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| Serving Callaway County communities since 1875. | www.fultonsun.com | Saturday, July 04, 2009 |
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Obama campaign reaches out to deaf community By ROGER MEISSEN The Fulton Sun
But Eisenhour understands what most people don't - that sometimes there are people on the other end of that line. The numbers - which give a pattern of electronic beeps and clicks - typically are discarded as faxes or computer modems. However, some connect to the homes and lives of people in the deaf community who communicate with a special text telephone called TTY. “This is our trial run,” Eisenhour said. “They've worked up a list of numbers for us here. “Some of them might just be fax machines, but some hopefully will be actual deaf community members.” Reaching those in the deaf community is the reason why she spent her Wednesday night volunteering in the Callaway County Democratic Headquarters phone canvassing for Barack Obama's Campaign for Change. “The deaf community wants to be treated like everyone else and they should have that right,” Eisenhour said. “They want to be informed about the issues of the day and want to have an opportunity also to let their opinions be known.” Just connecting with a person seemed like a victory, but it also meant an opportunity for both the person to be heard and the Obama campaign to pitch its candidate. Obama campaign regional press secretary Melissa Nitti thinks this is the reflection of the type of campaign they are running and how that's different than the McCain campaign. “It's a bottom-up approach that starts at the grassroots,” Nitti said. “That's why we listen to our volunteers who - in this case - came up with the idea to bring the TTY machine in and reaching out to this group of people. “This is a reflection of how hard we work to listen to community members, to get their opinions and their ideas about who we need to be reaching and how to reach them.” Nitti also said Callaway County seems to be unique in starting this and she doesn't know of any other of the campaign's headquarters that have reached out to the deaf community in this sort of way. When contacted, the Callaway County Republican Headquarters said they didn't play as active a role in things like calling for candidates and that McCain regional headquarters in Jefferson City and Columbia would coordinate his phone campaigning. “Volunteers make calls occasionally, but most of that kind of campaign is coordinated out of the candidate's headquarters,” said Dean Powell, Callaway County Republican Party chairman. “We don't have anything specific like that, but we're trying to keep the headquarters open and available for people to come get signs and - when it gets closer to the election - for people to volunteer.” While this was the first run for using TTY, the Obama campaign wants to keep connecting with the deaf community through it and other communication efforts like Video Relay Service. After almost 30 minutes of typing back and forth about deaf education, deaf issues and getting involved with the presidential campaign, Eisenhour could tell she was filling a real need in Callaway County. “In this community there are so many deaf people,” she said. “This just shows you there are people who want to know, who want you to listen and we should try to talk with them.” |
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