Guerilla

From the LA Times

“Using sophisticated communications techniques on the Nevada convention floor in Reno, Paul supporters transmitted mass text messaging to maneuver and direct their troops. When Paul appeared to speak, the ovation was thunderous.

At other times they shouted down the convention chair, Sen. Bob Beers. Taken by surprise the convention organizers and the McCain camp, which for instance had no supply of campaign signs to compete with the blizzard of Paul signs, eventually adjourned the convention in chaos without electing any delegates.”

Fiat Empire Screening

I went to a screening of “Fiat Empire” downtown this past Sunday-half a block away from Loyola’s Water Tower Campus in fact. If you click that link, you can see a running national debt calculator.

As usual, about 20 or so people showed up. On of the guys was the one who I talked about in a previous post as being a member of the John Birch Society, and two other people from the IRS protest. This meeting was especially cool, because the John Birch guy (sorry, I can’t remember his name) is a member of the Chicago Coin Club and brought along examples of real money-gold, silver and copper coins from back when America used to have real money. I didn’t get any pictures of these, but he also brought along some examples of money that has historically been used by different societies. You’ll probably think its boring and well, it kind of is, but that’s all I got pics of, okay?

Like I said on a previous post, Fiat Empire is a very good short (60 min.) film. The entire thing from Google video is below. To repeat, it’s kind of like a bad high school history doc at times, but it also raises several good points-I especially likes the way they connected the idea of 1) the media doesn’t cover inflation or the degraded state of our currency 2) the media doesn’t cover political candidates who don’t raise money precisely because 3) they don’t have the money to purchase advertising and improve the media’s bottom line.

It also features an extensive interview with Ron Paul

You can see the pics I took of some of the more boring money after the jump

YouTube: I now have a famous hand.

To my surprise, I got an email that shows me in the newest lonelantern viral video. My hand is the one right at the beginning holding the “What income tax?” sign, and has been viewed over 5,000 times. My raw footage has only 3 views, unfortunately.

Here’s the link to their Youtube channel.

IRS Demonstration-April 15, 2008

This was it: The Big Day.  It only happens once a year-April 15th, tax day.  All the last minute filers show up, and the post office at Canal and Harrison at least, enables them by having postal workers standing outside with giant bins so that its just like a drive-thru.  This is the biggest Post Office in Chicago.  It was decent weather, but the wind was absolutely ridiculous.  I don’t know if the video can properly convey how windy it was.  About 25-30 people showed up, despite the cold-there might have been more had the weather cooperated.  And most of us stood out there until the bitter end-about 6:30 until about 10:30.  We had more than 750 copies of “America: From Freedom to Fascism” that we handed out and hundreds of copies of Republic Magazine as well.  I just basically stood in one place and held up a “What Income Tax?” sign for most of the time.  My legs were absolutely killing me at the end.

We also joined forces with some Libertarian Party people who were out handing out petitions to get on the ballot in November-they had better signs.  We had everyone honking their horns-even the post office employees in the giant mail semi-trucks.

Here’s just some raw footage I shot.

See the pictures I took after the break.

Ameirca: Freedom to Fascism screening

Ron Paul started to tone down his campaign following Super Tuesday; he needed to compete in a primary for his House seat, and frankly, I think he’s just old and probably getting a little tired, even though he still is campaigning, and actively was campaigning in Pennsylvania.  Therefore, my opportunities for participation in his campaign was somewhat limited, so I decided to get involved in some other groups.  I decided to go to a film screening of Aaron Russo’s “America: From Freedom to Fascism.” It was co-sponsored by two groups, Lone Lantern and Restore the Republic, and took place at a local library.

This was definitely an eye-opening experience for me.  It is a powerful indictment against the IRS and neatly sums up the arguments against taxation in a skillful way, before getting a little weaker (artistically, not rhetorically) in diverting into a discussion of the Federal Reserve.  The part about American hero Joe Lewis were just shocking-I had no clue.  Watch the film and you’ll see what I’m talking about if you don’t know.  Or just google it or look it up on Wikipedia.

It was made by the late Aaron Russo, a major Hollywood producer.  He died of cancer in 2007, and made devoted the last of his money and efforts into making the film.

Here is the entire film-Google was given permission by the producers to have it.

