Chapter 16 money, money, power

Today's schedule is to go to the downtown Hynes (Hynes) Convention Center for GAIN training. APAP rented a big bus, filled it with all the people, and drove for nearly an hour before arriving at the conference center.When I got off the car and entered the building, the inside suddenly opened up, and there was a rush of people. There were two huge elevators in the middle, and there was an endless stream of people going up and down. On the edge of the spacious aisle, desks were lined up one after another, and there were many workers sitting there. Personnel: Some are responsible for registration; some are responsible for distributing materials; some are special liaison offices for an organization.

We went up to the second floor, and suddenly there was a commotion across the street. A man in a suit and leather shoes was walking out surrounded by people, and people around him kept asking him questions.Many people next to me also took out their cameras and snapped at him, and some rushed over to talk to him directly.Someone told me that this person is the governor of New Hampshire, Bill Richardson (Bill Richardson), who is very popular in the Democratic Party and was invited by GAIN to give the opening speech.Later I got the schedule and found out that the whole training started at 8:30. Since we lived too far from the city, we arrived here at 9:00 and had already missed the opening speech.

There are more people on the second floor than on the first floor. This floor is the main venue for training. The hall is facing the elevator. More than a dozen meeting rooms are lined up on both sides along the corridor.Just after the opening speech was over, there were people rushing to the meeting room everywhere, as well as the staff standing aside to help, most of them were young people, youthful and lively, full of voices, sometimes laughing and joking, which made me suddenly Give birth to a feeling of being in a grand event. Since there are more than 3,000 people participating in the training, each meeting room can only accommodate more than 100 people except the great hall, so the organizer randomly distributed us to more than 20 rooms.Although the speakers in each room are different, the themes are all agreed in advance, so it doesn't matter which one you go to.

After signing in, we received a lot of materials, and when we rushed to the room we were supposed to go to, the speaker had already started, and the theme was "Field101". 101 means basic courses. The courses of most universities in the United States are numbered with numbers, and the difficulty level increases upwards. 101 is the first course, the most basic one. The word Field is not easy to translate, I can barely translate it as "constituency activities", mainly to carry out substantive activities, such as contacting voters, urging them to register and vote. The speaker was a young man named Collin. He said: "Everyone knows that all the people who support the election think their work is the most important. The people in the fundraising team said, if there is no us, where would you get the money? People in the advocacy team said, if it wasn't for us, how would voters know who our candidate is? Like everyone else, I don't like such rhetoric. But, I have to be honest, - constituency activities are indeed the most important thing in the entire campaign Yes." Everyone laughed.

He went on to describe the four main steps in constituency activities: The first step is to register voters.Registering to vote doesn't mean you have to vote, much less you have to vote for a particular candidate, so generally there isn't much resistance.The second step is to analyze voters.We need to analyze the background of each voter to come up with issues that are most likely to impress her. For example, for the elderly, we can use welfare policies, and for young people, we can use religious freedom, anti-war, etc.The third step, persuasion, is to use the results of the second step to persuade voters to vote for our candidates, which depends partly on individual abilities.The fourth step, GOTV - GetOutTheVote (GetOutTheVote), let people come out and vote.Colin joked: "After the Republicans decide who to vote for, they will go to vote on Election Day. But the Democrats have three things they don't vote: don't vote when it's raining, don't vote if they don't have a haircut, and don't get up late. Vote.” Therefore, it is not enough to just convince voters, we must ensure that they actually vote on Election Day. For this, we can make phone calls, send email reminders, and provide transportation conditions on our own initiative.

Constituency activists will need to go door-to-door, but basic tactics for analyzing voters are still required.Colin said: "People with similar backgrounds are relatively easy to be accepted by the other party. For example, if we need to visit a black area, we will find a black person; if we want to go to a high-income (upperclass) area, we will hire this kind of person children.” At this time, the audience laughed, which made me a little puzzled, maybe because they had no money, so they could only hire children, and they couldn’t let one of the high-income groups work. Colin continued to give an example: "Don't underestimate the knowledge here, the preparation work must be done carefully. When I was in Florida, there were many Hispanics there. In our eyes, they were all the same. But once , we sent a Hispanic volunteer to their community, and it was very unpopular. It turned out that the volunteer was Puerto Rican, and that community was mostly Dominican! Conversely, if you send a Dominican volunteer to the Puerto Rican community , I guess they have to be kicked out."

I think, isn't it? Westerners can't tell the difference between Chinese and Japanese. In their view, aren't they all Asians? But if you send a Japanese to a Chinese immigrant community, it might be the opposite Stimulate the reverse mentality and vote for your opponent. In addition to investigating the life background of voters, their political attitudes should also be clarified in advance.If a place is too Republican, there is no need to go, because our time and energy are limited, and we cannot rush into the established positions of the Republicans and drown in their people's war.We should still go to the communities where the Democrats have a slight advantage and persuade them to vote. This is the most effective constituency campaign.

