Congressional meet and greet, VP debate party, and more

Tomorrow is the meet and greet with 4th district congressional candidates at the Student Union Building at Centenary College. The College Democrats are sponsoring this - all the Democratic candidates on the ballot this Saturday will be there: Paul Carmouche, John Milkovich, Artis Cash, and Willie Banks. The event starts at 11 am and goes until 12:15 pm - pizza and drinks will be available. For more info, contact Nadine Kaskas at nkaskas@centenary.edu.

Thursday night is the VP debate watch party - we'll be having it at the headquarters again, though this time in the bigger room, so it'll be more spacious and a lot cooler (and more fun) for everyone. We had a great turnout last time - and a great time shouting at McCain on the screen in unison - and this is sure to be even better with the differences between Palin and Biden. Please come by and bring food and/or drinks if you can! RSVP/get more details here.

Other events: we need volunteers to register voters at Centenary, LSUS, and the MLK neighborhood association every day this week, and we will be canvassing this weekend. Please come by the office to sign up, reply to this email, or call us at 318.221.7902. All events can be found on my.barackobama.com. The deadline to register to vote is NEXT MONDAY, OCTOBER 6. We're just seven days away!

If you want to volunteer from home, we need people to do some virtual phone banking. All it requires is a computer and a telephone - we need people to commit to just one hour of calling from home. Please let me know if you're interested in this and I can give you more information!

The state directors have been duly impressed by what we've got going on here - let's keep the momentum going and turn this state blue again!

Obama events this weekend

(left to right: Cal Butler, Del Brennan, Jackie Lynch, Kneece Camp, and J. T. Thomas register new voters while canvassing Shreveport neighborhoods; photo from Del Brennan)


Just a reminder - the campaign office is open from 9-9 Monday-Friday and 11-9 on Sunday (but we usually stop phone banking around 8 - still, you can come by!).

The deadline to register to vote on November 4th is just around the corner on October 6th - only 11 days away!! So we've got a desperate need for volunteers and a big push for voter registration - here are some of the events going on in the next few days that I'd love to see all of you at:

Friday, September 26

6:00 pm - meet up to register voters at the Capt. Shreve Homecoming game. One of our high school interns will be heading this up and may need some help - let me know if you're interested!

7:00 pm - preparing for the debate watch party! The debate, or possibly the town hall meeting between just Obama and the audience, starts at 8 pm, but come by before to volunteer for a bit before we all settle down to watch. We're having watch parties at the office and at Gigi's Sports Bar downtown (the latter is 21+ only).

Saturday, September 27

9:00 am - meet at the office for a bit of training and then head out to canvass public housing developments and targeted neighborhoods in Shreveport - this is knocking on doors and registering people to vote.

Sunday, September 28

4:00 pm - another canvass - this one meets at Roman Delight Pizza inside Mall St. Vincent before heading out to the neighborhoods around LSU Medical Center.

And much more - we need volunteers to help staff tables at Centenary, LSUS, BPCC, and other key locations over the next week! We also ALWAYS need volunteers at the office for phone banking (trying to recruit volunteers and calling back people whose registrations have been rejected), data entry, and general office help.

Electoral-Vote.com shows Louisiana as the only weak Republican state besides Florida in a sea of solid red - with your help, it should be easy for us to give our 9 electoral votes to Senator Obama!

See you soon!

Volunteers and interns needed at Shreveport Obama office!

We're in the early stages of building our volunteer army and at this point we're looking for leaders to step up and get us moving.

We need volunteers to do the following:

* Phone banking: Calling a list of Democrat-friendly people and asking them to come and help us.
* Voter registration: Going to events with our teams of canvassers and making sure people are registered to vote.
* Data entry: Logging the results of our phone banking campaign so that the campaign HQ in Chicago can see what we're doing.
* Reception/Office staff: People to meet and greet volunteers, sell Obama merchandise, answer the phone, send emails like this.
* Digital Team: Help get the message out there on the internet.
* Food committee: Make sure we're all fed and watered.
* Drivers: Help us get people to the polls!
* Handing out (and designing and printing) flyers.
* Any donations and contributions of time, money, furniture, food, office supplies and anything else that might help us!

Anyone who is interested in helping Barack Obama win the state of Louisiana should come to our new office at 520 Spring Street, Suite A (we're sharing office space with the Mary Landrieu campaign HQ), call us on 318-221-7902 or email us at northlaforobama@gmail.com. Our office is open 9am - 9pm Monday - Saturday and 11am - 9pm Sunday.

Just to give you an idea of what's going on: Until last Tuesday, the Obama campaign thought of north Louisiana as a lost cause, but thanks to groups like ObamaFTW (that's 'Obama-For-the-Win'), we managed to reduce John McCain's lead in this state from 19 points to just seven! When this happened, the campaign started to take notice and sent us David Wilburn, an experienced campaign organizer. Now we have three offices in north Louisiana - one here in Shreveport, one in Monroe and one in Alexandria.

If we can reduce McCain's lead to less than five points, the campaign will start throwing us money, and guess what? We think that within a week we can do just that.

In other words, and I know you may find this hard to believe, we believe that we actually have a realistic chance of winning this state for Barack Obama. This is why we need volunteers and we need them now. Anyone who thought there was no point in campaiging or even voting in this state needs to know this - that right now we actually have a chance - IF the people who support Obama are prepared to step up and help us.

Obama office opening in Shreveport!

Exciting news! Because we've narrowed McCain's lead over Obama in
Louisiana, the Democratic Party is finally investing resources in this
state! Obama offices are being opened in Shreveport, Monroe, and
Alexandria!

