11/03/11 – Jun Dam – The Scott Horton Show

Alright, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Wharton and our next guest on the show today is June Dam.
That's his name, June Dam.
And his website is rp2012.org.
What could RP possibly stand for in that web address?
Welcome to the show, June.
Hey, thanks for having me, Scott.
I appreciate you being here today.
What's this?
Ron Paul 2012 Grassroots for Liberty.
First of all, I guess, is this officially part of the campaign or this is your own project?
It's a 100% grassroots project.
I'm affiliated with the campaign, but I just, myself and a few others, just decided to get a website to help Ron Paul get elected in 2012 and decided phone banking and doing a lot of the traditional things were very important for the grassroots.
So we just decided to create a platform, rp2012.org.
And that's the story.
So we did, we helped out with the AIM straw poll back in August and we did quite well.
Good job on that, if that was you.
Yeah, yeah, well, of course, the campaign did most of it, but we complimented them very well.
We got about 1,500 commitments from people and probably about 1,000 of those 1,500 showed up, my assumption.
And so, you know, we added quite a bit of support for Ron Paul at the straw poll.
And so we were happy with that success and we just want to continue that going forward.
All right, well, that's very good.
Now, here's my thing.
I'm terrible at electoral politics and stuff.
I just hate that stuff and I'm no good at volunteering and doing things like this and that.
So I don't really know much about it.
So why don't you tell me everything you can about how, say, for example, the average anti-war radio listener might really take part and have some success at not just changing some minds, but rounding up some real primary votes for this obvious best congressman in the history of limited republics, if there ever was such a thing.
Sure, sure.
You know, it's just like campaigns in general.
The way to make a difference is to reach voters.
And we could spread the word and the idea that's great, but when it comes time to the election, it's more of the direct contact that makes the most difference.
Because, you know, spreading the word and ideas, they take a little bit of time.
And so since the election is coming up in the primaries, the first primary is happening January 3rd in Iowa, which I think is the most important primary.
It's actually what you call a caucus.
I think reaching out to Iowa voters is the most important thing we can do as volunteers.
And this platform, again, will help enable people to do that.
If you're not familiar with campaigning, you just think about how can you reach out to voters.
And when you think about it, how can you do it?
You can go online and do those kinds of things, but the most direct way is actually just pick up the phone and give someone in Iowa a call and see if they can participate in the caucus.
Or, you know, if you're in Iowa, you could go door to door and then have a face-to-face conversation with someone and get them to vote for Ron Paul.
And, you know, Ron Paul is, as I'm sure everybody knows, is the anti-war candidate.
And so, I mean, this will be a huge, if Ron Paul wins the nomination or does well, I mean, that will be a huge symbolic win for the anti-war movement.
And I think he can make a real difference if elected.
So he's the only candidate that can bring the troops home.
And as president, that's one of the responsibilities of the president.
So this is a, you know, if he's able to do it and we can make that happen, he can make the most direct impact on our foreign policy.
So that's why I think this is the way to go.
And, again, Iowa's the first caucus.
If people aren't aware about what a caucus is, it's just there's precincts all throughout the state of Iowa.
They're the smallest geographical political unit with about, let's say, 300 to 500 Republicans.
And they get together in their neighborhood, and let's say maybe 50 to 100 people show up, and they meet to vote on who they support for president.
They perform some other functions, nominate delegates, and also work on the party platform.
But the main thing, for our purposes, is the vote, the election that they hold at each of these caucuses all throughout the state of Iowa.
And one of the interesting things you can do as well is, even as an out-of-state volunteer, and we're focusing on volunteers in Iowa first, but you can, even as an out-of-state volunteer, go into the caucus in a neighborhood in Iowa and deliver a two-minute speech on behalf of Ron Paul.
Because the caucus, you know, it's pretty chaotic.
There's only, you know, the people just show up.
You know, there's people that have to conduct the meeting, and so there's a lot of new people.
So it's just, you know, an event where 50 to 100 of your neighbors show up at the same time and decide who to support for president and perform other party functions.
But the main thing, again, is the vote.
And if Ron Paul could win Iowa, I think he erases the electability issues, and he's set up to do well in the rest of the race.
So this is the key.
I think it's almost do or die in Iowa.
If he wins Iowa, I think he's in it.
He's going to be a contender.
If he doesn't or if he places third, I think it's going to be very, very difficult to overcome that, because, you know, the media will probably censor him, you know, if he doesn't place first.
I mean, they can't ignore him if he places first.
That'll get a lot of people from New Hampshire and other states not follow.