See some materials I picked up at the screening:

Sign Bombing

(This is not my picture-just an example. It belongs to the Wheeling, IL meetup)

After the office shut down the calling, there was a meetup in the lobby of the office-well, the lobby was the office. Just to give you a little idea of the power of meetup, 5 people signed up for the meeting and around 20 showed up. We had hundreds, possibly more than a thousand, signs. We originally thought we would only be able to bomb a few precincts, but we ended up being able to hit every single one we targeted. (Once again, the lack of a camera on my part means no pictures. Sorry.)

***

Timeout: What is sign-bombing? Check out the picture above and you’ll get an idea. It’s basically a strategy to maximize visibility for something in people’s minds, mainly by having lots and lots of signs. People need to be aware of Ron Paul before they will consider voting for him. As far as I’m aware, Ron Paul supporters created the term.

Here’s a great video showing what its about-they’re protesting Rudy Giuliani, a favorite target of Paulites.

Here’s are two other great examples from local news broadcasts:

***

So the guy who was organizing it said that we were specifically targeting the lakeshore precincts because they had an unusually high number of registered independents. Our plan was just to put as many signs as possible outside each voting place the night before the election. I went out with this guy whose name I can’t remember-but he had a car, so it worked out.

The rule is 100 feet from the polling place, but we don’t like rules. Our precinct was right on the lakeshore. It was dark and I’m not too familiar with neighborhoods in Chicago, but eventually it dawned on me that we were actually sign bombing Loyola-Chicago’s precinct. We left about 5 signs or so outside of every polling place in the precinct-all different sizes. Some precincts were doubles or even triples-they got lots of signs. There was an enormous snow pile right next to a polling place at Loyola and we put an even more enormous sign on top of it.

We were competing with a bunch of local candidates, so we needed to have a bunch of signs. One thing I noticed was that no other presidential candidate had any signage-Republican or Democrat. We finished at Loyola around 1AM. I was riding the L past campus and was horrified to see that all of our signs were gone, along with all the signs of the local candidates-except for Joe Berrios.

Little hint, Joe-when your signs are the only ones left, it’s not hard to figure out who tore the other ones down.

But otherwise, this was definitely fun.

My day at the office

Frustrated at my failures to make a difference through precinct-leading, I decided to head down to the Ron Paul campaign office. I had heard they needed help making calls before the election Feb. 5th, so I decided to head down there. Why I wanted to put myself through the torture of making calls again, I’m not sure, but I at least wanted to meet other people who were working for Dr. Paul. If for no other reason than to prove to myself that they really exist in Chicago.

I walked in and I noticed two things right off the bat:

1) The signs: Good lord were there signs! The entire office was empty except for two desks with computers and two phones on them. The rest of the office consisted entirely of signs. Little signs, big signs, really big signs, really REALLY big signs. Hundreds, possibly thousands. Sorry, I didn’t know about the Digital Media Lab when I did this, so I don’t have pictures, but it was absolutely unbelievable.

2) An enormous oil-on-canvass painting of Ron Paul which you can see here. Once again, I did not have a camera with me, so I took a picture on my phone, and then later took a picture of the picture on my phone. It looks pretty pathetic, but there is absolutely no way to do justice to how beautiful the painting was anyway. I didn’t even capture it all. It was floor-to-ceiling. Quite simply one of the most impressive pieces of art I have ever seen. And it was a gift from a supporter, who was just inspired to do it on the spur of the moment.

UPDATE:  I found it-it’s by Chicago Artist Caleb O’Connor:

Awesome:

Continue reading about my experiences, and see picture of the stuff I picked up while I was there:

Precinct Leading Day 2

This day really brought the bad/disconnected number issue to an extreme as you can see in the call sheets:

pl4

You might notice I didn’t bother to redact some of the numbers towards the end. Take a closer look. It’s because they’re all the same. And they’re all bad-just one bad number repeated for dozens of people. Something like 20-30 of them. Hell, you can call them yourself: 773-338-7800. That’s how ridiculous it was.

If you haven’t guessed based on the ending to the last post, I never did find another Ron Paul supporter. And you’ll also notice that at the end, I just sort of gave up. I found one Ron Paul supporter out of 400 calls. I didn’t really think it was worth doing the last 30-40 of them, considering that 20 of them would be bad no answer, 5 would be Democrats, and the other 5 would refuse to participate in my little poll.

