Work Day

Today is our big day for voter registration drives! Please pick one or more from the list in yesterday's posting and come out to help make a difference.

Things to remember about voter registrations:

• Bring a clipboard and extra pens.
• The coordinator should bring plenty of forms, but you can print your own out from here (requires acrobat).
  
• Don't wear any party or candidate identifying clothing or pins, buttons, etc.
• Don't discuss your own political views before a person has completed the form. They'll have to guess. :-)
• Don't discourage anyone from registering for any reason.
  

I want to emphasise that last point. I don't care if they did tell you they want to register Republican or LaRouche or whatever. We try to weed those folks out by picking our locations to perform the drives. However, once we are there it's our moral (and legal) imperative to register everyone regardless of affiliation.

Campaign News

There's a lot of news to get through today.

Office Moving

The first bit of news is that our office is moving. The new address is 3930 East 31st St. This is also the Tulsa Democratic Headquarters, so you can pick up campaign signs and materials for you other favorite democratic candidates when you stop by. Please do stop by, pick up your swag, and volunteer.

Registration Status

Greg turned in a batch of over 200 voter registrations to the county election board office this week. Congratulations to everyone who helped gather those registrations. But we need more, way more.

Now that we have a bit more experience, we can analyze which locations work well and which don't. Half of those registrations were gathered at a single drive at Wal-Mart last weekend. Half of the remainder were gathered at another drive at the east Tulsa flea market. We sent a lot more people to the various football games last Friday, and didn't gather more than 20 or so. So we are going to be dropping the football game drives and refocusing our efforts to locations like the area Wal-Marts and flea/farmers markets. I'll get the calendar updated when I can, but for now know that the football game drives are not happening. If you are going to one anyway and want to take some forms, by all means do so though.

Registration Opportunities

If you want to do something more that just simply voting to help Obama get elected (and every other Democrat in the area), this is your big chance. This weekend we have lots of registration drives going on. Just pick one or two from the list below that fit your schedule, and call the coordinators. We have plenty of opportunities, so don't just sit back an let someone else do it. Come on out and help!

If you want to help with the flea market drive this Saturday morning, contact Mary-Jo at 269-4400. She is also coordinating drives at the Quick Trip Anniversary Festival this Saturday from 5 to 7 PM.

We will also be doing a drive at the TU tailgate party this Saturday from Noon to 5PM at the stip mall on 11th street across from the stadium. Again, contact Mary-Jo at 269-4400 if you'd like to help.

Louis King will will be running a drive outside the BOK center during the Lil' Wayne concert this Saturday from 6-7:30 PM. You can contact him at 437-0310 to help.

Greg will be leading a drive at the Brookside Artzz this Saturday (tomorrow) from 11 to 5. He will also be coordinating a drive at the Jazz Hall of Fame during the concert this Sunday. If you like to listen to some good Jazz while you help register voters, contact him at gregmarkley@att.net.

Finally Blanca is running a drive at the downtown Hispanic Festival this weekend. It is both Saturday and Sunday from 1-10PM. The hispanic community in Tulsa has been growing much more quickly in the last few years than I think most Tulsans realise. Nothing less than the party's future hangs on how well we reach out to this community. Blanca has been working hard to register their voters for the last two years, so she's one of my personal heroes. If you have any free time at all to donate this weekend call her at 231-3340.

Debate Watch Parties

The campaign will be hosting watch parties for the debates. More on this in a later post, but for now mark you calendars.

Mule Skinner's Mail Pouch

I got the following email the other day:

Do you know if someone is doing a similar blog for other parts of the state?

After a long web search, I'm afraid I could find no other local Obama campaign site in Oklahoma. The closest I found was the statewide site up on Barack's main campaign website. It has some local area subpages.

I did find a fairly rich lode of personal blogs of Oklahomans who are writing about the campaign, along with their other concerns. The best I saw were:

• Blue Oklahoma
• Peace Arena - The emailer in question's own blog
  
• Alternative Tulsa
• Just Not Right aka Kittenstomper
• Middle Raged Punk
• Oklahoma Lefty
• Sinister - For those of you who don't know Latin, Sinister means left
• Fourth District Democrat - Covering southwest Oklahoma
• Soonerthought
• The Oklahoma Hippy - Currently has a lot of posts up about last night's Ani Difranco concert. Greg was there too. He had a great time, and registered 20 new voters.