If you were at the Howard Dean rally back in July, you met David
Wilburn, who works for the Louisiana branch of the DNC. He's coming to
Shreveport this afternoon to meet with volunteers - several volunteer
positions are open and important training will take place. I know this
is last-minute, but PLEASE stop by if you can - we need to give him a
rousing Shreveport welcome so he knows he made the right decision in
coming here!

Because the LA campaign still has limited funds, they'll be sharing
office space for the moment with the Coordinated Campaign - so come to
520 Spring Street at 5:30 this afternoon.

Please come if you can and bring as many people as possible! This is
all thanks to the efforts of volunteers - Del Brennan, Jasmine
Whitehorn, and many others among you who have all registered voters
and helped spread the word of change - you are all the reason we're
closing the gap.

Details and RSVP here.

--------

Monroe Field Office opening Tuesday, September 18. Details and RSVP here.

Alexandria Field Office opening Thursday, September 18. Details and RSVP here.

5 McCain videos everyone needs to see

Robert Greenwald, the skilled documentary filmmaker behind gems like "Uncovered: The War in Iraq," "Unconstitutional: The War on our Civil Liberties," and "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism," sent an email to fans today about the 5 McCain videos everyone needs to see.

The Real McCain 2 reached an astonishing 4 million views last week, just as the McCain campaign was trotting out lie after lie at the Republican National Convention. Coincidence? We don't think so. To us, this unprecedented number suggests that the public is desperately seeking the truth about John McCain -- a truth the corporate press still isn't providing.

We're hearing reports of a lot of hand-wringing from people who are scared and don't know what to do. So we came up with a way to put that nervous energy to good use! Join the McCain Truth Squad and a couple of times a week we will send you McCain videos for you to forward on with a personal note to your friends, colleagues and family members.

Join the McCain Truth Squad.

To get you started, below are five videos that present the Real McCain: an elitist out of touch with hard-working Americans; a double talker who supports a costly war in Iraq but won't support our veterans. Forward this email on. This is the McCain everyone should know.

1. The Real McCain 2: Watch as McCain's YouTube problem became his nightmare in the video that received over 4 million views.

2. Less Jobs. More Wars: What is this 'Iraq war' charge on my bill?

3. John McCain vs. John McCain: Tell McCain to get off the Double Talk Express.

4. McCain's Spiritual Guide: The video that caused McCain to renounce Rev. Rod Parsley's bigoted endorsement.

5. Why Won't McCain Sign the GI Bill? Presenting the most blatant hypocrisy of the McCain campaign.

Imagine how differently people would regard McCain if they saw all five of these videos and learned the truth. That's why we want you to forward this e-mail to everyone and anyone with a personal note at the top from you. Why send these videos individually when you can send them all at once? Also, get them on all the blogs and traditional news sites you can. Make sure you're doing everything you can to educate the public about the Real McCain.

Yours,
Robert Greenwald
and the Brave New team

I respect him and his documentaries quite a bit - these videos are pretty good at exposing McCain's schizophrenia and/or flip-flopping.

Obama Shreveport strategy meeting Wednesday night

Jasmine Whitehorn's second Obama FTW meeting is tomorrow night, Wednesday, at 7:00 pm for one hour. Get details and RSVP here.

A brief meeting agenda from Jasmine -

1. We have a speaker from Louisiana Victory-Shreveport Office. She
will talk about their campaign efforts, and the possibility of our
group campaigning for others like Mary Landrieu and William Jefferson.
2. We have a field officer coming soon on behalf of David Huynh
director of the Obama campaign in Louisiana, and we need to discuss a
time when everyone is available to do that.
3. We will discuss different committees and everyone will get the
chance to pick what committee they want to be in.
Sydney "Saci" Roy developed this idea, and she will be organizing this.
4. We'll open the floor to any new ideas/comments/proposals.

Sounds like a great meeting! I'll also be talking about a new Postcards for Votes project that I'd love for everyone to be involved
with - if you don't have the time to canvass for new voters or don't feel comfortable making phone calls, writing 2-3 reasons why you support Obama on a postcard is the perfect project. I'll collect all the postcards and send them to voters! I'll post more info on this soon.

The Obama campaign announced that its August fundraising fell below expectations - DON'T FORGET TO DONATE! Go to donate.barackobama.com or store.barackobama.com - any money you spend on merchandise (shirts, signs, stickers) all goes to the campaign.

Shreveport events this week

Shreveport Obama events have been a great success - Kaylon Johnson said Mayor Cedric Glover went to last Thursday night's convention watch party at Southern University and stayed through the whole speech!

Though the Meet & Greet with local Democratic congressional candidates Paul Carmouche and John Milkovich was canceled today due to Hurricane Gustav (see the end of the post), a few other Shreveport for Obama events are taking place during the rest of the week.

- Jasmine Whitehorn has organized an Obama strategy meeting for tomorrow, September 3 at 7:00 pm. The meeting will take place at the Law Office of Kenota L. Pulliam in the Louisiana Tower, 401 Edwards Street, Suite 525. For more information, email obamaftw08@gmail.com. RSVP here.

- Stormy Gage-Watts is holding a voter registration event this Saturday, September 6 at 9:00 am. This will take place at Stormy's Car Care at 3903 Greenwood Road in Shreveport. For more information or for directions, check here.

The following message is from Centenary College Democrats President Nadine Kaskas, who organized the Carmouche and Milkovich event that had to be postponed today:

Hey everyone,

The meet and greet is now postponed due to Hurricane Gustav preparations (all classes canceled until Thursday).

The Carmouche campaign is suspending all campaign operations. As soon as we reschedule I will be sure to let you know the updated information.

Be safe,

Nadine

It is important to note that as of today, the September 6 primary election is still scheduled to go on - so remember to go vote!