I’m at a beautiful retreat house on a hilltop in the mountains north of San Luis Obispo as thirty volunteers led by Courage Campaign’s brilliant field team learn the skills to be community organizers. The spirit and energy in the room outshine the magnificent California countryside.

Every four years, California exports labor and capital for presidential campaigns. I witnessed that firsthand as chair of Howard Dean’s presidential campaign here in California when, in 2003/4, we sent hundreds of people to Iowa, New Mexico and Arizona to fight in the early primaries. And we raised millions online from California to make Howard Dean the voice that forever changed the Democratic Party. But then what?

We did it again in 2008 with the Obama Campaign. California exported tens of millions of dollars (maybe hundreds of millions) for the Clinton and Obama campaigns. Thousands of Californians went to Nevada to turn that state blue, to Florida and Pennsylvania and even Montana. Some 60% (maybe more) of the telephone calls to voters were made from California so that volunteers in those other states could actually meet with the right voters.

But no one from Oakland went to Fresno. And no one from West LA went to San Bernardino. No phone calls were made to the Imperial Valley. No money was spent on building infrastructure or focusing progressive messages on the conservative parts of our state. And not one penny was spent bringing people together to figure out why our state is broken, much less how to fix it.

The folks in this room today are here to change that. These nearly three dozen volunteers applied for the position of Deputy Field Organizer. They are from all over the state. Born of the post-Prop. 8 wake up call, Cole from Humboldt, Erin from Glendale, Matthew from San Francisco, Sara Beth from San Diego and a couple of dozen more like them are here because they know that they are leaders who can change their own communities.

Sarah Callahan, the incredibly skilled and experienced Courage COO, is right now teaching the team how to create a stakeholder analysis, what to do with that analysis and how to organize around that understanding. Earlier in the day, everyone broke into teams to learn their own story of self and then how to teach the story of self for organizers.

Most people came to this energizing space because of marriage equality and LGBT rights, but all want to work to assure that we have universal health care, affordable education and good jobs. On my ride up here, I listened to NPR (of course). The news is not great. The wars in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq are sapping our nation’s resources. The financial system continues to reward the few at the top, while jobs remain far fewer than willing workers. Houses once at the heart of the California and American dreams stand empty because former owners can’t make ends meet.

In the meantime, the health insurance companies dump hundreds of millions of dollars of premium fees into ads designed to protect and enhance their profits by thwarting reform. Climate change, full equality for LGBT people, immigration and education reform are not even really on the agenda yet.

But there’s only room for optimism. The movement that put Obama into office is growing. It demands progress and it is organizing itself right here in Bradley, California and across our country. The leadership of the movement in many ways comes from the LGBT community. We’ll win marriage equality and full equality as we build a progressive state–and nation–for all of us.

Now that’s Courage.

(Cross-posted at Courage Campaign)