The Early Days

The St. Petersburg Times wrote an article about the early days of Florida's campaign. Click here to read about five people who were important in getting it off the ground.

Yes We Can

Carved in time for Halloween, a pumpkin had hit the stump (on the sidewalk of NW 36th Street in Allapattah).

Exquisitely done.

Barack Obama, President of the United States

Barack Obama has won the 2008 election to become the president of the United States of America. And he won in Florida.

This blog will now begin collecting the stories of people who volunteered and worked in the 2008 campaign. I will continute posting pictures and testimonials. Please continue reading, stay tuned.

I Voted Today

I just finished voting in downtown Miami, at Government Center. The wait in line was only forty minutes (compared with the two-hour waits recorded across the county last week). I was in my privacy booth for twenty minutes going over the ballot.
Free water and sample ballots were given out by poll workers.
There was a calm, almost entirely non-partisan energy in the line. A few people were campaigning in designated areas, with signs on sticks, but without any dialogue or arguing.
All the poll workers were kind, helpful, and indulged me in my cheerful mood.

A fire-fighter suggested people in Miami-Dade vote "no" on the ammendment which proposes consolidating fire rescue services in most municipalities throughout the county.

Joe Kennedy in Allapattah

Joe Kennedy, one of Robert Kennedy's thirty grandchildren, will be campaigning on behalf of Senator Barack Obama today in the Miami neighborhood of Allapattah. Apparently Kennedy spent a few years in the Dominican Republic, and that is why he is speaking here (Allapattah being a Dominican neighborhood). The event is scheduled to start at 1:30pm, 1700 NW 36th Street.

Bloomberg News did an article on the Hispanic vote in Miami, and the Obama Campaign's effort in Allapattah among other neighborhoods.

Early Voting in Miami

Barack and Michelle Obama held a rally on Tuesday at downtown Miami's Bicentennial Park, but on Monday, the first day to vote early in Florida, there was a flurry of homegrown activism and demonstrations to G.O.T.V., or get-out-the-vote.

See photos from the event here.

The day began with a rally at the International Longshoreman’s Association – AFL-CIO, in Overtown, where members from the nation’s largest labor unions took the stage (SEIU, ILA, AFSCME, and the Teamsters, to name a few). Before the high-profile speakers took the stage, Sam Cooke’s civil-rights era “A Change Is Gonna Come,” set the mood of a movement, not just a campaign.

Rev. Samuel Sullivan referenced the biblical march to Zion. “But we are not marching to Jerusalem,” he said, “We are marching to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”

The rally then took on the form of a march and headed south on NW 2nd Ave, towards Government Center, a site for early voting in Miami-Dade County.

On the other, eastern end of downtown, around a hundred students and local organizations gathered in the courtyard of Miami-Dade College’s Wolfson campus. A metal band, whose angsty sound didn’t appropriately capture the jubilant mood, performed live from a stage, and a street band with horns and drums followed the march to its conclusion, also at Government Center.

A podium and microphone, powered by a car-battery, was used by the labor unions, student groups, and other local community groups, to address the crowd.

There was even a mariachi band hired for the occasion.

The event was to be nonpartisan. However, one outspoken McCain supporter (who held a campaign poster high into the air, attached to a large stick), shouted at the labor unions and students, “Communista! Terrorista!” She went mostly unnoticed.

So all of this to say, instead of early voting being quick and easy, there was a large line of excited voters for most of the day, looking more like a party than anything neat and orderly.

Richmond Heights GOTV

This past Saturday, at the Sgt. Delancy Park in Richmond Heigts, local Florida Campaign for Change staff and volunteers held a get-out-the-vote bar-b-que with the help of community organizers.


Joe Garcia, who is running for Congress in Florida's 25th congressional district, was in attendance. The 25th district includes Palmetto Bay, Cutler Bay, Kendall, Florida City, Homestead, Hialeah Gardens, Miami Lakes and Doral. In order to take this seat, Garcia would need to defeat Mario Diaz-Balart.