"Liberals always think that everyone can be persuaded," said Colin. "Unfortunately, that's not the case. In fact, people's votes are often inexplicable." For example, his own boss in Florida is firmly against I came out to participate in the election for the Iraq War, but quit halfway, because although it seemed that everyone was against the war, when the election came, only one candidate, his boss, positively opposed the war, and because there was no support from voters, forced to give up early. Soon, an hour passed, and after a short break, we moved on to the next topic: "Let young people vote." Through their contacts, they found that they were basically from organizations like "Youth Democrats of New York State" and "Penn State Student Democratic Union". No wonder they were all so young.In comparison, our APAP has people of all ages, and it feels really good to be in the world of young people all at once.

This time the topic was shared by two women and one man.A lady is similar to the host, and at the same time, she emphasizes the need to have fun while participating in politics, especially for young people, the activities should be carried out in an interesting way, and it must not be held as a meeting of remembering bitterness and thinking about sweetness, or pre-war mobilization, and hero model reports .She said that young people in the United States participated in politics first in the form of community service. I think it was probably a long time ago in the innocent age, such as Boy Scouts and the like.Later, young people participated in politics mainly through various activities—of course, protests accounted for the vast majority, especially in the 1960s and 1970s.In recent years, young people have also lost interest in protests, and they have all gone to hip-hop (a form of music, once translated as rap music, Hong Kong and Taiwan are also called hip-hop music). The main energy is reflected in the election.But to draw them into the campaign, or convince them to vote for the Democratic nominee, has to come up with interesting ideas.I think this statement makes sense. Young people today, who have never seen anything before, will definitely be considered stupid if they follow the noble line of the Boy Scouts and the educated youth line of the 1960s. Use it, only to lure it for fun.

This lady did what she said, and played two games with us: one is to write down various names and songs, and then analyze what they represent; the other is to draw a pig on paper, and then through the drawing Analyze your own personality.I have played these two games before, but all the young Americans here are playing very enthusiastically, although I have not figured out what this has to do with campaigning. Another woman only briefly talked about three points: first, to organize activities, you must set the tone in advance to attract the attention of others; second, to be interesting, not only to make others find it interesting, but also to enjoy it yourself Third, you need to be open-minded. For example, a fund-raising party can be called a party instead of a fund-raising party, so as to attract more people.

The man was of African descent and was, needless to say, full of energy.He himself is a political consultant for the Democratic Party of a university, and this time he mainly talked about how to organize political activities on campus.He first ordered two audience members, both of whom were blonde girls, and asked them what their names were, where they came from, what major they were in, and so on. He established a good interactive relationship with everyone, and the atmosphere in the conference room suddenly became active.In college politics, he said, the most important thing is GOTV: getting people to vote.Because among the young people in college, liberals generally have an overwhelming advantage. Young people have always been natural supporters of the Democratic Party, so we don’t need to spend too much time talking. What we need to worry about most is that young people are not interested in politics. Interested, I would rather sleep in the dormitory than bother to vote.Therefore, every election day, he would be very busy, making phone calls everywhere, urging people to vote, and even once, he drove a big car with a loudspeaker, paraded through the campus, and advertised: Today is Election Day , Everyone go vote! Obviously, he is also a person who likes to do things ingeniously.He emphasized that in this day and age, we need some unconventional ways of conducting politics.To this end, he asked the audience: "Have you done any non-traditional activities?" One raised a hand and said, "We had an early retirement party for Bush." Someone else said: "We sell all kinds of gifts in the name of supporting Bush, and then send the money to Kerry." Suddenly everyone burst into laughter.I think this is tough enough.I once heard that some young people in New York signed up to volunteer because the Republican National Convention was going to be held in New York, but they didn't show up at the time, planning to use this method to create some trouble for the Republican Party.The person who came up with these two ideas is really bright for a while, and my admiration is like a torrent of rivers, endless. After the three of them finished speaking, we took a rest for a while, and Colin rejoined the battle and continued to talk about the organization of constituency activities.He said that he has been a constituency organizer for six years, "there is no more difficult thing in this world than constituency organization. I often pray to heaven: God, why are you punishing me like this? - But, Someone has to do this." In order to emphasize the importance of constituency activities, Colin began to damage the fundraising and publicity team again.He said that most of the money raised by the fundraising group was used in TV promotions.However, the most important undecided voters, who change their minds more often than their underwear, are rarely influenced by TV commercials; offset.Therefore, in the end, the outcome of the election depends on campaigning in constituencies.People are instinctively dubious about things on TV, but campaigns in constituencies send people to have one-on-one contact. When a person stands in front of you, her/his words are much more credible and more targeted , Unlike TV commercials, which often spend millions of dollars and say a lot of falsehood. He also cited the example of this Democratic primary.Dean was very vocal at the beginning, why did he fail twice in a row in Iowa and New Hampshire, and then never recovered?Colin said that this is because Dean seems to be very powerful and has brought supporters from all over the country to Iowa and New Hampshire. These people certainly work hard, but they are not locals. Lack of a common language, it is difficult to really communicate; Kerry's constituency organizers are very smart, they find local people who are widely respected and ask them to help Kerry, these people can discuss with voters on the local situation Voters are more likely to be moved by issues that are the most concerned in the local area.Therefore, Kerry turned over in Iowa and New Hampshire in one fell swoop, came out on top, and successfully won the party's nomination.