Today I visited the SEIU 1199 office in Columbus, the center of the Labor 2006 mobilization here in Ohio’s Ahia’s capital. The Labor 2006 program has brought the AFL-CIO and SEIU together to get out the vote, alongside Working America. Video the Vote and the America Votes coalition - which includes EMILY’s List, NARAL, Planned Parenthood, and Sierra Club among others - are also staging out of the SEIU building.

I’d had the impression that I’d visited some bustling, crowded, active GOTV operations in my three days in Columbus, but the mobilization taking place at the SEIU office clearly takes the cake for the scale and scope of their operation. I arrived towards the tail end of the first six hour shift of calls union members were making into the Ohio 12th in support of Bob Shamansky. The Labor 2006 side of the call center - split in two between them and America Votes - was making around 16,000 calls for Shamansky today and about the same number for Mary Jo Kilroy in the OH-15. Tomorrow will be even bigger: 45,000 calls into five contested races in Ohio.

There were about ninety canvassers and phone bankers in to help out the joint SEIU/AFL-CIO GOTV operation. As I was arriving, two AFL staffers were calling local union shops to scrounge up more volunteers for the last GOTV push Tuesday evening. As I was leaving a crew of eighteen sheet metal workers were arriving to man the phones and knock on doors.

In the category of things that don’t matter that much, the GOTV operation running out of SEIU had the best food I’ve ever encountered in a campaign. A cuban sandwich a call-in center? If only the folks at the Ohio Democratic Party were so lucky. Brett Banack, the AFL-CIO’s Columbus zone political lead (pictured above), cooked home-made tomato sauce and spaghetti for volunteers, too, though unfortunately I missed it. Tomorrow a big pancake breakfast is planned for the first shift of volunteers.

Bloggers like me have been pushing for citizen activism in support of political reform for as long as people were talking about the midterm elections. Grassroots involvement, taking place in part on the netroots, has driven our insurgent candidates into the position where they are now: charging a big, blue wave. But this activism has had a home in the labor movement for years. Strong unions have promoted a progressive agenda since their inception.

In fact, looking at what I’ve seen the last few days in Ohio, you might be able to add a Democratic majority in the House and Senate to the famed labor achievements of the weekend and the eight-hour work day.

At Sunday night’s Democratic voter rally, Sherrod Brown cast the work people have done to organize in support of Democratic candidates in a way that I’ve never heard a politician discuss their supporters before. Brown said:

Thank you, thank you for your activism. Thank you for your work for social and economic justice. Thank you for what you do.

Brown is absolutely right. Citizens working in support of the Democratic Party are activists. Here in Ohio in particular, but really nationwide, are working for social and economic justice, not just nice white guys in suits that walk around with their palms out. No, there is substance in what we do and their is purpose in our efforts.

Pundits can talk ad nauseam about the success of political ads, the size of campaign donations, and the alliances candidates make with incumbents. There’s certainly a lot to say about these things, to be sure. But what’s missed when discussions focus on the horse race, the money race, and the professional jockeying for power in politics is the human side of every candidacy that has the power to turn the idea of a candidate into a movement for change. Movements are built on people and activists build movements. So when we talk about the strength of the netroots, we should be sure to focus our attention where it properly belongs: on the people who constitute our community, not those that are merely the most visible.

This is not to say that bloggers aren’t leaders. We are. But leadership that doesn’t have recourse to the activist work of readers, community organizers, and union members won’t get very far. The blogs cannot effect change on their own and trying to do so is just going to burn out the activists we do have. What I’ve seen on the ground in Ohio, as with Connecticut this past August, is that we are strongest when we work together and honor the value of everyone’s contributions to our movement.

So go vote tomorrow. Volunteer for the last few hours of canvassing and phone banking. Watch a poll. Answer phones in a campaign office. Protect the right of all Americans to vote. Be a Democrat. Be an activist.

I arrived in Columbus, Ohio Saturday morning as part of the AFL-CIO’s Labor 2006 program that’s sending bloggers to cover key races and the voter mobilizations that are taking place to achieve victory on November 7th. Adam Conner and Nancy Scola are visiting and Midwest and Pennsylvania, respectively, and their fantastic work can be found on MyDD.