Obama in New Hampshire

Last night my friend Miriam called to see if I wanted to go to New Hampshire to volunteer for Barack Obama. The NH primaries are on Tuesday and this weekend was the big push to get people to vote, and specifically to get people out to vote for Barack Obama. There was a rally in Manchester at 9am, so we decided to leave Cambridge around 7am to be in Manchester around 8am and stand in line. Our plan worked perfectly. There was a little bit of a line when we got there, but not much and we got parking right across the street from the theatre. We ended up standing in line with a guy from New Jersey and behind some people from California and in front of a group from the AARP. When we sat down in the theatre (only 7 rows back and in the center section! Yes, I took the above photo.) we were sitting next to a man from Massachusetts who grew up in Chicago and a group from Chicago that was students and teachers from Chicago Public Schools who were there to get kids interested in the democratic process. It was pretty awesome just to see how many people traveled from so far to participate in this process. The people from California were talking about how the only way they get to see candidates is to pay $1,000 a plate for a fundraiser dinner. They were making a vacation out of it, planning on seeing all of the democratic candidates and hanging out until the primaries.

It was also so interesting to see the process of putting together a rally. There were so many people from the press and tons of volunteers and at least a few hundred supporters. We had to wait a while and then finally, Barack showed up and his speech was so great. I'm sure it was his standard stump speech, tweaked to include the Iowa caucuses and last night's debate, but I have to say it was still inspiring to see him live and to be there with so many other people. After being swept up in the whole process, we headed to the Obama for America headquarters and volunteered by calling folks for about an hour, and scoring free lunch and some buttons while we were there. :) Overall, it was an interesting day. I had never done anything like that before and I learned a lot about the primary process in a state where the primary actually matters.