Tonight I participated in the 45 minute Organizing For America teleconference. Here's my raw notes from the meeting, which don't include various introductory parts about Mitch and Jeremy:
Run By:
- Mitch Stuart, director of OFA
- Jeremy Bird, deputy director
Meeting:
- Poll for best call day
- First call for OFA since founding
- Real change only comes if Americans are pushing, Washington won't change itself without a lot of pushing from the general populace
- This is important to Obama
- Grass roots was the most important part of the election
- Need people getting out to build support in the community
- Get people talking about what's going on in Washington and the changes we need
- Ask everyone to get involved
- Only going to succeed if American are pushing for change both short and long term
Principles:
- If you build it, they will come (more infrastructure (offices etc) in local community)
- Have a house party/meeting host in each state
- Central person to bounce ideas and get information from
- Training is incredibly helpful
- Two way street
- How to more effectively organize (this particularly is a two way street)
- Issue and message training
- Feedback really matters: people are driving the agenda, tactics such as communication as well as strategy such as who should reach out to
- Will always ask for feedback and use it to drive the organization
- Need the support of the local leaders
- Provide leaders with all information possible both as a thankyou and to help drive change
- Want to have conference calls once a month
This weeks house meetings:
- Americans need to know how the stimulus will effect their lives
- Need to know that help is on the way
- Ideally parties hosted on Saturday but some are on Sunday or later in the week as people have time
- Go online and sign up, on barackobama.com site
- Aim to push the conversation out of Washington
- House party guide for running the party
- On Thursday morning, will email out final houseparty kit (including signup forms and video)
- Submit questions online
- Link will have the ability to either download or directly show the video
- Invite 50 people in your social network personally, expect 15-20 people or so to show up
- Packet will include next steps we need to take