I should also mention Sooner Kos, which isn't as much a blog as a discussion group on the Daily Kos website. Its fairly low volume, but you can find me there.

With a list this long, its inevitable that I missed a few good ones. Feel free to post your favorites.

Registrations Up or Down?

I stumbled across an interesting article by
Randy Krehbiel in Monday's Tulsa World about declines in the voter rolls in Tulsa voting districts. This is despite the fact that the population of the city is growing. This is mostly due to purges in the voter rolls in guess where? That's right, heavily democratic districts in north and east Tulsa.

The six north and east Tulsa districts pictured here lost about 3,000 voters in the last two years.

I'm not suggesting anything nefarious here. Randy's article suggests the culprit is declining home ownership rates in the area. Renters move more, and thus need to reregister more often than homeowners do. I suppose you could call the ongoing impoverishment of the working class, and north Tulsa in particular "nefarious", but that's another story.

I do know that we are going to work our tails off to reverse this. I'm going to try to get some detailed numbers today, but I do know that just two of our weekend registration events alone made up %5 of this deficit. We are still just getting geared up and learning where the most effective places to register people are, so I expect this to accelerate in the days to come.

In the meantime, if you want to help, please call the office (or stop by during business hours). If you have any suggestions for good places to register voters, please post a reply to this message.

Help Us - Help Yourself

The election is now 7 weeks away. I know a big deal has been made about Obama's fundraising, but that isn't the whole story. The Republicans have the resources of the world's weathiest men to draw on. Campaign finance laws limit how much money they can give to any one candidate, so they just find other ways to leverage their money. They give to the RNC. They start "astroturf" campaigns. They own many of the media outlets. They even own the companies that make the ballot boxes.

To fight all this we only have one asset: you.

This one asset can make all the difference. There are way more of us than there are of them. If we all stand up, they lose. If we sit around waiting for others to do everything for us like usual, we lose. It's that simple. El pueblo unido jamás será vencido

Our stategy for this cycle is equally simple. Until Friday, October 10 (the registration deadline) we register new voters. Lots of them. Everyone we can. After that, we get registered voters to vote. If we do both well enough, we can win. Yes, even here in Oklahoma.

If you have time, please contact the campaign at (918)497-6292 or stop by the office at 3930 East 31 Street during business hours to ask about helping out with voter registration. Our calendar lists the big official pushes, but there are lots of other ways to help register voters. Even if you don't have the time, make sure your friends and relatives are properly registered. Also make sure they know about this website. Getting others to help is as good as helping yourself. Everyone should strive to do both.

For those with specialized skills and gifts or extra fee time there are some other needs the campaign has right now. Namely:

• Volunteer staff for the office. Hours are Monday through Friday from 9 to 5. Saturday 9 to noon.
• Write letter to the editors of the Tulsa World and other papers.
• Help manage the newsletter.
• Update Demkookie and Tulsa Dem Newsletter.
• Apply to be Tulsa County precinct officers.
• Make color copies.
• Make black and white copies of materials.
• A CPA or accountant to track receipts/expenditures.
• Order, sell and distribute T-shirts.
• A graphic artist.
• Several more trucks with drivers are needed to pick up and deliver Obama stuff.
  

You can also inquire at the office about donating funds to the campaign.

It is said that evil triumphs when good men do nothing. It is time for the good women and men of Oklahoma to stand up and do something. Yes, Oklahoma Can! Si Se Puede Oklahoma!

Welcome

Welcome to the Oklahoma For Obama Campaign 2008 blog. This is a statewide campaign, but those of us running this blog are from Tulsa. Our activities are going to concentrated there. We'd like to try to use this blog to help tell everyone what is going on, what our needs are and what you can do to help.

Our primary push right now is for voter registration. All across the country Democratic voter registrations are way up, and with your help Tulsa will be no exception. Check out the calendar at the bottom of this blog to see what your upcoming opportunities to help will be.

Like the presidency itself, this is the people's campaign. If you don't participate, it doesn't happen. So if you have any suggestions for things you'd like to see here, feel free to post them below. Otherwise, make sure you get registered to vote, and make sure all your friends are registered as well.