First, a shout out to my sisters and brothers back in my homeland of Los Angeles.

They have moved the protest of Trump’s mass deportations to mass resistance.

Be safe.

Back here in Brooklyn I spent last night phone banking for Zohran Mamdani

Early voting begins on Saturday, June 14th with the actual election day on June 24th.

The most recent poll shows Mamdani within a couple of percentage points of Andrew Cuomo. Just a month ago Cuomo had a double digit lead.

I haven’t done phone banking in a few years. The last time was in Chicago for a local state representative race.

In those days I went to the campaign office, shown to a room with a bunch of land line phones, handed sheets of voters with phone numbers and made cold calls.

Well, those were clearly the dark ages.

This time I made the calls from home on my laptop. After a short couple of minutes of online training (there were dozens of us - maybe more - on the zoom call).

Then I switched over to a call generating site which made the call for me.

For those that were new to all this, a script was provided.

I introduced myself to the person on the other end of the line and then asked a number of questions about their intentions.

Would they be ranking Mamdani as #1?

If not, would they be ranking him as one of their five choices?

I reminded them, #NoCuomo.

I offered to tell them where there voting location was.

I was scheduled for three hours and, frankly, it was a blast.

I know that door knocking is best. But for those that can’t do that, this is a great alternative.

I got only one, “go fuck yourself”.

I also got one, “It’s none of your business who I’m voting for”.

Which I fully respect.

I got one, “Thanks. But I’m already canvassing for Momdani”.

One person told me, “I’m wearing a Momdani button right now!”

“Wow,” I said. “I’ve been trying to get one myself.”

“Where do you live,” he said. “I’ll bring one over for you.”

One gentleman from Queens assured me that all twelve of his family members would be voting for Momdani.

I didn’t have a box to check for that.

*No AI was used in the writing of this post. All spelling errors and awkward sentences are human.

Share