OFA: Harnessing Obama’s grassroots network in Massachusetts

A couple of weeks ago (on May 16), Organizing for America [OFA], the grassroots network that was called Obama for America, had an organizing meeting in Massachusetts that drew over 400 attendees.  [I've written earlier about the challenge and promise of OFA, the 13 million person network from the campaign, that is unprecedented and the question of whether they will be field troops for the Obama agenda or enabled to have their own input into policy.]

Marshall Ganz provided a historical context for OFA.  He noted that social change in our history is not a constant, it is episodic: “”Change is slow except when it’s fast. We’re in a fast movement now so let’s not lose it.”  This is the first time, Ganz noted, that a social movement gave birth during a political campaign.  Successful social movements have to act national but be locally rooted, and to translate national action into local change. Ganz believes that more civic capital has been created through this campaign than ever created through our nation’s history; we have to be creative about using this civic capital.  We need to make sure that it is not a one-way arrangement.

The theme of OFA members wanting input on policy came up at the OFA-MA event, both in questioning of Mitch Stewart (national director of OFA) and in informal discussions throughout the day. Mitch Stewart noted that OFA’s prime agenda was “to support the President’s agenda.”  During Q&A a woman  shouted out “We want input in that agenda!” to large applause.  Stewart tried to siphon the OFA interest in policy by encouraging people to express their input on  whitehouse.gov or by communicating with their members of Congress.  He noted that he was not a policy expert and OFA was not a policy organization.  But it is clear that the audience wasn’t comfortable with that resolution.

A number of speakers highlighted a theme that I have discussed earlier about the importance of marrying technology with “social capital” to have optimal effect. Ethan Winn (software developer) summarized it as  “organizing practices apply online” and commented that once you build the trust through F2F encounters, you can give people responsibilities.)  Marshall Ganz, Harvard lecturer, former community organizer and train-the-trainer for the Obama grassroots effort, in response to a question about how to reach low-income people through technology, replied: “It’s important to distinguish between carpenters and tools. The best tools in the world don’t build a house. The campaign made the tools and equipped people to use the tools. The Dean campaign was successful in using technology to fund raise but the Meetups were not successful — no one knew what to do. The Obama campaign did that part well. People were hungry for tools to work with one another successfully. The technology AND the leadership together were what made the campaign successful. Also, the use of YouTube to enable people to tell their stories was extraordinary. That tool has just begun to realize its potential.”  And Sarah Compton (field organizer in MA for Obama) observed:  “I hope that technology never replaces face-to-face contact. When canvassing to NH, we tried to have a carpool in every town. Those carpools were also meetings and got people engaged. A proof that that was more successful in some ways than technology, the national campaign sent out a blast email about Drive for Change, but we got thousands more people to canvass through word of mouth.”

Here is a thoughtful post on the OFA-MA meeting by “Bottom Up Change”.

Here is video of “Grassroots Organizing: Harnessing the Obama Movement” [panel featuring Sarah Compton, Marshall Ganz, Juan Leyton (director of Neighbor to Neighbor), Ethan Winn and Alan Khazei (BeTheChangeInc.org and co-founder of City Year)

OFA-MA has many other resources from the recent meeting including a live-blogging account of the day.

Is Global Recession Increasing U.S. Engagement?

(Flickr photo by jam343)

Typically and historically the effects of a great recession or significant levels of unemployment have been greater civic disengagement.

There have been interesting studies on this:

