Well, I guess the secret is out now. After yesterday's rec list meta-fest everyone knows the truth about how incredibly organized and powerful we really are.
As Plouffe himself has said, we are "the best organizers in the history of politics." (That little tidbit is one I heard on a TOP SECRET conference call that only thousands of volunteers across the country got to listen in on.) See all the cool stuff you can be a part of?
But maybe you still have questions, like how can I too, be a part of the vast Obamabot conspiracy? Where will I get my marching orders? Are there uniforms? Secret handshakes? And what, exactly, would I be doing to carry out my mission of defending the President at all costs?
Read on after the fold, all is revealed.
So you want to be a part of Organizing for America, the President's Field Team? Help organize support for Barack Obama's legislative agenda?
You can start right here:
barackobama.com.
Yeah, I know, it's stunning but true! The President has his OWN website just for mobilizing the army of volunteers out there working on his behalf. And here's the amazing part - all the super secret plans are spelled out right there for anyone to read.
Sign up for the mailing list and you will get the famous E-mails you hear so much talk about. Chock full of instructions straight from the top. Mine usually come from Mitch Stewart, the Director, or Jeremy Bird, the Deputy Director. But sometimes I get one from Grand Master Plouffe. And every so often the President himself sends me an email. I mean yeah, no question who is running the conspiracy of hope and change.
Here's a video of some volunteers getting their marching orders straight from the President. Notice how young they are! Because if you get folks early enough you've got them hooked for a lifetime:
And you can click here to get a copy of the uniform.
So what's the agenda? Well, it's actually up to you. Because what OFA offers is a lot of ways to engage, and you choose to take up the ones that are meaningful to you. You can simply take the excellent online tools and use them to call Congress, write a Letter to the Editor, or share information ranging from fact sheets to videos through your social networks. The scripts and messages are usually pretty simple, leaving a lot of space for your personal story and perspective. Sharing personal stories and putting the messages in your own voice is what happenes at offline phonebanks and canvasses also, and even at organizing meetings and house parties.
The idea is that one human being talking to another about what motivates you to act is the most persuasive political action out there. It's the true secret weapon, and has been since the earliest days of the Obama campaign. I know because I've been trained and trained others over and over to tell our stories and use them to build support for taking action.
We do it online and offline - oh yeah we don't just hang out on blogs! Actually most OFA volunteers don't hang out in the comments sections of blogs but may participate in social media and stop in to read the latest. But regardless, it's those the personal connections among organizers that build power. Here's what the California New Media Director wrote about our work on healthcare over at Tech President:
Here in California, OFA used our email lists, my.barackobama.com, the OFA CA Facebook fan page of over 21,000 fans, Twitter, SMS messages, videos, photos (especially from mobile phones), and blogs to spread the word about phonebanks, canvasses, rallies, congressional office visits, and organizing meetings. Online organizing campaigns coordinated with follow-up calls by volunteer organizers proved to be an incredibly important team building and event building tactic. OFA's "You Fight, We Fight" online campaign--where supporters pledged hours on barackobama.com to support members of Congress who pledged to fight for health reform--we learned that online activists who talked to an OFA organizer within three days of signing up had a 75% volunteer commitment rate. If that same organizer talked to them the same day, the commitment rate was about 90%. Online organizing, paired with personal contact, made an incredible difference.
So if you sign up online you will likely get a phone call, or at least an email, with more not very secret instructions. You will start getting invited to things happening offline in your local area, like organizing meetings, training sessions, phonebanks, canvasses. Those are likely to include work not just in support of bills in Congress, but probably also local candidates who need help against the tea party forces of reaction.
A warning though - it turns out this isn't particularly glamorous or easy. Organizing is hard, sometimes frustrating, often invisible work. I've explained before that it's us "hopey changey" folks who need to be especially strong and tenacious because we've got our work cut out for us:
Hope is not for everyone. It is only for those strong enough -- or desperate enough -- to embrace it. It is cruel, harsh and demanding. Belief in change will break your heart almost every time. Hope won’t let you sit on the sidelines. You can’t take the easy way out. The disillusioned can safely withdraw. The Hopeful are driven to engage.
And yet, it is this stubborn belief that "change is possible" that is the true, secret source of organizing power we tap into.
I've studied organizing and social movements from the view of a scholar in the ivory tower and the perspective of a participant on the ground, and I have come to one key conclusion -- positive emotions motivate action.
Hope in the future, a belief you can make a difference, the understanding that change is possible, these are the essential ingredients in moving people to act for change. Apathy, fear and self-doubt keep us from acting. Organizers foster the faith in ourselves we need to make sacrifices and persist in the face of obstacles.
In other words: without hope there can be no change.
Want to know the real secret? This backbreaking, often demoralizing, work of building support step by step is also the most addictive, fun, empowering work I've ever done. With people who are creative, smart, engaged and authentic about politics. It's why I can't give up on it and why so many stay with it. It's why so many of us spend hours and hours on the phone with total strangers or standing in the sun with a clipboard or going to a weeknight organzing meeting when you are already tired or simply dialing in to far more conference cals than you believe you can ever tolerate.
Once you do all that, in your copious free time, of course, you should come to Daily Kos and read and recommend all my diaries! And please write your own, about the organizing work you are doing. Post some pictures, tell your story. After all, that's how we roll.
I am a volunteer with Organizing for America in California. When I write here, I speak for myself and not for the organization in any way. My diaries, and all the words in them are my own.