The most interesting person who I talked to was an African-American man who supported Huckabee, and justified his support of the Iraq War by saying that he had been “overseas” (he didn’t say where) and everything looked fine(!). So he thought that Democrats were somehow creating Iraq as a stunt to make the President look bad. No, really. It’s in my notes on the sheet.

Ultimately, my precinct activities faced several difficult obstacles.

1) Chicago: This is heavily Democratic city-Republicans are about as rare as the black rhino.

2) Technical difficulties: I was having some pretty bad difficulties getting the Ron Paul website to cooperate with me, delaying my calls while I tried to figure out the problems with the databases.

3) Real Estate: Tons of high-rises in my precinct meant it was virtually impossible to go door-to-door, unless I would pose as a resident of one of these apartments, get past security, if any, or just convince a resident to let a total stranger inside. None of this was appealing to me. Later, I would talk to people who actually have done this type of thing-they didn’t like it either.

4) The Weather: For some reason, this year was an unusually cold winter, the primary was on Feb. 5th, and there was no way I was going out door-to-door.

There is no doubt that real person-to-person contact through door-to-door canvassing is the most effective way to do the grassroots work I was doing, but as the above mitigating circumstances show, this was highly difficult. If I had to do it again, I might actually have tried sneaking into buildings, if for no other reason than it would have been an adventure and I would have had good stories to tell on this blog.

I also kind of felt bad for carrying water for the RNC. I don’t support the Republican Party and it sends a cold chill down my spine that I might have been helping them to update their records and therefore making their political organization more efficient, no matter in how small a way.

Moral of the story: COLD CALLING SUCKS! DO NOT DO THIS! ANYTHING BUT THIS!

BUT, there is a better way, as you will find out in my post on my day at the Ron Paul campaign office.

Precinct Leading Day 1

I can’t really say what initially caused me to want to be a precinct leader for Ron Paul. I had no idea what it was, and I certainly had no idea what I was getting myself into. The major lesson I learned from this experience is that cold calling people-particularly about politics-is the worst job in the entire world. I doubt I would have gotten a worse reaction if I was trying to telemarket root canals.

So basically what we have right here is a “script” that we were supposed to use:

phone-script

This is a non-advocacy script, meaning you don’t identify yourself as a Ron Paul supporter. The whole goal of this sort of thing is just to identify supporters of the various candidates. The main responses I was interested in were whether someone was already a Ron Paul supporter, what issues were important to them, or whether they were undecided. This is known as the “identification” stage.

Here are the call sheets I used:

pl11

I was extraordinarily nervous about cold-calling people. I finally managed to get over my fear, and called the first person right from the comfort of my own apartment. He answered-all good so far. So I asked him if he wanted to answer a quick survey about the upcoming election. He told me he’s at work and can’t answer questions right now.

I have no idea why this was so discouraging, but I literally did not call another person for another 3 days. Just one call, and I was already sick of it. I hate talking to strangers. Even worse, I hate feeling like I’m annoying people. That’s what this was. Was anyone going to answer? Was I just going to be annoying everyone? Eventually, once again I worked over my fear (after several days) and managed to call the second person.

No answer. Third person. Bad number. Fourth person. Bad number. I quickly learned another lesson: I’m working with Republican National Committee documents. In Chicago. The most Democratic area of a state that went heavily Democratic in 2004. Republicans probably haven’t been here in YEARS. Ron Paul is technically a Republican, and therefore relies on their documents.

All of my fear evaporated. Calling numbers and hearing that sweet sound “the number you have dialed is no longer in service” over and over and over again just made me happy. It was just comical. Why on earth was I so scared? This is easy! Every once in a while I would get a hold of someone and ask them if they wanted to take a survey. They usually declined or told me they were voting for a Democrat. Dozens and dozens of calls, no answers, bad numbers, hang-ups, and Democrats. I had recently seen a poll that showed Ron Paul at 5% in Illinois. I had to get at least 5 out of 100 right?

