensure that
every eligible voter gets the chance to vote and that every vote is counted.
It's easier if we live in a swing state, or can travel to one-we simply sign
up with ACT or the local Democratic Party and plug in wherever most useful.
But even if we don't, we can still contribute money for critical field
efforts, and once we've done that, and then join phone banks being run by
MoveOnPAC and ACT, calling swing state voters to help convince them to turn
out.

Most of us reading this essay will vote. And maybe our friends will as well.
But in a politically divided nation, victory will go to the side that turns
out the greatest numbers of their most marginal supporters, including those
who doubt their vote will matter. Particularly when reaching out to those
poorer and more transient constituencies that traditionally vote half as
often or less than the wealthier ones, getting people to polls isn't
something that can't be done by just running more ads. We have to make the
phone calls, knock on the doors, and keep track of who has voted so we can
remind people as many times as necessary that their vote could make the key
difference.  This election will be won with presence and persistence.

Though we know this abstractly, what would happen if we recognized that our
actions matter precisely because we're joined by so many others? Our efforts
could make that recognition a reality. We've anguished for four years over
this administration's destructive actions. Now it's time to act.

Paul Rogat Loeb is the author of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A
Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, just published by Basic Books.
Habitat for Humanity founder Millard Fuller writes "Paul Loeb brings hope
for a better world in a time when we so urgently need it." Barbara
Ehrenreich says,  "For anyone worn down by four years of Bushism, The
Impossible Will Take a Little While is a bracing double cappuccino!"  And
Bonnie Raitt writes, "This inspiring collection is such a song of hope in
these difficult times." Loeb is also the author of Soul of a Citizen. See
www.theimpossible.org