My internship with the Howard Dean campaign has been the best part of the NYC program so far. On the first day of my internship, they asked me to go to New Hampshire the next day and stay through the following Wednesday to campaign for Dean in the primary. On Friday at 4 p.m., I boarded the bus to Manchester with other staff from the NYC headquarters, city council members, a NYC for Dean group and Columbia University students.
We arrived after midnight, so we went straight to the YMCA in Manchester. I slept on a gym mat made for a six-year-old. We woke up at 6:30 the next morning and got a head start on our first day volunteering. I spent the morning canvassing and then worked until 11 p.m. answering phones at the headquarters. Carol Moseley Braun, who dropped out of the race and endorsed Dean, was at the headquarters that day and I got to shake her hand.
The next night, the volunteer coordinator set me up at a retreat center owned by a Dean supporter and offered free to volunteers, so I got to sleep on a bed. The next day I attended a Women for Dean event. I did "visibility," holding Dean signs on the street and cheering for him ("D.E.A.N…Let's take our country back again," etc.) The next three nights I slept at a host family's house and worked on canvassing, phone banking, and visibility during the day.
The best part of campaigning was meeting hundreds of volunteers who have the same political beliefs as I do. People flew and drove up to New Hampshire from all over the country, and it was inspiring seeing how motivated everyone was. Spending five days in N.H. primary taught me how much actually goes into a campaign. The volunteers from the NYC headquarters now have a better sense of what we need to do to win the N.Y. primary. The last night in Manchester was the victory party (well, the 2nd place victory party), and Governor Dean's speech was inspiring. Our next task is to convince people that Dean is still very much in this race (he now has a higher delegate count than Kerry because of superdelegates) and to win the N.Y. primary on March 2.