• The classic study of the sociological effects of a great recession was in Marienthal by sociologists Jahoda, Lazarsfeld, and Zeisel. They examined the effects of the Great Depression on a tiny Austrian town, 20 m SE of Vienna, in 1931-1932, that captured the psychological costs for individuals exposed to prolonged unemployment, thrown into a vicious cycle of reduced opportunities and reduced aspirations to the point where they didn’t fully pursuing available opportunities.  Many workers were unemployed following the closing of town flax mill that affected nearly every Marienthal family; 2 years after closure in 1931, only one in five families had one or more wage earners with regular work and 75% of families were dependent on unemployment insurance.  Despite increased free time, people joined less, read library books and newspapers less, the public park fell into disrepair, and the once popular theater club was shuttered. The only organizations that benefited were those providing a direct financial benefit to individuals (e.g., the cycling club which offered insurance to members and the Social Democratic cremation society)  The unemployed men in a demonstration of their lower self-esteem and lack of purpose actually slowed down their walking speed and stopped more often.
• Bob Putnam in Bowling Alone (2000) Figure 8 (p. 54) charted the civic patterns over the last 100 years through the aggregate market share of 32 civic pillars (e.g., the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, Rotary, Red Cross, PTAs, etc.). The biggest single rapid decline in the last 100 years was in the Great Depression. A number of groups lost half of their members in 3-4 years in the 1930s.
• A 2008 study by Brand and Burgard using long-term panel data from the high school graduating class of 1957 in the state of Wisconsin showed that spells of unemployment have a permanent effect in depressing civic engagement.  Overview at http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/bowling-alone-because-the-team-55041.aspx .   Jennie Brand and Sarah Burgard.  “Effects of Job Displacement on Social Participation: Findings over the Life Course of a Cohort of Joiners.” Social Forces. (September 2008). The reasons for this long-term impact are not well-known but may also be psychological.
• Cristobal Young, a graduate student rising star in Princeton’s Sociology Dept., has a forthcoming thesis with a chapter on the time effects of unemployment showing that the big increase in the unemployed is time spent alone (up by about 160 minutes a day), controlling for standard socio-demographics. Time spent with family increased by 2.25 hours a day and time spent with friends increased by about 45 minutes, but both were actually lower than the increase in time spent with families and friends on a typical weekend day.  (This may be part psychological and wrapped up in self-confidence or shame, but clearly also partly a coordination issue with the schedules of friends and family members who often work weekdays and also may not want to socialize on weekday nights for that reason.)

The short answer is that we won’t know until a year or two from now when we have reliable large-scale data, but history is chastening on this score.  Obviously in this business, as the mutual funds warn, past performance is not necessarily indicative of future success.

But Annie Gowen of the Washington Post examines some tea leaves in “In Recession, Some See Burst of ‘Neighboring’; Tough Times May Be Helping Build Stronger Communities in D.C. Suburbs” (5/4/09) and asserts hopeful early signs.  She asserts that due to technology, governmental leadership and an active youth generation, this global recession is currently increasing engagement.

My own take is that in all likelihood there is clearly a positive impact of President Obama, who comes from a community organizing background and fully understands the importance of engagement.  He ran a campaign that mobilized scores of new voters into the political process and built up an e-mail list of 13 million supporters who expressed their hunger in staying involved.  He was a participant in our Saguaro Seminar, and early steps of his administration, like renewal and expansion of the national service legislation, and his volunteering on Martin Luther King day and organizing an effort to help others do so clearly provide a conducive backdrop to those with inclinations to serve.  Moreover, Bob Putnam and I have written about the 9-11 Generation, and this will certainly help bolster the country’s civic engagement, aside from the effects of the recession.

It could well be that the economy will be having a negative influence on civic engagement, but that some, and maybe all of this may be countervailed by the Obama effect and the 9-11 Generation.

In any event, the evidence Gowen of the Washington Post musters is fairly anecdotal:

- In Montgomery County (MD), for example, the number of new neighborhood groups has doubled

- “… in hard-hit Manassas (VA), active groups jumped from five to 20 in the past two years.”

-  Keith N. Hampton, an asst. prof. at U. Penn.’s Annenberg School, runs i-neighbors.org, a web site for neighborhood groups with 50,000 members. Hampton says that i-neighbors’ communication  is up 25% this spring over last spring.

Note:  Gowen doesn’t mention this in her article but there is clearly strong evidence (more related to the young generation of Americans) about big increases in interest in national service programs, like Teach for America, City Year, etc.  This is probably a consequence of 2 intersecting factors, the declining job opportunities for graduating seniors at universities, and a 9-11 Generation (those in H.S. or college at the time of the September 11 attack) that has been more interested in volunteering and politics than the generation that came before.

Another journalistic article that also stresses the positive impact of recession on volunteering is “Many who lose a job find a joy: Volunteering” (Atlanta Constitution, by Gracie Bonds Staples, 5/19/09)

No gap in black-white turnout in 2008 elections; youth gap narrowing

The Pew Research Center, in partnership with CIRCLE released a report showing that Asians, Hispanics and Blacks voted in record numbers in the 2008 election, partially spurred by the magnetic candidacy of Barack Obama.  America’s three biggest minority groups — blacks, Hispanics and Asians — comprised almost a quarter of all voters for president in 2008. The increases in minority voting were driven by increases both in numbers of voters and the rate of election turnout.

