By Larry Barber
So here we are, overseas during the most important election of our lives. Isn’t that true? It’s still sometimes difficult for me to believe it’s come to this in the United States. In my lifetime. You’re reading this now because, like me, you want to do something to help, to fight for what is right, to defend the Constitution.
Individually, we do that by requesting our ballot every year and we vote. It’s not as easy as back home, but with help we all learned how. Request the ballot, check that your Election Official received your Ballot Request, get your ballot by email, fill it out and print it, then return it to your Election Official back to the United States in time to be counted. For most of us, someone else had to teach us how to do all that. So that’s key—passing on our knowledge, and so our power, to others.
Now, for this crucial election to defend our democracy, it’s our turn to help our community of overseas Democrats vote and have their vote counted. Our votes have been shown to swing elections. So numbers matter.
I’ve volunteered for decades in political campaigns, made phone calls and knocked on doors and written postcards for decades more. So joining Democrats Abroad, making phone calls to help Democrats vote from overseas was a natural for me. I liked the automatic CallHub program that let me phone bank from home and dialed for me. But I still felt I had to psych myself up to make political calls.
You know the drill—it takes guts to cold call from a general list, doesn’t it? Yikes. The last time I did it, sometime last year, I was calling Texas and I made about 100 calls. I got through to a surprising number of people, and when I said, “Hi, I’m a volunteer with the Texas Democratic—” they hung up. Two people let me talk, one was a Democrat. As I said, it takes guts.
That is not what we’re asking you to do here in Mexico. That is not what calling for Democrats Abroad is like—not at all. In fact, instead of wanting to soak my head in cold water (Texas), after a hour of calling DA members I actually feel good. Not only have I accomplished something—helping folks vote—but I’ve had some interesting conversations; I’ve heard some great stories. Here’s a new caller from just last week, “I just made my 1st 20 calls in Mexico. It was simply amazing. I left messages or spoke with 13 of the 20 calls. All but one were very friendly. No one hung up on me.” You see the difference? After calling, you feel good.
Sometimes new callers are intimidated with either the CallHub program or the script. I can help you with that. Contact me and I’ll get you trained and calling comfortably. We can go through each aspect together, until you’re really at ease with making calls. You’d be surprised at how quickly a half hour goes by; it’s easy to do that a couple of times a week.
Contact me at [email protected] and put DA CallHub in the subject line. Check out the phone banking training page here: https://www.democratsabroad.org/phonebanking_training We want to work to keep our country free from autocrats and the dangerous people who follow along behind them. Even from Mexico, we can make a difference!