Obama's Grassroots People One Story at a Time

This is not for the right wing of heart.

WaPo: More than 10,000 people applied for slots as "Obama Organizing Fellows" and about 5,500 were interviewed by telephone, answering such questions as "Why Barack?"

This first batch is now finishing a round of voter-registration drives and a series of one-on-one recruiting efforts. Dozens of the Missouri fellows will be offered full-time jobs, paid to spread the word.

"It's one thing building on the next," said Buffy Wicks, Obama's state director here.

When 97 volunteers arrived in St. Louis, Wicks told them her story: a rural California upbringing followed by political activism that intensified when her closest friend was diagnosed with HIV and had no health insurance.

"When he decided to run," she said of Obama, "I said I have to do this because it's for people like Todd.

"It's going to be very hard," Wicks told the volunteers. "It's a lot of long days, a lot of unhealthy days . . . but it's worth it, because we're going to change the country. This for many of you is going to be a transformative experience in your lives. Are you ready for that?"

Wicks and Missouri field director Peachy Myers introduced the group to an 86-page training manual filled with lessons drawn from Obama's experiences as a community organizer and the first 16 months of the presidential campaign. In a national conference call to the volunteers, Obama recalled that when he called his first meeting on Chicago's South Side in the 1980s, no one showed.

"Get ready to have a lot of face-to-face meetings with people who may say yes as well as those who may say no to your ask for commitment," the manual states. "The strength of our campaign has been engaging people that have never been politically active. It is not easy!"

"This summer is all about building capacity," Wicks told the group, explaining that the volunteers would fan out in teams to identify community leaders -- some traditional, some neophytes -- who would "build miniature campaigns in their own neighborhoods."
....

If several people on the ground mention the same problem, the campaign can adjust. Similarly, if one organizer has a good idea, the campaign can quickly pass it along, as happened recently when someone started canvassing at gas stations and discovered that drivers irate about rising prices were motivated to register.

"Now, I'm really jealous of you, because you're going to have a lot of fun. You're going to eat cold pizza, and you're going to drink warm beer," Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), a fervent Obama supporter, told the volunteers. "But have fun. That's what he wants you to do. He wants you to learn how to reach out, organize people for power -- the good kind of power, the kind that comes from the bottom up."

McCaskill telegraphed the campaign's central focus: introducing Obama to voters who remain skeptical, and reassuring them.

"The message you've got to send, more than any other message, is that Barack Obama is just like us," McCaskill said.

"If you look at what he has done and how he has done it, anybody who thinks he's out of touch has not paid attention to who he is as a man."

The volunteers now scattered across Missouri are an eclectic bunch. Some have worked in campaigns; most have not. Volunteers in their 20s seem to outnumber all others, but more than a few are in their 40s, 50s and 60s.

One woman described herself as an unemployed single parent from Kansas City looking for bigger solutions. Another said she grew up in the 1960s, granddaughter of a suffragette. A law student raised in a small Missouri town said she was drawn to action after seeing foreign revulsion toward U.S. policy.

Linda Carey, whose children are grown, is a first-timer.

"I've never done anything like this," explained Carey, who said the aftermath of 9/11 and the treatment of terrorism suspects at Guantanamo caused her to take notice. "You go to his Web site, and he immediately invites you to become involved. He invites you to tell your story, and he trusts you to be okay." read more

Obama's Organizing Fellows Hit the Streets

Look out john mccain. 

Obama's volunteer army is the result of a call for volunteers in april.

wash post: Moving to harness the grass-roots energy that helped win the Democratic nomination, Sen. Barack Obama's campaign will deploy 3,600 volunteers in 17 states this weekend, each committed to six consecutive weeks of full-time political work.

The project, launched two months before the senator from Illinois became the presumptive nominee, is a measure of his determination to out-organize Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in states that could swing a close election.

The campaign put out word in April about "Obama Organizing Fellowships," an approach that went well beyond the "y'all come" model of luring volunteers with free doughnuts for two-hour canvassing stints. Supporters were required to answer essay questions, supply references and go through a telephone interview with campaign staff members.

In return for a promise to give the campaign at least six weeks of their lives, they were promised training in community organizing techniques.

A cover letter from Obama, who spent three years in the 1980s working in impoverished Chicago neighborhoods, spoke of lessons in the "basic organizing principles that this campaign and our movement for change are built on."

Obama urged supporters to apply and to "put progressive values to work in the real world."

Know Your Obama or Get to Know Him

Obama Seeking New Voters in General Election

forget about those white men in ohio that would never vote for obama because he's black (pity them), obama is looking toward the general election and looking to sign up a new electorate, more voters younger than 30 and more black voters to compensate and win state's such as ohio.

politico: Obama's massive, smoothly integrated volunteer organization has been a mainstay of his campaign. It has been central to his success in caucus states such as Minnesota and Idaho, where a volunteer army - organized online - preceded and noticeably bolstered his staff's organizing efforts, helping to build the huge victory margins that have made him the frontrunner.

His voter registration efforts have drawn far less attention. But they were there from the start. When Obama toured Iowa last February in his first campaign swing, his campaign brought along voter registration cards. As the race there heated up, voter registration became a quiet focus, with registration drives in colleges and even high schools that helped drive Obama's victory.

South Carolina, Hildebrand said, was the site of another intensive effort. "A great case study for voter registration was the South Carolina primary, where we dramatically expanded the African-American vote and dramatically expanded the youth vote," he said. "It was such a big part of getting us to that 28-point margin of victory."

Another high-stakes voter registration drive just concluded in Pennsylvania, where the deadline to register as a Democrat and participate in the primary was March 24. The Pennsylvania Department of State reports that more than 234,000 voters have either newly registered as Democrats or switched from other parties, and the state hasn't finished counting the new registrations.

part of that effort will be obama's organizing fellows:

This summer we are looking for students or recent graduates who want to be a part of a new generation of leadership that believes, like Senator Obama, that real change comes from the ground up.

Fellows will be trained on the basics of organizing & campaign fundamentals and then placed in a community to carryout grassroots activities. Program participation will start on June 5 through the end of the summer. Fellows will be asked to commit to a minimum of 30 hours per week.