Fired Up! Ready to Go! Who Wants Ice Cream? Come Get It

With now only 40 days left before the election, having so often suggested that it's your dedication of time—not necessarily your money—that's needed, and with friends shipping out to the swing states, and my mom signing up voters in Virginia, and my auntie Carol Jean manning the phonebanks, and me reading all these Grace Paley short stories, while the polls, against all decency, remain neck and neck, I finally got myself down to the San Francisco Barack Obama headquarters last night for a volunteer orientation. Here's the lowdown. The critical task that remains for San Franciscans at this late hour is to help out in Nevada, a solidly purple swing state. Volunteers are needed to travel there in person or to make calls from the phonebanks here in order to get tabs on where Nevada voters stand on the candidates, to encourage them to vote, and to facilitate their ability to get to the polls. There are over 70,000 phone calls that still need to be made from the SF office, and an amazing assortment of enthusiastic folks down there from 10 am to 8 pm getting the job done. Join them! To find out more about getting involved here in SF, check out www.sfobama.com. Better yet, just get yourself down to 939 Market Street and get on the phone. They can train you in just a few short minutes and then you are welcome to drop in whenever you can—even on your lunch break, even if you've never done something like this before, even if you feel like you don't know too much about the policies. It's an all hands on deck situation. Here is the video they played for us last night. It's the full story behind the whole Fired Up! Ready to Go! chant and a hugely appealing glimpse of Obama, worth watching through to the very end. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4GQ5rGsk1A]