This link has been bookmarked by 57 people . It was first bookmarked on 11 Oct 2008, by stan mag.
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29 May 15
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The Ohio campaign is attempting to build teams in 1,231 campaign-defined "neighborhoods," each covering eight to ten precincts. They are targeting virtually every inhabited square mile of the state. The campaign claimed to have teams in 65% of neighborhoods when I visited in early September. That's risen to 85% coverage at press time—and they are shooting for 100%. In contrast, the Kerry campaign effectively wrote off rural counties, and completely abandoned them in the final few weeks of the campaign in a last minute all-in shift to the cities.
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Jeremy Bird, the Ohio general election director and one of the driving forces behind making teams a national strategy, said, "We decided in terms of timeline that [our organizers] would not be measured by the amount of voter contacts they made in the summer—but instead by the number of volunteers that they were recruiting, training and testing. It was much more an infrastructure focus. So there would be no calls from Chicago saying, 'Why haven't you made more calls?!' Instead there would be calls saying, 'Where are your neighborhood team volunteers?' Or, if the numbers seemed high, 'Are they real?' It was a whole shift in mentality that was really, really good."
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"We had a whole month where, on our nightly calls with headquarters, we did not report our voter contact numbers. We only reported our leadership building. I definitely stayed on top of what our voter contact numbers looked like. But headquarters wasn't paying attention to how many voters we registered or how many doors we knocked that day—they were paying attention to how many one-on-one meetings we had, house meetings, neighborhood team leaders recruited, how many people we had convinced to come to this wonderful training in Columbus that we had. Yes, it was definitely scary to see how big our persuasion universe was and know that our first priority was not to just be tearing through that."
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Christen said, "I feel like people are committing more time this election because there's a community thing going on, and they're part of something that's local and social. But we're also more effective at harnessing volunteers because the teams do a lot of the training and debriefing themselves—it scales well. Everyone who goes out canvassing comes back with at least one story of someone they impacted. The team leaders are trained to give people time to tell those stories, and so everyone gets a sense of progress and they learn from each other how to be more effective next time."
That's a totally different picture than what I saw in scores of Kerry offices in 2004: crowds of canvassers receiving minimal instruction before being sent to an unfamiliar neighborhood and rarely getting the chance to debrief with others as a group.
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Jackie wrote: "When we identify a volunteer or a potential volunteer we always hold a one on one meeting. Movements aren't built on individual people—they are built on relationships. Then we ask our volunteers to make deeper commitments. We coach new volunteers and facilitate the process for folks who are old hat at this stuff through an organizing activity. Usually the organizing activity is hosting a house meeting but it can be hosting a community meeting or a faith forum or recruiting seven plus new volunteers to take the first step and come to our office. Once someone has succeeded at an organizing activity we ask them to try their hand at leading a voter contact activity. Mostly we are interested in how well they train fellow volunteers to make phone calls or knock on doors. Training is a huge part of quality control and we need our leaders to be good trainers. If a potential leader is a successful trainer then we meet with them again to ask them to take that next step and become a Team Coordinator or Team Leader. If at any moment in this process a volunteer isn't successful our organizers are trained to spend time coaching them through getting better. We are an inclusive team here and our goal is always to make people better."
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Ryan had his own wisdom on team building to contribute: "Don't pass the baton to someone until you get someone else running at your speed. It's important for organizers and team leaders to find that point where a new leader is running at the same speed—mentally, physically, time-wise, interest level, desire to win—all those things. You find that point, and then all of a sudden it hits you: they're running neck and neck with you and that's the time that you pass it off and move on to building the next new team."
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When Patrick was talking to me, a handful of team members were buzzing around the rally asking every student to sign in. The sign in sheet gave every person the option of indicating interest in becoming a leader. Free food would be served at the end of the rally, but you needed a little green sticker to get some. Of course, you got a sticker by signing in.
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Marashal Ganz, who is an advisor to the national field campaign, and one of the main architects of the team model, said he's been waiting 40 years for it.
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A well-run organizing campaign is the most beautiful thing in the world: people know what they're working for; they have little successes everyday; they prepare for problems ahead of time and have great fun attacking them when they happen. Everyone is in a state of constant euphoria. In the end, win or lose, you have built something that gives you hope for the future—hope that humanity can, as it turns out, work cooperatively towards a better future and succeed.
