And Calling...

Yesterday began an onslaught of calls to Congress from supporters of health care reform, organized through the Organizing for America website. I wrote about my own experience of making the phone calls here.

And the numbers keep rising. People called other people all throughout the country yesterday, to make these phone calls again today. The number, at this moment, of calls made is 319,279. Apparently the president joined up with the people in New York who had been making the phonebanking effort.

And then there were the stories, as people talked to each other about how important it is to make these changes. Here is a sample of a couple of those stories:

This evening I and three other volunteers got together and made calls. As I was calling, one of the women I spoke with told me that she was inspired by my story -- shared in the email earlier that day -- to get her entire family to call Congress. She didn't know it was me on the phone, but she said she just couldn't stop saying "this isn't right" when she heard my story. It gave me so much hope -- during the evening we made 213 calls and got 64 commitments to call tomorrow.

-Jenny U., Missouri Volunteer

Seeing the tally go up, hearing voter after voter agree to call, and listening to the real excitement people have about finally fixing this broken system, I was reminded why we do this. Each of us can only give so much -- but when we all do it together, we move mountains. Health insurance reform, here we come.

-Sean Knox, California New Media Director

And here's a message from Mitch Stewart, director of OFA, where I got the above quotes.

And then here's the president from last night. Really great speech. He starts at about nine minutes in. He starts to get funny at 28 minutes, and then really funny at about 30 minutes.