Eventually though, my fear was replaced with sheer frustration. No one even wanted to answer the damn survey. I tried the non-advocacy angle. I tried flat-out identifying myself as a Ron Paul supporter, since I thought the non-advocacy stuff was dishonest. Either way nothing much happened. One woman I called pretty much summed it up: When I told her I was working for Congressman Paul, she said “Oh I’m not voting for him. He’s kind of a quack.” I said I wasn’t trying to convince her, just trying to identify his supporters and she said “Well, you can’t count on me,” and then hung up.

Well, I had made 99 calls, and my 100th call appeared to be yet another “no answer.” I hung up and was in the process of calling someone else when I got a call back from the number I just hung up on. I wasn’t too enthusiastic. This was actually the first time anyone who I called had called back, and I told him that I was a precinct leader fro Ron Paul and I was just calling to try to identify his supporters. “Oh yeah,” he said, “I’m a big supporter of Dr. Paul. I think he’s got a lot of great ideas.”

CELEBRATION!!!! I told him thank God, you’re the first guy I found who actually likes the guy-on exactly my 100th call. He said Paul was doing pretty good in the Rogers Park neighborhood. I asked him if he needed any materials, he said he already had some. We said goodbye. I called my mom, I was so excited.

I called a few more people, got about the same stuff I was getting before, but I was too hyped up to keep going. Nothing gave me heart more than finding that guy. You can see my excitement in the note next to his name. That had made my whole day worth it.

It would turn out to be the high point of my efforts at precinct leading.

TO BE CONTINUED…Part 2

How to be a Ron Paul precinct leader

So you want to be a Ron Paul precinct leader. Well here goes. It basically involves three steps: Identification, Conversion and “get out the vote.”

Here is how the Ron Paul website described the Identification process:

Voter ID is as easy as contacting the voters on your precinct list, either by phone or in person, and asking them a few simple survey questions. Although it takes time to contact each voter on your list, it’s not at all difficult.

We recommend that you start your voter ID by phone and then finish it up by going door-to-door to the voters you weren’t able to reach by phone.

There are three types of voters on your list. The purpose of the Voter ID survey is to help you find out as quickly and easily as possible which category each voter belongs to.

The three categories are Ron Paul supporters, supporters of other candidates, and undecided voters. Think of the three categories as the Saints, the Sinners, and the Searching.

Aww, that’s cute.

So the Saints are “the voters in your precinct who already support Ron Paul. You may not know who they are yet, but they’re out there. Down the street, around the corner, a block over – the Ron Paul revolution is simmering behind lots of doors in your neighborhood.”

The Sinners “are the voters in your precinct who support any candidate other than Ron Paul. Don’t be tempted to try to convince these voters to support to Dr. Paul: once you’ve identified a “Sinner,” don’t waste any more of your precious time or literature on them…If a “sinner” strongly supports an opposing candidate and sees you organizing to win your precinct for Dr. Paul, they may decide to start organizing voters for their candidate. Stay clear of the sinners entirely, once you know who they are.”

The Searching “are the undecided voters who are still looking for the candidate who best addresses their concerns. If you follow the survey script we provide for Voter ID, once you’ve finished with Step 1, you’ll know exactly which issues are the most important to every undecided voter in your precinct.”

So to sum up: “ Voter ID is the reconnaissance of political warfare. When going into battle, you, and Ron Paul headquarters, need to know how many troops we have, how many more we might raise, and how large the enemies’ forces are.”

Continue Reading about my exciting adventures:

Time to get your pitchforks

We officially have no constitution anymore. Well, I guess it isn’t official until the House Democrats surrender as well.

Updates coming…

Stickers are not illegal

From various news sources: A teenage supporter of Ron Paul (hi there!) in Minnesota has received $550 in citations for having a large Ron Paul decal in the back window of his car.

Big Chief LaDue says, “The political aspect of this doesn’t enter into the equation at all,” the unsuspecting chief told the Associated Press. “It’s very clear in state statute that you cannot have anything that obstructs the driver’s vision.”

But normal American Cody Hauer says: “I support Ron Paul. The city police department doesn’t. They gave me a ticket for DWR — Driving While Republican.”

Sounds loony, until you consider, as numerous commenters on the post pointed out it’s not illegal to have anything blocking your back window. Many trucks, vans and other vehicles don’t have rear view mirrors or even back windows. Check out a semi the next time you see one. As long as you have side windows mirrors, you’re fine.