The second table shows especially large increases in the turnout rate among blacks, and especially black women (not charted), although all non-white groups showed increases.  [Black turnout rose from 60% in 2004 to 65% in 2008, virtually indistinguishable from the voting rates of whites at 66%.]

68.8% of eligible black female voters voted in 2008 (an increase of 5.1 percentage points, from 63.7% in 2004), so that black women were the highest voting of any racial-gender pairing.

So the interesting takeaway from all this was that although the voting rate in November (despite all the money spent on the campaign and the telegenic candidacy of Obama) was relatively unchanged, but the composition of the voters definitely did change, with whites continuing to disengage and non-whites becoming more active.

The region of the country that saw the most dramatic increases in black voter turnout rate was in the South.

Obviously the $1,000,000 question is whether these behavioral changes are likely to continue beyond the Obama candidacy.  One piece of good news for those interested in seeing non-white voting rates continue to rise, is the behavior of younger Americans, as youth tend to keep the civic habits they demonstrate in their teens and twenties.  And this was also good news, especially for blacks.

CIRCLE’s analysis revealed that the “youth gap” ( younger Americans voting at lower rates than older Americans) continued to shrink in 2008. [For example, voters 18-29 voted at rates 24 percentage points less than Americans 30 and older in 2000 but this narrowed to a gap of 16 percentage points less in 2008.]  But minorities also saw good news in the turnout of various ethnic groups.  Young black adults’ voting rates (ages 18-29) increased by 17% from 49.5% in 2004 to 58.2% in 2008.  For the first time, the turnout among 18-29 year old blacks was higher than any other racial and ethnic group in 2008.  While white youth voting rates were relatively flat from 2004 to 2008, mixed race youth voting at 55%, almost 10 percentage points higher than in 2004 (perhaps motivated by voting for a mixed-race president).  Latino and Asian turnout rates continued to increase, but they significantly trailed turnout rates of whites, mixed race and black youth voters.  (The only youth group to see a decline in voting rates in 2008 was Native American Non-Hispanics.)

So the increases in youth turnout, if they persist could help change the distortion in our democratic process toward politicians being more responsive to the needs of older voters, and if non-white voters continue to increase their voting turnout rates and white turnout rates continue to decline, this may also start to change the voices heard in the democratic process.

See also: No Racial Gap Seen in ‘08 Turnout (NYT, 5/1/09)

Great day for national service

Community Service Graffiti (look closely)-by EgoAnt

The number of Americans annually participating in national service programs will triple under legislation approved today by the House of Representatives and approved last week by the Senate, from 75,000 a year to 250,000 by 2017.  Especially heartening, given my experience as a senior policy advisor in the Senate on the enactment of the National Service Trust Act of 1993 was the level of bipartisan support.

The Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, passed the House 275-149 with almost all Democrats supporting it.  While a clear majority of Republicans were opposed, it still garnered 26 Republican votes.  The Senate had passed the same legislation last Thursday in a 78-20 vote, including 22 Republicans.  It is expected that  President Obama, who campaigned on this issue will sign it into law shortly.

The legislation creates  four new corps to address needs in low-income communities: a Clean Energy Corps (CEC) that deals with energy efficiency and conservation; an Education Corps to increase student engagement and achievement; a Healthy Futures Corps to improve access to health-care; and a Veterans Service Corps to help veterans get needed social services.  The CEC will build energy-efficient low-income housing, provide clean energy-related services designed to meet the needs of rural communities, and work with schools and youth programs to educate students and youth about ways to reduce home energy use and improve the environment.

The bill creates new programs for a wide range of age groups. A new Summer of Service program for middle- and high-school students encourages them to volunteer in their communities by allowing them to earn $500 to be used toward college costs. Students will be eligible to participate in two terms, earning up to $1,000. The Silver Scholarships and Encore Fellowships are two programs that offer Americans age 55 or older post-career service opportunities, as well as a way into new careers in the nonprofit or public sector. The federal education reward that volunteers receive for their service, rises to $5,350 starting next year, from the current $4,725 and is then indexed to increases in Pell grants.

