Saturday was Pledge Project Canvass day, and we had our own event in our neighborhood of Boston. It was small, but the people who showed up made it worth the anxiety that I was feeling about this first OFA action. Would anyone show up? Would people have a good experience? Would this achieve anything? And most troubling: was I becoming a card-carrying member of the Obama-bot cult??? Note to Michelle Malkin: it sure beats the cult-of-Santelli.
I’m sure we could have had a larger showing if I’d had more than three days to organize this event and if I was a better organizer. But, considering the time constraints, overall I am satisfied with the result. I do have a few complaints, though, which I’ll get to shortly. But first, I’ll discuss what worked.
This event was different from a lot of the canvasses around the country, I think, because I framed it as a combination of a social media gathering (in this case, a “Tweetup”) combined with activism. We met at a local ice cream/coffee shop called JP Licks, had some ice cream, and spent the first hour discussing how new technologies such as Facebook, Twitter, Ning, etc., can be used for political organizing. Although the turnout was small, the people who showed up came from a variety of backgrounds and were eager to get involved. A candidate for the Boston City Council named Tomas Gonzalez joined us along with his daughter and one of his campaign volunteers. A veteran of the Obama campaign’s primary/caucus in Texas who had recently moved to the neighborhood was there. Joseph Porcelli, a local organizer and founder of Neighbors for Neighbors, was also there to cover the event for his organization and offer his social media expertise. (Shout out to Joseph for the video above.) We decided that it would be a good idea to have a larger politics-meets-Twitter event in April or May in which we might invite local candidates and create a network of Boston politicos on Twitter.
After the Tweetup, several more volunteers joined us and we went out into the main commercial drag of my neighborhood to gather pledges (minus Joseph, who couldn’t join us). Our main goal was to talk with people about the budget, let them know what Organizing for America was doing, and obtain pledges. There were five of us in total. A few volunteers were extremely successful in gathering pledges, but for most of us, it was tough going. We devised a concise pitch to try to get the attention of passers-by so they would stop and chat with us. But even in a liberal’s paradise like Jamaica Plain, few people wanted to talk to us. In my experience, a lot of people who supported Obama didn’t want to stop for just two minutes to fill out a form. One man passed me by and said, “Obama will pass the budget without me. Good luck!” Another woman who I tried to talk with walked by and I noticed a “Health Care, Not War” pin on her jacket. When I asked her if she would support the President’s budget, she looked at me coldly and let me know that Obama was disappointing her with his appointments and by not supporting a single-payer system. Well, that’s the way it goes, I thought. Most volunteers had to leave early, so we only canvassed for about an hour and ended up collecting 54 pledges.
So, that’s not a bad day. If it’s true that there were over 1,000 canvasses held around the country, it’s possible that there were around 50,000 pledges collected this weekend. Considering that a lot of the OFA state organizers are not in place yet (not here in MA it seems), that would be an impressive achievement considering this was OFA’s first action. Also, I had several conversations that made me think that just being out there talking with people about the budget was having a positive effect. At least three people thanked me and one person told me to “keep it up.” The best encounters I had were with people between the ages of 18-25. They were most willing to sign the pledge. One younger guy I met talked with me at length about his disappointment with Notre Dame for rescinding their invitation to Obama over his stem cell decision.
Despite the generally positive experience I had with this canvass, there were some problems. First, the volunteers who hosted this event weren’t given much time to plan, advertise, and recruit other volunteers. We were given a little over a week’s notice about this canvass, but the mass e-mail that OFA sent to its 12 million person list did not go out until last Monday. Second, although the budget is a very important part of the President’s agenda, it is very hard to get volunteers motivated about it. The one consistent criticism I heard from my volunteers was that it just wasn’t that engaging to ask people to support a federal budget proposal [Insert expression of shock here]. Third, the goal of the plege project was never entirely clear. I’m still not exactly sure what OFA is going to do with these pledges. Sure, the media will talk about the numbers, which should give the President a small boost with the public. And, of course, OFA is collecting information about people who support the budget and who may be interested in volunteering in the future. But there needs to be a much more concrete focus for this kind of action. It is hard–really hard–to take several hours from one’s weekend and talk to strangers about a budget. I am extremely impressed by the volunteers who showed up at my event, but I know it wasn’t easy for them. This kind of civic engagement and desire to enact change is encouraging. Still, unless the projects that OFA offers people are made more engaging, it may be difficult to sustain interest among a large portion of the grassroots.
Finally, one of the volunteers told me that she felt a bit uncomfortable with the entire idea of a grassroots organization in support of the President. It might be better, she said, to stick to volunteering for organizations that are working with the poor or with people who need direct assistance. People need to be able to oppose the President as well, she noted. This is actually a very serious objection to the idea of OFA and it needs to be addressed more fully. I don’t think it’s right, in the end, because there’s no difference in principle between volunteering for a cause or to directly help people in need versus volunteering for a public official who is committed to the same goals. The fact that Barack Obama is the President shouldn’t make a difference. If the goal is universal health care, a greener energy policy, more jobs, better jobs, and increased opportunity for all American children, then any kind of activism that helps achieve these goals is worthwhile. That also doesn’t mean his supporters should not oppose him when he does the wrong thing. Otherwise, we’d truly become cultish Obama-bots. Fortunately, there has always been much more inra-party dissent among progressives than those of Malkin’s ilk, so we need not worry much about sheep-like followers here. The woman I spoke to with the pin is a good example.
The Pledge Project Canvass was a decent start, but it revealed some major problems that need to be examined. The lasting impression for me is just how novel this kind of organizing is. It wasn’t intentional, but it was appropriate to have an event on new media when we were getting ready to participate in a kind of politics that hasn’t existed in America before. Whether this new politics is sustainable will depend on whether OFA can make it exciting, interesting, and connect it to real outcomes. The battle for health care reform may be just the right fit for the new politics.
UPDATE: Major media outlets, including the Washington Post and CNN, are reporting the results of the Pledge Project Canvass today (Sunday). It turns out there were over 1,000 canvasses Saturday: more than 1,200 canvasses, actually.