But the author of this post is so condescending-

“It seems that Hauer, like thousands of other Ron Paul supporters all over the country, regards it as his holy duty to persuade others to vote for his candidate in this heated primary season.”

“Obstructed rear vision is not an unusual charge to be leveled against libertarians.” (what does this even mean?)

“They will be flocking to this blog item any minute now to leave their outraged comments about such police tactics and the ongoing anti-Ron Paul media conspiracy that will effectively ignore and smother the spread of news concerning the about-to-be-infamous Owatonna Outrage almost everywhere but here. Apparently, Hauer feels compelled to share this outrage and sense of urgency with every ticketing officer.”

As usual, the best comments come from the Ron Paul supporters in the comments section:

“Come on, get “objective” and stop taking cheap shots at Ron Paul and his many supporters. After all, he is not in favor of more war (e.g., McCain), nor in favor of a Nanny State (e.g. Huckabee). Do you want this? We don’t. Does it come as a surprise that there are still Ron Paul people out there? One reason is that we are tired of a media which has done all it can to marginalize this candidate. IBut, thanks to the law of unintended consequences, the media has actually, by such shameful tactics, added greatly to the public awareness of Ron Paul… sorry.”

“Oh Andrew, how us Ron Paul supporters love you. You and your fine organization are the pinnacle of journalistic integrity. Condescend to us more. Please.”

” “He talks himself into a citation every time,” Chief LaDue points out.” What the hell is that?! How can someone “talk himself into a citation” if the citation is to be awarded on something objective like whether a sign is blocking rearward vision? That statement from the Chief PROVES (Yes, Andrew, note the capitals) that this is a political ticket.”

“Isn’t it wonderful that this young man, a teen, is so excited about this election. Dr. Paul has infused enthusiasm into our youth, and that is a very good thing. He has caused the young Americans to love their constitution and understand it. He has taught them through this election process the workings of Government but unfortunately they have also seen how the Media has tried to bar this good man’s message in the most un-American way I have ever seen. I hope they are not to discouraged by what they see but committed to right the wrongs that they see.”

And my favorite:

“Of course there are wacky Ron Paul supporters who TYPE IN ALL CAPITALS. At least they care and can write, unlike lots of government-schooled Americans. You would do well to devote more attention to the more respected intellectuals who support Ron Paul.”

Apparently, some people think that just leaving a comment at a blog is enough to qualify you for the crazy-house-but how is commenting on a blog any different from writing one? Sheesh.

Is McCain an option for Paul supporters?

I know you’ve probably all seen this, but here’s the McCain remix on the Barack Obama “Yes We Can” video

This pretty much sums it up. “American won’t have a problem with troops being in Iraq for 100 years”? People got sick of it after about 2 years, and remain so.

And none other than Ron Paul weighs in today in the Tribune. It’s not really a surprise, but he doesn’t like McCain:

“I can not support anybody with the foreign policy he advocates, you know, perpetual war. That is just so disturbing to me,” Paul said. “I think it’s un-American, un-Constitutional, immoral, and not Republican.”

He forgot illegal. Virtually the only reason Dr. Paul began to stick out in this campaign is people seeing him as the only Republican onstage in the debates who opposed the war in Iraq. All of his other positions wouldn’t have gotten him any attention-they’re actually fairly similar to most conservative positions, which for practical reasons, most conservatives won’t say out loud, like eliminating the Fed and the IRS etc. His p0sition on Iraq is what “made” him (besides his necessary reliance on the internet for campaigning). As George Will put it, Ron Paul makes the case that not only can you oppose the War and be a conservative, but that if you are a conservative, you must oppose the war.

Honestly, for anyone who thinks like the person I mentioned in the previous post, and will vote for McCain because he’s a “deficit hawk” needs to think about just what the last five years in Iraq have done to our deficit, and then think about what it would be like a hundred years from now. America and Iraq, third-world allies.

And none of this “the hundred years quote is taken out of context” mess. McCain’s already embraced indefinite occupation.

Feel free to disagree.

Where will we go?

The Tribune poses an important question:

The question is, when the contest is finished, where will these people go?