The bill also dramatically strengthens service learning – using community service projects as a vehicle to strengthen and enforce academic learning in schools.  [Studies have found that service learning can be an especially effective way to teach since the service projects often require underlying academic skills which students are more motivated to learn or practice if they understand their relevance, and which students remember better afterwards.  An example might be teaching students about scientific measurement by measuring pollution in a river and sharing these results with local environmental groups or officials.]

National service has huge ripple effects on volunteering.  The Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), the federal agency that oversees the AmeriCorps program, estimates that the 75,000 AmeriCorps members who served last year  supervised 2.2 million community volunteers.

Interest in volunteering is rising amid the worsening economy, the sheen that President Obama has given to this issue, and the coming of age of a more altruistic generation, many who got exposure to volunteering in school.   But the economic downturn has also hit the younger generation harder.  Of the 1.2 million jobs lost last year, 60% were held by workers under the age of 25, according to the office of U.S. Rep. George Miller (D., Calif.).

There were 9,731 applications submitted to the AmeriCorps online system last month, over triple the 3,159 submitted in February 2008.  In 2007, more than 61 million Americans spent over 8 billion hours volunteering. More than a quarter of young Americans 16-25 have volunteered. And nearly 65,000 college students prepared to do volunteer work for spring break this year, up 11% over last year.

“The silver lining of economic downturns is that more Americans, especially Millennials, are flocking to public-service positions,” said Sandy Scott, CNCS spokesman.

Investing in service also leverages impressive economic returns. In 2007, volunteers generated $158 billion worth of economic benefits. A cost-benefit analysis of AmeriCorps, for example, showed that every $1 invested produced returns of $1.50 to $3.90 in direct measurable benefits.

As Patrick Kennedy said on the floor of the House before passage: ” There’s an old saying that reads, ‘The most sacred thing one person can give another, outside of their love, is their labor.’  That goes to the core of why supporting programs that promote volunteerism and community service is so important..”

Rep. George Miller, chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee noted on the floor of the House:

History has shown that in times of crisis, Americans turn to service and volunteering for healing, for rebuilding and for hope. The spirit and generosity of the American people is one of our nation’s greatest assets….We see this every single day. In the past week, North and South Dakota have been in a state of emergency, with communities facing severe flooding as the snow melts. As they have in so many other times of disaster, Americans showed up to help. Officials estimate that there are tens of thousands of volunteers who have already been on the ground for days, lining the shores of the river with over 1.5 million sandbags to help stop the flooding. In Fargo, a city with a population of 90,000, 80,000 volunteers showed up to help.They’ve driven through treacherous conditions from Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois, and beyond, ready to serve and ready to help….This legislation is just what we need, at this pivotal moment, to get our nation back on track.

President Obama commented: “”I call on all Americans to stand up and do what they can to serve their communities, shape our history and enrich both their own lives and the lives of others across this country.”

A summary of the legislation is available here.

A summary of the service learning provisions is available here.

In the run-up to the bill being passed there were also strong editorials or op-eds:

Bruce Reed and John Bridgeland , Volunteer to Save the Economy, NYT op-ed (1/23/09), noting that since those doing national service cost far less, they could provide an outsize economic stimulus per dollar invested.

The Moment for National Service, NYT Editorial (1/26/09)

Colin Powell, Let’s Renew America Together, WSJ Op-Ed (1/17/09), discussing the importance of USAservice.org

[I]n times of need…, [t]his is not a time to retreat to our homes and wait until it’s safe to emerge. It is the time to give more, to step forward and serve our fellow citizens, and to reach into the reservoir of this nation’s unrivaled capacity for good….You don’t have to wear the uniform of this country to serve others. You don’t have to work in government. And you don’t have to start a foundation. At a time when so many of our countrymen are in need, everyone has the power to help.

Read previous Social Capital blog posts on the importance of national service.

Is a British Obama possible?

