this just in

thanks for your patience.

i'm sitting in the board room of teamsters hall, local 200, in the west side of milwaukee. i am one of three people trying to coordinate the 'voter ride' program for the city. there is a very loud phone that rings whenever someone needs a ride to the polls. we arrived this morning with a bounce in our step. ward maps were already yahooed and there are two computers set up with a city map program. the room quickly began to fill with eager drivers, who we tried to dispatch into zones as we quickly assembled an admin system. many are not from around here, in from chicago and even beyond.

ride requests have been a bit slow. i've tried to get a sense of what else is going on in this staging area outside of our swank room. the big union hall is a-buzz - it's all tightly organized. at one point this morning, it was chock full of volunteers who were dispersed into specific teams for quick training. this is the place from where canvassers are combing the city, phoners are dispatched to phone banks, and from where drivers are sent to wait patiently in coffee shops and book stores for the ride requests. i'd say that several hundred volunteers are being coordinated from this spot. the food depot is fucking amazing - coffee, juices, h20, and a full smorg of snacks and eats. union halls are special to my heart - i just love being in this teamsters hall, especially one that's alive with this much activity and anticipation.

there is a tv in this room that only broadcasts a christian news channel - hardly helpful. we're trying to get more info about what's going on in the outside world. we heard that this morning, there were line-ups at polls that were up to two hours long. good signs. there are poll monitors all over the country. i'm going to use this lull point to dig up some news - hard news.