Robi Ganguly’s Big Ideas

If you’re out there, thinking to yourself that the poll numbers look great and this election is in the bag, STOP.

Stop thinking that you don’t have anything to do in the next 3 weeks. 

I admit, the situation looks rather rosy at the moment, but if you really want to see a President Obama in the White House, I urge you to listen to what the man is saying:

THIS IS OUR TIME 

What do you think that means folks? OUR time.. WE need to be involved. 

"Be the change you want to see in the world."

                         -Mahatma Gandhi

From one of mankind’s greatest philosophers AND one of our most effective leaders comes a reminder for us all: we must make this election go the way we would like.

It’s important to me to see Barack Obama elected. I’ve been doing a number of things to play a part in his candidacy and I have many friends who have been doing the same. Have you?

Some ideas about what you can do to get Barack Obama elected over the next 3 weeks:

1. Familiarize yourself with the "battleground states" of this election: Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Colorado, Nevada, Michigan.
2. Talk to your friends in those swing states about the election: Don’t be pushy, but create conversations, have meaningful, in-depth discussions of the issues that matter to you. Avoid hyperbole and emotional, pithy remarks and engage in behavior that is required of a CITIZEN:
   • Look at your phone’s address book and scroll through it. Do you have any friends in those states? Have you not talked to them in a while? Give them a ring. Talk about the election.
   • Open up your email address book and do the same thing – look to see who among your friends are in these swing states. Email them, start a dialogue. Share digital media that you’ve watched, read, listened to or even created about the election that you find interesting and useful in making your decisions.
   • Are you on MySpace/Facebook/Bebo/iMeem/Friendster/LinkedIn/Plaxo? If so, the tools aren’t great, but you can use these services to identify friends who are in the battleground states – take 30 mins and make a list of 10, 15, 20 friends. Reach out to them.
3. Share your enthusiasm for action with other like-minded friends: It’s always more fun to work as a part of a team. Create your own small team of friends who are taking actions to share, discuss and promote the Obama campaign. Pass this blog post on, recruit people to come up with more ideas than the ones I’ve listed here.
4. Donate to the campaign: Here is the link to my donations page (get me past $0 folks!), but you can just as easily go to the main donation page, located here.
5. Volunteer for the campaign: (sign up at: http://action.barackobama.com/page/s/volunteer)
   • Make calls in the coming weeks with local supporters and contact your neighbors: http://my.barackobama.com/page/votercontact/details
   • Hop in your car and head to a nearby battleground state, if it’s feasible for you (SF friends, there are several trips to Nevada planned).
6. Create your own media for the campaign:
   • If you have a blog, write on it.
   • If you go to a rally, take pictures and video of it and share with your friends.
   • If you have artistic inclinations, create your own Obama logo and put it in your email signatures, on your social network profile, in your IM profiles etc.. If you don’t, go find logos here
7. Wear your support for the campaign: t-shirts, bumper stickers, pins, signs.. all of these will help show your support and remind others.
8. Remind all of your friends to vote on election day!

These are just my ideas, please add your own in the comments.

Also, here are some interesting sites to check out along these lines:

http://www.returntoohio.com/ 

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/09/on-road-grand-junction-colorado.html 

http://thegreatschlep.com/

Finally, for those who are trying to figure out what media to share with their friends, here are some of my favorite speeches/ads/media/articles:

Articles and links:

Attack Tactics backfiring on McCain

Obama’s career timeline, detailing why the experience question is pretty silly

New Yorker on Barack Obama back in 2007

Lengthy piece on "Obamanomics" from August

Ads and Videos:

A recent ad that tells us more about Obama’s background

Obama’s speech on 10/13/08 about the economic crisis.

Inspiring video created for the convention.

Obama’s Speech on Race – "A More Perfect Union": one of the most amazing speeches I’ve ever seen.

Popularity: 5% [?]