Gian Pablo Villamil

Birth of a meme?

“I think American Airlines did not earn the new puppy today.”

“Thanks for buying all that beer and cheese! You have really earned the new puppy!”

This will be the exact opposite of not getting any ice cream.

November 14th, 2008 | Category: Funny, Politics | Leave a comment

This extremely thorough spoof of the New York Times was distributed today to over 1.2m people. It’s an elaborate exercise in creating an alternate reality – by getting people to think of these things, of the possibility of an end to the war in Iraq, free health care, etc. it makes them more conceivable, and hence more likely.

I signed up through the project’s “secret” website, and distributed a few hundred of them in the East Village. Most people didn’t really notice anything different, but by about noon people had heard about the project and were eager to get their hands on the fake papers!

November 12th, 2008 | Category: Art, Commentary, Economics, Politics | Leave a comment

President Obama on the cover of the Daily News

Huge crowds are celebrating in Union Square, in New York. Someone picked up copies of the first edition of the Daily News announcing the Obama victory, and they were paraded around to great acclamation. I have never seen such sheer unadulterated joy in New York in the time I’ve lived here.

Later at a bar, watched an impressive acceptance speech by President-Elect Obama at Grant Park in Chicago. I was struck by the acknowledgement of the gay community, and by the story of the 106-year old woman, daughter of slaves, who voted for him in Atlanta. Given the size and emotions of the crowd, it would have been easy to for him to have been demagogic and triumphalist – instead, over and over, he insisted on inclusiveness and humility, in his trademark, slightly stilted and professorial style.

Of course, that’s only the beginning. The next four years are going to be interesting.

November 5th, 2008 | Category: Politics | Leave a comment

Up at 6:00am this morning, voted at 6:15am. Things were very busy at my polling station, a real sense of occasion. The lady next to me was congratulating a first-time voter, about voting in *this* particular election. I actually teared up a bit.

Billboard in the East Village

Here is a picture of my local polling site. Lines have shortened a bit since the early morning, and everything seems to be going well.

Sirovich polling site in the East Village

Afterwards I headed down to the Bowery Hotel, where there is an ongoing phone bank effort to call voters in Virginia. Apparently the McCain campaign is saying that voters have to be at the polls an hour before they close, which is not true. The phone banking campaign is all about convincing non-voters that they can still make a difference, and that they need to get to the polls.

Interestingly, the intensity of calling operation has gone up a notch: in contrast to previous phone banks, here we are asked to keep calling voters on our list until we get through, instead of leaving a message or flagging them as “not home”.

Obama phone bank at the Bowery Hotel

Initially we were calling voters in Virginia, urging them to vote. However, about an hour and a half before polls closed in Florida, we got an urgent message from the campaign HQ in Chicago that some precincts in Florida were not turning out in the numbers expected, and that we should drop everything and start calling Florida. I speak Spanish, so I was in the middle of a group of other volunteers, who would pass calls to me when the person on the other end didn’t speak English.

The sign stuck to my jacket says "I Speak Spanish"

Things really picked up speed, with campaign staff urging people to keep calling right up until the polls closed. A couple of voters reported incidents of fraud, especially in nursing homes where patients were pressured to sign empty ballots. This was reported to the campaign HQ, which responded in a matter of minutes, calling the voter back and documenting what had happened.

Volunteers still calling Florida at 6:45pm

November 4th, 2008 | Category: Politics | Leave a comment