Virginia is one of the top priorities this election. This Thursday there will be a phone banking effort in Cobble Hill to get out the vote for Congressional candidate Tom Perriello and for Barack Obama.

Tom Perriello, running for Congress in the VA-5 district against Republican Virgil Goode, may be a particularly important person for us to get into Congress because of his excellent diplomatic record. After 8 years of Bush’s failed foreign policy, we need some people with excellent diplomatic skills in government to help clean up the mess. Goode is stuck in the Bush/McCain thinking. By contrast, Perriello has a record of diplomatic success in difficult regions. Back when Sierra Leone was one of the world’s most violent hot spots, Tom worked with child soldiers, amputees, and local pro-democracy groups, and played a significant role in the peace and reconciliation process that ended twelve years of violence there. He then became Special Advisor and spokesperson for the International Prosecutor during the showdown that forced Liberian dictator Charles Taylor (who was also responsible for the violence in Sierra Leone) from power without firing a shot. THAT is the kind of diplomatic skill America needs after years of Bush/McCain blunders. After this success, Tom served as a national security analyst for the Century Foundation. He has worked inside Darfur and twice in Afghanistan, so he knows about the hot spots of today. This is the kind of leadership we need in Congress! He is raising record amounts of money to defeat the incumbent Republican. For me, this is a critical pick up opportunity.

Emily Weiss is setting up a phone bank to help Tom Periello and Barack Obama in Virginia. Here is her email:

I hope you will be able to join me for a virtual phone-banking party for Tom (and Obama) this Thursday evening, October 30, between 6:00 and 8:30 p.m.

I know it's short notice, but as you may have noticed the election is coming up pretty soon, and Tom's race has gotten very close, and apparently on Friday at midnight the Obama campaign is going to freeze their get-out-the-vote universe, so up until then our calls are Very Important because we can identify voters who are leaning towards Tom and catapult them into the Obama campaign's GOTV universe, and once that happens the Obama people will call those people four more times before Election Day to make sure they don't forget to vote.

Thus, in order to make sure that as many Tom-supporting VA-05-dwellers as possible get harassed by the Obama campaign during the last four days of the race, if you show up at my apartment sometime between 6:00 and 8:30 on Thursday evening I will give you a user name, a password, a script, some talking points about all of Tom's great policies (I'll even send them to you early if you want to prep), some Halloween candy, and some beverages to keep your phone voice smoothly modulated. I live at 401 Henry St. #3, between Warren and Baltic in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn (near the F/G at Bergen St., the 4/5/2/3 at Borough Hall, and the R/M at Court St.).

If you are planning to come by, please write back to this email to let me know so that I can make sure to have Ashleigh Crocker, the Perriello campaign's lovely Volunteer Coordinator, set you up with a username and password and so that I can print out some nice materials for you ahead of time. You can also call me at 347-205-7200 if you have any questions or anything.

Looking forward to seeing you soon,

Emily

P.S. Also please keep in mind that the main point of these calls is not to persuade Goode supporters to vote for Tom but just to figure out who people are planning to vote for and, in the case of undecided voters, to find out what issue matters most to them. So basically you will not need to get into arguments with people over the phone, in case that makes or breaks your decision.

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