Obama ‘08 (photo by beebo wallace)

Harvard and Manchester through the SCHMi collaboration released their findings about whether a British Obama is possible.  Broadly we found that substantial generational patterns of increased tolerance in both Britain and the U.S., whether related to attitudes towards a black boss or intermarriage or towards black politicians (in the US).  Robert Putnam (Harvard Professor and visiting professor at Univ. of Manchester) noted that: “Change is taking a similar form on both sides of the Atlantic: exactly as in the US, the generation of Britons uncomfortable with non-whites in positions of power or intimacy is gradually dying off, and being replaced by its more tolerant offspring….It is fair to add, however, that the smaller minority population in the UK, as well as the much shallower pool of black politicians and the more centralised political recruitment paths, still tends to work against black representation in Britain.”

There is an interesting article on these findings by Allegra Stratton “Britain ready for black prime minister” in today’s Guardian and in-depth piece called “Mixed Blessing” and an editorial “Geography of Race” by co-author of the forthcoming book Age of Obama, Tom Clark.

In addition, the BBC aired several pieces on the story (“Black prime minister likely to take decades” and Robert Putnam interview with the BBC).

One can find the underlying scholarly papers (on which the report draws) and a sample chapter of the book Age of Obama here.

Press release on this topic available here.

Background:

Social Change: a Harvard-Manchester Initiative (SCHMi) is a collaboration of Harvard University and the University of Manchester that seeks to understand the complex consequences of big societal changes, like the Industrial Revolution or the civil rights revolution, which require careful inter-disciplinary research to identify ways to maximize social benefits and minimize social costs. Much as the sharp declines in life expectancy in the train of the Industrial Revolution in the later 1800s spawned empirical research that uncovered the importance of clean water and sanitation and ultimately reversed the adverse health effects, so too SCHMi aims to spur careful research on large-scale social issues today and thus to foster social progress. Transatlantic comparison and transatlantic learning have long been pivotal to such efforts.

One objective of the SCHMi collaboration is to produce roughly annually a book or report for the informed public, comparing and contrasting the US and UK experiences on some major social issue. The first project, nearing now completion, is on diversity/immigration. We anticipate future reports on religion and public life, and on inequality. The fourth and final topic has not yet been determined, but will likely be either the social consequences of technology or the changing workplace.

Diversity is a critically important subject. In the opening decade of the 21st century immigration and racial diversity are high on both countries’ agendas, for both are undergoing rapid demographic change. But their starting points and trajectories are different, and the policy debates, while intertwined transatlantically, are also different. The Age of Obama (to come out in Fall 2009) compares the social, economic, demographic, and political consequences of immigration and racial diversity in the US and the UK. The work is unusually timely because many are now wondering whether there could be a British Obama.

The Age of Obama is written by Tom Clark, an experienced writer for The Guardian, and builds on substantive contributions from Professors Waters (Harvard), Fieldhouse (Manchester), Peach (Manchester-Oxford), Yaojun Li (Manchester), Daniel Hopkins (post-doc, Harvard Govt. Dept.), and Rob Ford (post-doc, Manchester sociology) with overall project direction being provided by Robert Putnam.

• The underlying chapters are:1. Comparing Immigrant Integration in the US and the UK (based on research by Mary Waters)2. Ethnic and Racial Segregation in the US and Britain (based on research by Ceri Peach)3. Immigration and neighborhood diversity in the U.K. and the U.S.  Does diversity damage social capital? (based on research by Ed Fieldhouse and David Cutts)4. Socio-economic integration of immigrants in the US and UK (based on research by Yaojun Li)5. How levels of neighborhood immigration influence attitudes towards immigration in the U.S and the U.K and generational changes in the US and UK in attitudes toward race (based on research by Dan Hopkins and Rob Ford).

UPDATED: Technology doing little to reduce civic class gap

photo by TabascoKid

At the Harvard Inequality Seminar, Harvard Prof.  Sid Verba and BC Prof. Kay Schlozman presented some of their then-unpublished recent work-in-progress on whether the Internet is helping to reduce the class gaps in civic participation that Verba wrote about in 1959 in Civic Culture and Verba, Schlozman and Henry Brady wrote about in 1995 in Voice and Equality.  [They have now published their findings in "The Internet and Civic Engagement" (Pew Internet and American Life Project, 9/1/09).]

Their primary conclusions were that the Internet is NOT doing much to level political participation from a class perspective but may be doing more to level participation across age groups.  Over the past generation, lower socio-economic groups and younger Americans participate civicly at lower rates than older and higher status Americans.