Where will the people who conspired to raise $6 million for Ron Paul in one record day of Internet-fundraisng in December go? Will they settle for McCain, who drew boos among the cheers as he appeared [at the CPAC conference] this week, his party’s nominee-apparent?

Will they stay with their party? Or will they move to the third or fourth presidential candidate on the ballot in November?

The answer is…complicated.  This is much like when John Edwards dropped out of the Democratic race when people wondered whether Edwards voters would go to Obama because they’re both “change” candidates (whatever that means), or will they go to Clinton, because his appeal was largely to the white working class, a group she has been strong with?

Well, if you couldn’t tell by now, you can’t just put people into a box like that.  Edwards voters ended up splitting up about equally into the above two groups.  There was no monolithic “Edwards vote.”  It’s the same with Ron Paul supporters.  I’ve heard one person (not a representative sample) say he would vote for McCain because he was a deficit hawk.  Another said he was voting for Obama in the Illinois primary because “Paul can’t win.”  (Never mind that a vote for Obama would have been equally worthless because he was already guaranteed to win in Illinois.)  Yet another said he was voting for “the Green Guy” because he was “just so sick of all this political bullshit.”  (I managed to convince him to stay with Paul.)

And then there are the people like me-those who were drawn in specifically for Dr. Paul and his ideas and his campaign, and probably won’t even bother with anyone else.  I have to say, I’m seriously doubting whether I’m even going to bother showing up in November.  I’ll be overseas, and absentees ballots don’t even get counted unless it’s close (which it won’t be).   I tend to think that most of the people who I’ve met and interacted with in this campaign are like me.  They just won’t bother with anyone else.  You can only capture this kind of energy once.

Starting Off

What an unfortunate time to begin a blog about my experiences volunteering with the Ron Paul campaign.  I just received an e-mail the other day in which Dr. Paul essentially concedes defeat (with apologies for length-I know blogs are supposed to be for those with short attention spans):

…Let me tell you my thoughts. With Romney gone, the chances of a brokered convention are nearly zero. But that does not affect my determination to fight on, in every caucus and primary remaining, and at the convention for our ideas, with just as many delegates as I can get. But with so many primaries and caucuses now over, we do not now need so big a national campaign staff, and so I am making it leaner and tighter. Of course, I am committed to fighting for our ideas within the Republican party, so there will be no third party run. I do not denigrate third parties — just the opposite, and I have long worked to remove the ballot-access restrictions on them. But I am a Republican, and I will remain a Republican.

I also have another priority. I have constituents in my home district that I must serve. I cannot and will not let them down. And I have another battle I must face here as well. If I were to lose the primary for my congressional seat, all our opponents would react with glee, and pretend it was a rejection of our ideas. I cannot and will not let that happen.

In the presidential race and the congressional race, I need your support, as always. And I have plans to continue fighting for our ideas in politics and education that I will share with you when I can, for I will need you at my side. In the meantime, onward and upward! The neocons, the warmongers, the socialists, the advocates of inflation will be hearing much from you and me.

So he’s not quitting, but he kind of is…but not really.  I absolutely, totally understand that there is an upcoming Republican primary in his congressional district, and that should certainly take first priority, but its certainly not very encouraging to those of us on the ground (or at least to me).

This comes on the heels of finding out through the media that Dr. Paul is only going to be focused on caucus states from now on, not primaries.  This is certainly wise strategically, and confirms what I had suspected.  He’s done very well in the caucus states, possibly winning Louisiana (the caucus version) and beating McCain repeatedly elsewhere in Alaska, Montana, Nevada, Wyoming etc, and came within a few votes in Iowa, Washington, Minnesota, North Dakota and most recently Maine.  But again, this is not very encouraging to someone like myself, who worked extensively in Illinois and will possibly be going up to Wisconsin soon, my home state, both of which are primary states.

Here’s the NY Times’ take.

Oh well, I’ll soldier on.  I’ll try to update regularly and recount some of my experiences.  In the meantime here’s a video that sums up everything I love about Ron Paul, his supporters and this campaign.  It’s from New Hampshire, when Dr. Paul was excluded from a so-called Republican debate on Fox so-called News.  Sean Hannity emerges from a building and he finally gets a look at what real Americans look like, as they chase him down the street: