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Mitch Stewart: Hi everyone.  My name is Mitch Stewart.  I'm the battleground states director here at Obama for America.  I wanted to provide you all with a briefing, basically an update on what our grassroots organization is doing out in the states. 

Now while we're still 531 days before the election, there's a lot of work that has to get done.  What we've learned is that organization building takes a long time.  Relationship building takes a long time.  The other thing that we all know is in September and October we'll see a sea of volunteers come into our offices.  We know that we have to have an infrastructure in place, and organization in place, to properly channel that energy.

And now what we've learned is the best way to do that is to have what we call a team model, where we empower local volunteers to take leadership roles in our campaign, make decisions for our campaign in their neighborhood or in their community based off of both the work that they've done leading up to the election, but also because of their experience.  But we have a lot of work to do.

A couple of things that we're working on right now, a couple of programs that we're working on right now is the Summer Organizer Program.  It's an eight-week program starting the first week in June, will end the second week in August, where they're going to be going out to communities across this country registering voters, going door to door, helping us build this team model, this organization within communities and neighborhoods across the country.  And you know they really make up both the philosophy but also the heart and soul of this campaign.

The second program that we're working on is what we call the one-on-one program.  And that's allowing volunteers right now to reconnect with folks who've been active in 2007 or 2008 but haven't been very active in the last two years.  Basically what we're asking is our volunteers to sit down with these supporters, talk through what the campaign should look like in their local community, and frankly have a dialogue, hear from them about what they want to see, what they want to hear and then once that's done is getting that supporter, getting that previous volunteer to make a commitment, basically saying I'm in, I'm here to support the President in this campaign.

Finally we have what what we call grassroots planning sessions happening across the country.  We've had 49 to date and I think we have another 142 planned over the coming weeks, but basically that allows our volunteers to sit down with other volunteers and map out what our campaign should look like in 2011 in their town, in their neighborhood.

I appreciate your time.  If you have not yet clicked on to volunteer, please do so.  It's incredibly important, and we'll have either a staffer or a volunteer get back to you and get you involved, get you engaged in the campaign.  Thank you for your time.

 

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Notes: This video builds on the April 25 one from campaign manager Jim Messina.  Here's the e-mail that linked to the video.

[name] --

You've been hearing from Messina about our overall strategy and what's at stake in this election. My job as the Battleground States Director is to report back to you on the nuts and bolts of what we're building in communities across the country.

I want to take you through it in detail, so you can understand how to get involved and shape our organization where you live.

We're going to build it from the ground up. And we're going to use this summer to roll out our team model and organizing structure through grassroots planning sessions in homes and by videoconference.

Here's the full briefing -- watch it here, and if you're willing to get involved now and be part of the organization in your community, let me know:

[video]

Some of these planning sessions are already under way, and we're starting to get some feedback. I got one email from a supporter named Steven, who hadn't been involved at all since 2008, and only went to his grassroots planning session on a whim.

As a result, he's all-in -- he wants want to get involved fast, and also has all sorts of new ideas for how he can apply his skills better this time and which friends and colleagues he can reach out to about joining the campaign.

The subject line of his email about the meeting was "Inspiring night."

This kind of organization-building isn't just an electoral strategy -- it's a reflection of what we believe in as voters and citizens. It's a commitment to the kind of politics that begins in backyards and living rooms and empowers every single American to get involved and organize for the changes they want to see.

At a moment when it feels like the only thing that separates our opponents is how quickly they want to end Medicare as we know it, winning this way -- driven locally, powered by the grassroots -- will be a rebuke to those in Washington who still think that people across the country don't have a seat at the table where decisions are made.

I'm asking you to pull up a chair. If you're willing to get involved now, at this crucial point in the campaign, let me know here:

http://my.barackobama.com/Grassroots-Update

Mitch

Mitch Stewart
Battleground States Director
Obama for America

Copyright © 2011 Eric M. Appleman/Democracy in Action.