My new grassroots job

I might have mentioned this to a few of you via email.  For the last three full days, and for the next few weeks, I am working as a grassroots contractor to mobilize voters for a major health care measure that we want to be part of the Washington state budget for the 2008 fiscal year.  I have been dispatched to health clinics in key swing districts to rally support for our plan to add 10,000 basic health care slots into the budget. 

Each day, I explain to voters how the measure would impact them, and I get as many as possible to call their state senator directly.  It makes them realize that they can truly make a difference, and teaches them how to pressure their elected officials for this and other issues.  Almost all of the individuals that I come in contact with each day lack basic health coverage, and are in quite a bind financially.

For me personally, besides it being a great resume-builder and networking opportunity, this job is quite a learning experience.  I am bettering my people skills in terms of engaging voters directly.  Most important of all, it reminds me that not everyone follows politics.  Many of the citizens that I meet want to learn about issues like health care, but don't want them explained in policy-wonkish language that bloggers like myself are addicted to spewing out each day.  They want straight-talk.

For the most part, each day I come in contact with socially conservative people who strongly support the idea of universal health care.  Some are divorced moms left with nothing except their children to pay for.  Some are immigrants that work their tails off each day, and struggle to pay for their child's health care.  Others are disabled but proud military veterans who after serving their country in war can barely scrape by.  These are people.  This is reality.

Partly because of this experience, I have less patience for lawmakers, groups and people that base their opinions on ideology alone, as opposed to common sense.  Conservative pollsters have effectively pushed the message that universal health care equals socialized medicine, and socialism equals China and Cuba.  But to many conservative citizens that work hard and pay their taxes, they want universal health care.  To them, it's less of an ideological argument than an argument about reality.

Long story short, I am working hard to both keep this site running while working a job that requires 50 hours of my time per week.  It's all worth it!

Comments

[Tony]

Good Luck!

[The Mexican]

All my support to you. As a Democratic Socialist, I'm rooting for you. There are no moral or ethical substantive explanations to give any support for why Americans don't have a universal health care system. In the richest country in the known world, it's an absolute moral disgrace and ethically unsound to not have it.

[Administrator: Todd]

Thanks, guys.

"The Mexican", it's also economically unsound not to have universal health care. Many governors are figuring that out.