Phonebanking, ft. some friends and some doodles

The most meaningful thing I'm doing this summer is, hands-down, phonebanking with Sunrise!

Some lovely phonebankers pose for a Zoom screenshot

Charles Booker and Jamaal Bowman have their primaries on June 23rd, and there are thousands of calls to make before then, so I wanted to get this post out in time for people to join a phonebank if they want to. Since I just mentioned it at the end of my last post, I thought I’d elaborate.

So what's a phonebank? Put simply, phonebanking is when volunteers make direct phone calls to voters, asking them to vote for a certain candidate.

I had never done a phonebank before in my life until this year, when my local Sunrise hub made calls for Marie Newman (candidate for Congress in IL-03). It was a small group that patiently explained all the steps to me over Zoom, and Newman ended up winning her primary, so that felt awesome!

But what if I say the voter's name wrong?
That will happen at some point.
Just do your best and be friendly!
(warning: my stick figure comics do not improve at all through this post)

Despite being new to phonebanking myself, I joined the national team that covers facilitation, debrief, and training for Sunrise’s national phonebanks. Why the heck did I do that? I got super excited and wanted to help. I wanted to learn about a type of advocacy I wasn’t familiar with. I was bored during quarantine. I was scared about every scary thing that’s happened in 2020. I love supporting other volunteers.

Lots of feelings + teenager with free time = a phonebank facilitator. Go figure.

A fellow facilitator, Claire, describes our work this way: "We are a volunteer team organizing the movement behind the nationally endorsed candidates. We do all the behind-the-scenes work to organize hundreds of people to make thousands of calls to voters about these amazing candidates! Everything from having good vibes and facilitation at our phonebanks, to clear communication afterwards and effective debriefs to get feedback."

Everybody has something they're especially excited about. Some of us love to make debrief calls over the weekend while sitting on the couch, and others are Zoom wizards who dedicate hours to trouble-shooting tech questions with volunteers. One of our veteran trainers, Laís, took on her role because "I love the idea of being able to bring more people in through training. With the FDT (facilitation, debrief, and training) team, this is something I feel really passionate about, and something I feel is sustainable and maintainable for me." She does a lot of training outside phonebanks, with other initiatives like Sunrise School! So if you hop on a phonebank and see Laís with her awesome zoom background of cute sloths, know that your training is in good hands.

Last I checked, I think we’re at 35 members on the team. These people are AMAZING and I learn so much from them!

Some of these stick figures are making calls with earbuds to improve the audio quality
They're not stethoscopes, I swear!

We put our hearts into this because we know it works. This is how people power wins elections. Zach, a zoom tech, puts it into perspective for an individual phonebanker: "The margins of victory for many congressional races come down to thousands or even hundreds of votes. So if there was a way to convert an hour of my time into even just 2 votes for a candidate of my choice, I would think that's a pretty good deal. Phonebanking is that deal, and as you improve, an hour of your time may be worth more like 6 votes." He's totally right, and even the wrong numbers or less-than-successful conversations save time for the campaign and help us become more efficient.

Those are single-digit numbers per person, but all together we become a force to be reckoned with! "To me this feels like a movement—it is alive and HAPPENING," Claire told me, "Election day is only one day, but the process is months long and we are making that happen in many ways. I just trained my first phonebank and we collectively dialed 30k people. That people power is unbelievable."

Personally, I love that it’s not just about getting votes for the candidates. A few weeks ago, we started every call by checking in and connecting people to COVID-19 resources, before even bringing up the campaign. These days, we’re walking people through the process of getting their absentee ballots in real time, over the phone, to remove as many barriers as we can to safe voting. Most of all, we recognize that this is a really difficult time to do voter contact, in the midst of an uprising against police brutality and systemic racism, and a pandemic… yeah, this is a lot, so sometimes the best we can do is just make people feel heard. 

Now that we've talked about his position on healthcare, do you think you'll vote for Charles Booker?
Yeah, absolutely!
Awesome! Let's request your absentee ballot.

Laís is a facilitation "anchor" within our team, meaning she not only trains on phonebanks, but she also updates the script and coordinates with one of the campaigns, Jamaal Bowman's team in NY-16. "It's a huge district, and we're trying to beat a 30-year incumbent," she emphasized. The current congressman for the Bronx and Westchester, Eliot Engel, doesn't even live in his district (and lied about it) and returned recently only to say "If I didn't have a primary, I wouldn't care."

"We really need Jamaal to win so the community can recover," Laís continued, "This district was one of the hardest hit by COVID, so it's really important to phonebank for areas other than where I live."

So, what’s a phonebank like? We welcome almost a hundred people onto a Zoom call, hyping each other up. The first-timers receive training, while the returners jump right onto the automatic dialer. Everyone is on mute in Zoom, but you can see the other people making calls with you, and the chat is CONSTANTLY active. I mean, I can barely keep up, but that’s awesome.

Phonebanking can be like this... and sometimes like this       

When someone has a great conversation and reaches a voter who will support our candidate, they drop a * in the chat and everybody celebrates! When someone has a really rough call, we’re there to support each other. And when the inexplicable weirdness happens, we can be perplexed together as a team. You never know what’s going on at the other end of the phone, so there have been some wacky voter interactions.

Even if you get a lot of hangups, you're still part of the team that makes over 10k dials in one sitting!

Does this sound like fun to you? Please join us on our phonebanks! You can hang out with us for a few hours, even multiple days or weeks if you’re feeling it. As a movement, phonebanking is one of the most effective ways to build momentum for a safer, more just future. And as a sixteen-year-old who can’t vote, this is how I’m going to help influence 2020.


At the protest I attended the other day, organizers called on the Class of 2020 and older to VOTE. And then they called on the classes of 2021, 2022, and younger to keep up the work, even more fiercely. This is the work, or at least one option for how to do it. I hope to see you out there.