Although they didn’t know the socio-economic status of the 13 million e-mail addresses that Obama gathered in the 2008 campaign, they surmised, based on their research that it was likely to be disproportionately those of higher SES levels.

They also were able to dissagregate the class gap in civic participation among the lower SES fifth.  They compared rates of *online participation* (participation in one or more of five categories like giving money to political causes, sending e-letter to editor,  signing an e-petition, contacting your representative by e-mail, etc.) among those who “connected” (i.e., they had Internet at home or sent e-mails periodically) against those who weren’t.  The digital divide (much lower rates of being “connected” among the lower SES fifth) explained maybe half of the class gap in political participation, but a clear gap in political participation remained, even in comparing the rates of political participation of connected lower class Americans against upper class Americans.  Verba pointed out that this is probably a function of lower SES groups, either: a) not wanting to participate; or b) not being able to (not having the money or time or skills); or c) not being asked as much by other groups to participate.    The last factor creates a vicious spiral; people target higher SES groups to politically participate since they participate more and it seems rational to focus attention where it will produce the biggest payoff, but this in turn makes lower SES groups participate less and therefore means that other groups avoid them more in the future in targeting.

The one potential bright spot for Verba and Schlozman was social networking groups (Twitter, Facebook and the like).  Participation in these groups was much higher among younger Americans than older Americans.  While social networking sites have the potential to be used for political purposes, they didn’t see evidence that these sites were commonly being used for such purposes, and in fact, their data (drawn from an August 2008 national survey of 2,000 Americans), continued to show a persistent effect of older Americans participating more politically (both on-line and off-line).  But Verba and Schlozman, while acknowledging that more of the “political” uses of applications like Facebook currently seems to be fannish, think that these social networking groups may in the future help to reduce the age-based civic gap if they are used for more expressly political purposes.

One of their interesting findings was a graph that compared levels of class inequality in 1959 (from Civic Culture) to 1995 (from Voice and Equality) to their current findings.  Interestingly, the class gradient has remained fairly constant.  Those in the lowest SES (socio-economic status) fifth participated civicly at rates of 25-35% in all three studies, and those at the top SES fifth participated civicly at rates of 80% in all three studies (spanning 50 years of U.S. history).

Their findings were somewhat controversial among the crowd listening to these comments.  Some felt that they limited participation too much toward traditional forms of participation (writing a letter to the editor, giving money to a political candidate, etc.) and shortchanged new forms of political participation, like writing a blog post or commenting on one, joining a Facebook cause, etc.  [Verba and Schlozman did that so they could compare on-line and off-line participation,  and didn't have an off-line counterpart of blog posting.]  Others felt that they couldn’t make inferences about the consequences of the Internet, since they didn’t know the counterfactual (how much would Americans of various social classes participated offline if the web wasn’t around).

Verba and Schlozman have also not teased out whether the patterns with regard to the Internet for youth are a cohort phenomenon (where this group will stay equally involved as they age) or a lifecycle phenomenon, where it is something about being a 18-25 year-old and this group will become less civicly involved as they age.  When they showed a slide comparing civic engagement by age (in 1959 v. 1995 v. 2008) it shows that there is now a much flatter pattern of civic engagement by age.  Whether that says something about the Internet or the attractiveness of Barack Obama to youth participation is anyone’s guess.  In addition, since the methodology Verba and Schlozman used did not survey cell phones (disproportionately used by young people), it is possible (if the young cellphone users differ from the landline users) that they underestimated youth civic participation through various social media.

OFA activated to stump for Stimulus Bill

I previously posted about the Obama’s efforts to turn their amazing 13 million person grassroots network into an organizing force on behalf of the Obama legislative agenda (or “your agenda” in their language).

OFA (technically “Organizing for America” or sometimes called OFA 2.0) was activated through this video where President Obama notes the importance of crowd-sourcing (how the people will collectively produce a better product), although he doesn’t use that term.

Apparently 3,300 house parties on the stimulus were organized, to mixed press reviews — the OFA is tapped out or a success – some were canceled, some had low turnout, but others seemed an excellent example of democratic participation, like the account that538 had of one grassroots account of a Maryland house party among OFA Obama activists discussing the stimulus bill. After reminiscing about the 2008 campaign and why they wanted to stay involved, participants broke into subgroups like Energy; Science & Technology; Transportation; Education; Health Care; Jobs (retraining); and Public Sector Jobs (teachers, firefighters, etc.) to discuss what was or wasn’t in the Stimulus and what should be.  Their goal was to share the group’s thinking with Senator Barbara Mikulski.

