Sunday, March 2, 2008

Obama Volunteers Pack Union Hall in Dallas


By Jim Lane

DALLAS – Over the years, Elaine and Jay have come to know just about everybody that volunteers in progressive electoral politics in Dallas, but they didn’t know anybody at the Obama volunteer training session they attended on March 1. Everybody was new, and the Service Employees’ hall on Ross Street was packed. Latecomers had to stand in the back. Elaine thinks there were 120-150 new volunteers there, and there were
8-10 similar events occurring in Dallas at the same time!

No, Elaine and Jay said, they weren’t all young people, they were allages. The crowd was just as slice of the Texas public. No, they weren’tpredominantly African American, and yes, there were a number of Latinos.If they were any color at all, it was green, in the sense that they werelearning how to do something they had never even thought of before.“They didn’t even know that you can’t leave campaign literature in
mailboxes,” Jay laughed.

What is causing this tidal wave of volunteerism? Jay and Elaine agreedon that. “They don’t like Bush!”



Top photo by Jim Lane/People's Weekly World (c); bottom photo by Jay Dunn.

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