Post from Jeremiah Bird's Blog: Moving America Forward: One Door at a Time

Post from Jeremiah Bird's Blog: Moving America Forward: One Door at a Time

By Jeremy Bird, OFA Deputy Director - Sep 9, 2010 12:52:58 PM ET

Also listed in: 2010 HQ Blog

OFA Deputy Director Jeremy Bird wrote on Huffington Post about the success of our recent Moving America Forward Day of Action, where volunteers knocked on more than 200,000 doors throughout the country.

Now that Labor Day weekend has come and gone, political season is in full swing. With November 2nd less than two months away campaigns are buzzing with activity and polls and predictions are dominating cable news. Here at OFA, we've been hard at work since our June 5th VOTE 2010 kickoff contacting voters and getting ourselves ready for the fall push. Just a few weeks ago, we decided that we would use August 28th to test our organizational strength by holding "Moving America Forward" canvasses across the country.

Nationally, we set an ambitious goal by pledging to hit 200,000 doors in the dog days of August. OFA staff leadership across the country talked to their volunteers and set state-specific goals: South Dakota would knock on 1,000 doors in targeted areas; Indiana would hit more than 20,000; and New York would reach another 10,000 doors in key Congressional Districts.

OFA volunteers and staff have been working closely on the ground with campaigns, state parties, and other allies since we launched our VOTE 2010 campaign--we knew the effort would be a test for OFA volunteers who had already been canvassing throughout the summer and who would continue knocking on doors until Election Day as the core forces behind our get-out-the-vote (GOTV) operations. But our volunteers and staff made clear they were ready to test their ground game 10 weeks out from a critical election.

As it turns out, OFA volunteers were more than up to the challenge.

After tallying up the reports from across the country, our volunteers made some spot on predictions--nationwide, OFA supporters knocked on the doors of 200,893 targeted voters. Volunteers made another 168,330 phone calls on top of the canvasses. In state after state, OFA supporters not only hit their goals--they blew past them. South Dakota knocked on 2,200 doors; Indiana led the nation with 23,605 doors; and New York hit its numbers while developing some serious volunteer leaders along the way.

Ultimately, the numbers tell only part of the story. What's behind the numbers is a corps of volunteers across the country who are fired up and working hard to move America forward and to keep us from going back to the policies that drove our country into a ditch. And this past weekend was only the beginning.

Read the full post and check out photos from the weekend of action.