Well, I'd like to chime in here that I was just reading a local Iowa paper and their so-called power rankings, not just who's doing well in the polls, but who's got the best organization and the most widespread one and in which counties that matter the most and these kinds of things.
And they had him in first place, and I don't know if they still do, but anyway, he's right up there.
So it's actually within reason that this could really happen.
It's not 2008 right now.
He actually is, you know, within possibility, a real possibility of winning Iowa.
And so a little bit of help could really go a long way here.
And so I think people need to recognize that, that this isn't just, you know, a great speaking tour like it was last time.
It's a great speaking tour with a chance for you to go out there and prove that you agree with this guy, that he's representing you, as he's certainly been representing me up there in the Congress all these many years, though I've never lived in his district.
But now I guess here pretty soon we're going to have to take a break.
When we get back, I want to ask you a little bit more about the campaigning, because I've got to tell you, even though I host a radio show and I ask people questions on the show, you know, for my job all day, every day, like I'm doing you now, it actually really is intimidating to me, the idea of calling Iowans out of the blue and talking their ear off about Ron Paul.
I don't know what to say, and I'm not even sure how to approach it at all.
And I was wondering if I was guessing probably a lot of my audience feels the same way.
Maybe you could help us feel comfortable, help explain the process of how they can do some of these things in a way where, like, yeah, you know what, I do have 20 minutes to kill.
Let me see if I can get some real work done here, something productive, instead of just, you know, wishing and Facebooking about it.
Sounds good.
Sounds great.
Great.
So, here in just a second the music's going to start playing, unless I misjudge the time or things are running wild.
It's rp2012.org, Ron Paul 2012 Grassroots for Liberty, and they have all this information about how you can help make phone calls to Iowa and help educate people on the caucus process and why they ought to support Ron Paul, how to come together and create local groups in your own community that, you know, again, the whole thing's focused on, you know, real effective activism and campaigning here, which, you know, seems to me like if there's something you can do for, seems like a really good shot for getting some wars ended and some patriot acts repealed, you know, it might be worth it, a little bit.
I have the excuse that I do a radio show, but I think I might even help out if I can.rp2012.org.
We'll be right back with June Dam, right after this.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
And being a libertarian, I know that most Americans don't agree with me on a lot of things anyway, probably most things.
But it does seem to me like the best parts of the left and the best parts of the right really do agree with libertarians about what ought not to be done anyway, a lot of the time.
And it seems like if we have a chance for real realignment in favor of peace and liberty and, geez, maybe perhaps even a sound currency and a real economy instead of this boom and bust madness, that now's a really good opportunity for people of all different political stripes to come together in a new coalition in favor of the one candidate who represents those things and makes a fool out of the rest just with his presence.
It's Ron Paul.
You already love him or you don't, I guess.
I certainly do, and I would like to see him, if not win the nomination, at least do real well and win some primaries and some caucuses and make as much of an impact as he can, criticize Obama from the peace position for being a warmonger as much as possible, whatever.
And there's enough democratic process, so-called, in this country left that it seems like we can use it at least to get the point made, to make sure that he can do as good as we can help him do in this thing.
And so this website, Ron Paul 2012 Grassroots for Liberty, looks like it could be a very important contribution to this process, training you up how you can influence people in Iowa, I guess even how people can go to Iowa.
You have to be from there to participate in the caucus, but not to propagandize people and explain to them what they ought to be doing and even how to participate in the process to make sure that they do as well as they can, you know, that night, that kind of thing.
And so now I get to, after that long reintroduction of June Dam, I want to turn the mic over to you, June, and let you explain as much as you can about the website itself at rp2012.org and what kinds of training and what kinds of help you can offer people, ideas that you have for how they can do real important, you know, effective activism in the case of Ron Paul, especially in Iowa.
Okay, sure.
It's really easy to do with rp2012.org.
It's just a matter of signing up, clicking a few buttons, make phone calls and then start phone banking or the buttons you want to click.
And everything is right there, the phone number, the name, the script, one by one is on your screen.
So you just have to go ahead and dial with your cell phone.
Hopefully you have free cell phone minutes or you could call when you do on the weekend.
You can also use Google Voice or Google Talk and you can call out for free.
But it's very easy to do.
You just log in, click a few buttons, the script's right there, and you can start reaching out to Iowans.
It's just a very easy thing to do.
The one thing is I know people, some people are uncomfortable making phone calls, and that's, I think, the biggest hurdle people have to get over.
It's really, you know, after the first few calls, it's actually really easy.
It's, you know, you're just reaching out to another person.
And nine times out of ten, probably more than nine times out of ten, people are nice.
They're just very neighborly.
They talk to you.
They'll give you their time.
