I feel like I'm back at the scene of the crime. Nearly 4 months to the day, we were back where it all started at LA Trade Tech in downtown Los Angeles, where we attended our first Camp Obama and learned how to change the world.
Over 400 other Camp Obama graduates, campaign alumni, community organizers, and would-be community organizers have gathered here on a cold, rainy Saturday morning all hoping to have the same question answered.
Now what?
The simple answer is that Change Is Coming To California. And that Change is Us.
we're all connected - a team building exercise
The post-election Obama organization (what we jokingly refer to Obama 2.0), like the Obama administration, is in transition. A lot of very smart people at Obama 2.0 are trying to figure out the best way for us to utilize our talents and to keep our spirit of community activism alive and growing.
They've come up with a four important goals:
Organize To Support Legislation: To turn Obama's promise of change into reality, we will need to support the administration's agenda by lobbying our local officials, and by reaching out to our neighbors and educating our communities - just like we did in the election.
Electoral Organizing: Grow the next generation of elected officials. Identify and support progressive candidates running for state and local offices.
Promote Two-Way Communication Between The Administration And The Grassroots: We will become our own lobbyists! Research the issues facing your community on a local, state, and federal level. Know your elected official's contact information and backgrounds.
Civic Engagement: We will make our communities better places by working with existing community groups and service organizations (or even creating our own!) to bring about change in our states, our cities, our schools and our neighborhood.
The Obama organizers in California are an impatient bunch and don't want to wait for Obama 2.0 to give us our marching orders. So they've already come up with an organizing tool that will enable us to get started now.
CommunityOrganize.com is an online network created to serve as the organizing hub for training and outreach where individuals can meet others dedicated to changing the world around them, share resources, learn about critical issues and opportunities to make a difference, and build online relationships that support and extend our in-person, offline organizing work.
Even if you're not in California, you should check it out. If our little experiment works, we might just be exporting this to other states.
By the end of the meeting we were given three "asks":
Join CommunityOrganize.com
Meet with our neighbors and figure out what our needs and concerns are on a local level.
Adopt a Food Bank in our area and organize a food drive for this weekend.
Already, we have two Food Bank events in Los Angeles organized through CommunityOrganize.com
Westside Food Bank , which distributes food to the food assistance programs of 65 Westside Los Angeles social service agencies.
Beach Cities/Harbor Food Bank Drive for the beach and harbor areas in LA County.
Our goal is to deliver 2,000 lbs. - ONE TON - of goods.
WHAT'S NEXT FOR YOU?