Crossposted at www.communityorganize.com.
Yesterday 150 former Obama campaign volunteers and staff, and other organizers from around the Bay met in San Francisco to reflect on the successes of the campaign and to strategize about how to support community organizing in the Bay Area and across California. Participants came from San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, Marin, Contra Costa County, San Joaquin County, Tri-Valley, Fremont, Palo Alto and Santa Clara. Most had worked for the Obama campaign, including traveling to other states and organizing hugely successful phonebanks.
We spent the afternoon working on our vision of community organizing, and thinking about the incredible potential of this group working together on a local, regional and statewide level.
Here’s some feedback shared at the meetings and in the small groups:
On the successes of the campaign: “Respect, Empower, Include.” “No drama Obama.” “Empowerment and access given to us.” “The campaign came to CA to organize, not just for $.”
On what we have learned: “Learned about own capacity for leadership.”
What’s a community organizer? Someone who listens, who doesn’t give up, who “empowers people for a common cause” and who can “be a bit of a hardass” when needed. Community organizing is “Getting the resources that are needed but that we don’t yet have.” It means “passion” and “commitment” and “clear goals.”
We shared a host of critical issues facing our nation, state and community that concern us, like health care for all, dealing with the California budget crisis, getting out of Iraq, marriage equality, education, and supporting union organizing.
And we collected seven bags of donated food for the San Francisco food bank, and lots of surveys with written feedback about the campaign and future organizing.
We will be sending out the results of all of this feedback to participants in the next few days, and plan to get together again soon after the New Year.
In the meantime, former Obama campaign organizers are rolling out a new website, www.communityorganize.com, to link volunteers across the state who want to continue working together.