Not sure whether these efforts actually changed the stimulus bill, which disappointingly was hammered out between House and Senate leaders (with Administration representatives) in closed-door, old-fashioned, smoke-filled rooms. But is clear that some combination of Obama stumping for the bill plus the activation of the OFA network may help explain why popular support for the stimulus bill increased in recent days.

As I wrote earlier, I think the challenge of keeping OFA vibrant is making participants more than foot soldiers in the Obama “our” agenda.

Is “Organizing for America” really “Organizing for Obama”?

We’ve posted earlier about the $64,000 question: what will happen to the throngs of political supporters brought into the process by the Obama Campaign?

This has been partially answered.  Obama for America 2.0 [OBA 2.0] as it was loosely called will be called Organizing for America.

The language sounds empowering of his supporters (“you’ve built the largest grassroots movement in history”, “our journey to change America”, “we cannot do it without you”, I wouldn’t have been sworn in without you,  etc.), but a separate press release by Tim Kaine, governor of Virginia and head of the Democratic National Committee, indicates that Organizing for America will work within the DNC.  This organizational structure suggests that it will be more of a force to enact the Obama Administration agenda: in other words a one-way rather than a  two-way street.

He doesn’t answer how it will be staffed and funded, whether it will be a federated, with a chance for participants to rise to state or national leadership positions in OFA through voting, and most importantly doesn’t address whether it will enable individuals to contact each other: criticizing Obama if they feel he is not living out the ideals of the campaign, or organizing around issues different than the Obama Administration is focusing on.

I’ve indicated earlier that I think this extraordinary 13 million person network will have less staying power if the individuals feel they are merely foot soldiers without an ability to change or shape the political priorities.  (And the one other effort to help glean citizens’ priorities for the Obama Administration (Change.org),  seemed to fall victim to the “vote early, vote often” phenomenon, propelling the legalization of marijuana to #1, probably because Ron Paul supporters rallied their troops repeatedly).

The Obama folks also introduce by video Mitch Stewart as the Executive Director of Organizing for America, caucus director of Iowa and the person and the person who ran Virginia for Obama during the general election.

Stay tuned.

Turning the Mall into a community

I heard about the great joint effort of MeetUp.com and the Huffington Post to distribute 500,000 name tags yesterday at the Inauguration in an effort to get the 1.8 million attendees to meet each other.  The name tags read “Hello my fellow American, my name is…”  Attendees were asked to write their name and where they were from, so other attendees could say, “Oh, you’re from Chicago, do know my cousin Harold.”

MeetUp founder Scott Heiferman and  Jeremy Heimans noted that: “We want to turn a crowd into a community. We all need a little reminder that we’re not just spectators and that Inauguration isn’t just for celebrities. We can look at each other, and not just at the Jumbotrons. As Obama says, “We’re the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

Waiting to hear from some of those at the Inauguration whether it really worked.  Look forward to any comments from attendees.

Apparently the back of name tag had a 4-point guide on how to strike up a conversation.  We assume it was more sophisticated than “Come Here Often?”

This may be the closest we’ve come yet to Joseph Porcelli’s vision of “National Name Tag Day.”

See also Nancy Sciola’s post on this for TechPresident.

What is your pledge for America?

I was moved by Barack Obama’s invocation of the social progress we have made in a lifetime — as he put it, “a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.”

Obama’s inauguration speech also called upon Americans to return to the inspirational examples of our forebears acting in service to others (to their friends, their communities, the generations to follow):

“As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages. We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service; a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves. And yet, at this moment – a moment that will define a generation – it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.

For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter’s courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent’s willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends – honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism – these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths.

What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility – a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.”

Husband and wife Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher called on their Hollywood friends to pledge what THEY were doing or planning on doing to make the world better and ask you to do the same.  Is this the same Ashton Kutcher of Punk’d fame, or did he have a conversion experience?  It’s a moving video nonetheless and let’s hear it for second lives. [You can also play ‘name that celebrity….’