You know, you'll get a hang-up here or there, someone kind of rude, but that's very, very rare.
Out of every ten calls, you'll only get maybe one.
So it's very easy to do.
It's very effective.
It's the best way to reach out to people and share your ideas about foreign policy and things like that.
Do you have any questions so far about that?
Yeah.
How many different scripts are there?
And I guess basically if people just register at rp2012.org, then they have access.
I guess tell us what kinds of things they can find at your site to help them.
Sure.
There are some videos that, you know, give the training-type videos.
But the main thing is I think you can get started and make phone calls.
You're just getting started with it is the best way to learn.
And what we're doing is, you know, we're pretty focused.
We're calling mainly Republicans and independents.
Democrats are good, but just statistically it's a little bit harder to have them register Republican and vote for Ron Paul in the primary.
So in the general election it's probably a little bit better to focus on Democrats.
But the independents are probably the best.
And so we have, you know, in Iowa it's about a third, a third, a third, a third Republican, a third independent, a third Democrat.
So, you know, we have a list from the Secretary of State.
We have also some other lists that have pre-identified Ron Paul support.
So we call both of those lists.
And the main thing, too, is, you know, we want to just talk to the undecided.
Those are the people we can make the most difference.
If they already have an opinion, it takes a lot of effort and energy to convince them.
So these calls are, I think, easier because we're just trying to identify people who are open, who are undecided, or those that are Ron Paul supporters.
And when we find a Ron Paul supporter, it's very easy.
You just have to talk to him, inform him about the caucus, let them know the date.
It's January 3rd.
We let them know that, you know, we'll let them know to bring as many people as possible.
We want to tell them how urgent it is to do that.
And then we want to let them know that they have an opportunity to speak on behalf of Ron Paul at the caucus, a very short two-minute speech, a very easy speech to make.
And we want to persuade and convince them to do that because that can make a real big difference.
There are people that show up at the caucus that are undecided.
And so you can make a big difference on the day of the caucus.
You know, sometimes as much as 15%, 20%, 25% of the people that show up at the caucus are undecided.
So finding Ron Paul supporters, identifying them, letting them know that they have an opportunity to stump for Ron Paul for two minutes is the main effort.
And if we're able to do that, there's 1,784 precincts all across Iowa.
It doesn't seem like a whole lot.
We can make a difference.
If we find one person, that's one out of 1,784.
I mean just imagine, you know, hundreds of volunteers doing the same thing and being able to get, you know, not only people to speak but as many people to the caucus as possible.
Well, you know, Jim, I think I learned the most about the Iowa caucus process in 2004 when it was Howard Dean going in and it was John Kerry coming out.
And they had a lot of reporting about how it came out that way and really broke down the way it works with, as you kind of were describing earlier, the, you know, multiple votes inside the caucus system as these different areas of the state elect the people who are going to move on to the higher level to do the vote to see who's going to win.
They do the vote to see who's going to move on to the higher level and then those are the people who make the decision, these kinds of things.
So in other words, it all just comes down to rubber meeting the road and people getting out there and participating in this thing.
And if the Rampallians can keep electing Rampallians up to the highest level with their sheer numbers, they can actually do this thing.
They don't have to elect the Republican John Kerry, Mitt Romney, or any of the rest of these goofballs.
They really can do this thing.
I agree, I agree.
This is the way to do it.
This is the best way to reach out.
Making phone calls, and you can do this anywhere, you know, around the world actually, not only around America or across America.
So making phone calls, that's the key.
Making phone calls, phone calls, phone calls, as many as you can.
The other thing you can do is you can actually go to Iowa as a volunteer, as a state volunteer.
You can't vote in the caucus.
You can't be a delegate in the caucus, but you can actually help out.
You can actually, if there's no one there to deliver a speech, you can do that.
I think this is actually a great opportunity for military veterans to actually go to the caucuses.
I think they probably are the most effective in persuading the more, I guess, right-wing, fox-watching, you know, Republicans.
So I think that might be another opportunity if there are any military veterans that have some time and availability to go to Iowa and participate and help out.
I think that would be great.
I think they are the ones that can deliver the most effective stump speeches.
And so, but, you know, anybody else who's a good public speaker, I would encourage.
If they want to really make a difference, they can actually go to Iowa and help out.
So either make phone calls or go to Iowa.
Those are the two keys to helping out.
And if you sign up to RP2012.org, you can just leave your phone number when you sign up.
We can follow up and give you guys a call.
All right.
That's RP2012.org.
We've got two months to make this happen.
Get organized.
Get with it.
RP2012.org.
Thanks, June.
Thanks a lot, Scott.
June Dan, everybody.