Clarissa, Southeast PA

Recently we have been doing a lot of phone banks to strike up support for protecting women's health during the current health reform debate. These calls can be difficult as we usually don't know what we are calling about until a few minutes before the call and don't get a lot of time to prepare for the script. Furthermore, we use a computer program called "Activate" that dials all the calls for us and weeds out the answering machines. When working correctly, phone banking becomes pretty fast paced and there's not a lot of time to regroup and prepare before the next call. This of course can be frustrating, especially when we are talking to someone who has a lot of questions about whatever bill or amendment we are pushing for.

Despite all this, the most interesting thing about phonebanking can be the random responses from the callers. A surprising amount of women have already heard about these issues and have already contacted their representatives on their own. A few women have even mentioned that they prefer to work on the health care reform issue in their own community, and see following our requests as a conflicting action to whatever work they have already done.

There are also the women who are surprisingly receptive to our awkward scripts and genuinely listen to what we say. One woman was so quiet after I spoke that I was worried she had hung up on me, only to hear, "hold on....I'm thinking...okay yes, I'll do it!"

Of course, there are always the people who are ready to say "no"
before we've told them what we're calling about. One woman apparently said to one of our interns, "Honey, I'm Catholic and would do anything to stop you." The negative responses also seem to vary based on the area we're calling. While calling people in Pennsylvania, I received a considerable amount of hang ups. However, while calling Indiana, I had one woman take a full two minutes to apologize and excuse herself from making the two minute phone call to her representative. These responses can vary based on the time we're calling too. For example, last week we were phone banking during the Michael Jackson memorial service, and we definitely got a few women who said they were in the middle of watching it and honestly too emotional to help us out at the moment.

Sometimes we won't even get a chance to speak to the person we're calling on a count of her calls being screened by a controlling spouse. You'd be surprise how often these guys turn up, both in phone banking and canvassing. I don't know whether or not they feel they are doing their partner a favor, but just so you know, fellas, when you tell us "she's not interested," we don't take that as an answer until we hear it from the horse's mouth. Of course, not all of the men we reach are like this. A few men during our last phone bank called their representatives about women's health even when their wives or girlfriends declined.