Volunteering is has its ups and downs. Last Saturday when I realized my DNC volunteer assignment was basically standing outside a building pointing at a door I was a bit bummed. When I realized I would be standing outside the Denver Convention Center (where daily caucus meetings took place before the prime time speeches happened at the Pepsi Center) with a bright orange volunteer t-shirt on and essentially no info to give people (no idea how that seemed like a good idea to the volunteer coordinators) I decided I had better print out maps and a schedule of events so I didn’t sound like an idiot.
Monday and Tuesday Mandy and I roamed around the Convention Center directing and greeting people and basically trying to help them out as best we could. We were the only ones with a map or schedule that first day (the coordinators did finally give us some info on Tuesday) and were the envy of all other volunteers. Somehow we never got a photo of us – bad blogger, I know.
Our first “sighting” was Ted Koppel, soon to be followed by a wave from Howard Dean. On Tuesday we staked out the door where we believed Hillary Clinton would arrive but she managed to evade us, dang! We did see actress Rosario Dawson as she made her way to the Women’s Caucus (very nice, said hi).
Wednesday was my first non-Mandy day which was a bummer but luckily the other volunteers were very fun to hang out with (even when a pro-life guy with a huge billboard of an aborted fetus yelled at us for over an hour and a half). Over the first 3 days there were Obama merchandise people all over and people supporting just about every cause you can imagine. There was even a guy who claimed (falsely) to be from the Daily Show who had an “Edwards ’08 – don’t hate a playa” t-shirt on who was asking women if they had had an affair with Edwards and if so handed them a Barbie doll and asked them where he had touched them. I’m assuming this video is on You Tube somewhere.
Best quote was a man who walked up to me and said, “I’m a Congressman – do I have to stand in that line?” As he had a credential, the answer was no and he was super happy. Favorite person to help was a woman who needed a wheelchair who was going to see Michelle Obama speak inside – sweet, sweet lady.
But by Wednesday I was fed up with doors that were locked for seemingly no reason that people had to enter to get to their meetings on time and many more things I won’t bore you with. I was a bit grumpy after my shift but perked up when a fellow volunteer let me know that Michelle Obama was speaking down the hall. I saw the last 20 minutes of her speech and felt like that was a nice reward for my time.
Thursday morning I was told when I checked in that all the coordinators/volunteer captains were leaving at 11:30 so I didn’t even need to bother checking out. I was still hoping that maybe someone would find tickets to Invesco for Obama’s speech for the convention volunteers, but alas, the message was more like “see ya later, thanks a bunch.” The mood of volunteers was pretty grim as delegates and volunteers all seemed to know where they were going after 3 days and my fellow volunteers and I felt pretty useless.
After a Blair Underwood (cutest family ever) sighting and a brief chat with Gayle King, AKA Oprah’s Best Friend, who were attending a breakfast in the Convention Center, the real boredom set in. I spent the next hour walking around trying to find someone to assist but mostly chatting with some volunteers I had not worked with earlier and following up with another volunteer who was on a waiting list to be a security volunteer at Invesco. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to spend 6 hours in the sun helping people get inside Invesco when I wasn’t sure if I would ever get inside myself (apparently my volunteer side has its limits) so I had not signed up for this.
I left a group of 3 volunteers to check in with the woman on the Invesco waiting list and when I returned 5 minutes later was greeted with 3 enormous smiles. A woman had just handed them credentials to Invesco out of the blue. At first I thought I had the worst timing ever and considered sprinting down the street to find the woman, but I was then shocked to find out that one of the volunteers (who already had a ticket) had saved one just for me. I had just met this person and we had talked for maybe 4 minutes. I gave him a hug and jumped up and down for awhile.
After getting our babysitter Mindy to agree to watch Saffie a few extra hours and Josh to take over after that I now needed to figure out how to get to Invesco. One of the other lucky volunteers to get a last minute ticket was in the same boat I was. Our cars were parked by the Convention Center (sorry Al Gore, yes, I drove by myself to Denver that morning). We teamed up and made our way to the stadium. **special note – because I am a rule follower I did tell the volunteer captains that I was leaving my shift early (everyone else had left by this time) – they congratulated me on scoring a ticket and encouraged me to find my way to Invesco.
We got there (by a shuttle we discovered) ridiculously early, but we weren’t the only ones. The doors finally opened at 1pm and we discovered that our tickets were pretty good. We were under the large jumbotron to the right of the stage and close enough to the CNN booth that I could see Wolf Blitzer dancing to Stevie Wonder right along with the rest of us later that night. After we sat down I realized I already had a sunburn so decided to buy an Obama hat for some sun protection. My string of luck continued when an Invesco worker offered me some sunscreen (without that sunscreen I would have been in baaaaaaad shape – something was going on with me running into generous strangers that day)
Here are some photos I took with my iphone of the stadium filling up (watch the Bronco head disappear) and an atrocious picture of myself (remember this was my 4th day in a row of waking up before 6AM, I had been standing in the sun for hours, and had no warning I was going to be witnessing history that night!)
I really wish I would have been there when the woman was handing out tickets because not only would I have sent her in the direction of 2 volunteers who I had gotten to know quite well the day before who never got tickets, but I would have loved to have gotten one for Mandy as well. Many of you know that I have made fun of twitter, facebook, and iphones in the past but I have now flip-flopped and have embraced them all. It was wonderful to text and twitter – get messages back from facebook from people who were following my posts. It really added to the fun.
I don’t even know how to explain how I felt that night. How many times in your life have you yelled, chanted, danced, waved flags and signs, stomped your feet, and felt like you were a part of history – wonderful, fantastic history. Add in saying the pledge of allegiance with Olympian Shawn Johnson (which was just kind of goofy), the national anthem sung by Jennifer Hudson, performances by Stevie Wonder and Sheryl Crow, a speech by Al Gore who I just simply adore, and it doesn’t matter that you’ve been up since 5:30AM, are sunburned, have only eaten stadium food all day, and are wearing a goofy volunteer t-shirt. Life is good. Embrace the moment.
Thanks again to Mindy and Josh for taking care of the Saffinator, to the mystery woman with my “golden ticket”, to the volunteer who thought to get one for me, to the worker who gave me sunscreen, to the volunteer I spent the day with who drove me to my car after we figured out how to escape Invesco by light rail and bus (her name is not Darleen but something close to that, shoot).
And thank you Barack Obama for a wonderful speech and a wonderful night – I can’t wait for you to be president!!
Coming soon – my volunteer adventures will continue as I sign up for some Obama ’08 action.