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Through the meeting, Jennifer had inspired and commanded the room of 50 new volunteers on top of her five team members who already had roles. Her seven year old daughter had been staring up at her with calm awe the whole time. Good organizing changes the world. In fact, it's what humanity is made out of. Every one of us is the product of centuries upon centuries of the struggle between good organizing and bad organizing. Barack Obama—through the most incredible, random, beautiful, twists of history—has brought good organizing back. God bless him and the army of volunteer and paid organizers who are making it real.
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28 Nov 12
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26 Nov 12
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19 Nov 12
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Let me help you be a community organizer.' And then they go out and they get people to be their coordinators
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"It's about empowering.
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Well hey, here's how to be a community organizer. Let me help you be a community organizer.' And then they go out and they get people to be their coordinators. And then we tell those new coordinators, 'Build yourself a team and be organizers too.' There's no end to it.
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Inside the Obama campaign, almost without anyone noticing, an insurgent generation of organizers has built the Progressive movement a brand new and potentially durable people's organization, in a dozen states, rooted at the neighborhood level.
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The architects and builders of the Obama field campaign, on the other hand, have undogmatically mixed timeless traditions and discipline of good organizing with new technologies of decentralization and self-organization
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18 Nov 12
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As team leader, Glenna would report results to Ryan a couple times per week and would be held accountable for meeting specific goals by certain deadlines.
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That training was expensive, but Jeremy said, "We spent more money than they ever wanted us to. But training is the most important thing. So [in our field budget] I'll cut whatever you want—but having all of our organizers together and training them for a full weekend.
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14 Nov 12
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07 Feb 12
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13 Apr 11
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headquarters wasn't paying attention to how many voters we registered or how many doors we knocked that day—they were paying attention to how many one-on-one meetings we had, house meetings, neighborhood team leaders recruited, how many people we had convinced to come to this wonderful training in Columbus that we had
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I feel like people are committing more time this election because there's a community thing going on, and they're part of something that's local and social
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He elaborated: "So many people lose elections because of the places you can't get to. This program allows Glenna's team, with just two or three weeks of VAN training to know how to cut turf, to know how to pull lists and put canvass packets together. So all that type of work that eats up so much time for organizers can be handled at the local level—at her place
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it was painfully clear that an enormous amount of power is unlocked by this incredibly simple act of distributing different roles to people who actually feel comfortable taking them on.
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"Rather than say we have X leadership roles to fill, we're creating leadership roles for as many leaders as we have. So we have people in charge of whatever they ARE. We are saying, 'What's your social network?' We say, 'OK, you're The Balcony Coordinator—your job is to go party at Balcony [a local bar] every weekend—like you do anyways—but now wear a Barack Obama button—and bring voter reg forms.' Or, 'Hey, you work at Brunos—when you go out on deliveries—as long as it's OK with your boss—ask people if they're registered. You're going to be our, um, pizza coordinator.' "
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Barack Obama—through the most incredible, random, beautiful, twists of history—has brought good organizing back
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18 Oct 09
J. DunnInside the Obama campaign, almost without anyone noticing, an insurgent generation of organizers has built the Progressive movement a brand new and potentially durable people's organization, in a dozen states, rooted at the neighborhood level.
culture culture.web history history.american history.currentevents ideas ideas.futurism ideas.leadership ideas.liberalism ideas.networks ideas.networks.netroots ideas.networks.social ideas.paradigmshifts ideas.polisci politics politics.activism politics.a
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02 Sep 09
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08 May 09
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The New Organizers, What's really behind Obama's ground game
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Training is a huge part of quality control and we need our leaders to be good trainers. If a potential leader is a successful trainer then we meet with them again to ask them to take that next step and become a Team Coordinator or Team Leader. If at any moment in this process a volunteer isn't successful our organizers are trained to spend time coaching them through getting better. We are an inclusive team here and our goal is always to make people better."
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07 Apr 09
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06 Mar 09
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After visiting my fourth or fifth team, it was painfully clear that an enormous amount of power is unlocked by this incredibly simple act of distributing different roles to people who actually feel comfortable taking them on.
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shape roles around individual personalities
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help you be a community organizer.'
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I felt like we should have been leaders, but that never happened. They said, 'Do your call lists, knock on doors—let us do the thinking.'
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the campaign is actually taking two big risks: first they are risking everything on the effectiveness of masses of volunteers, then they are risking everything again by relying on volunteer teams to lead those masses. What if teams was just a bunch of hippy nonsense? What if it turned out there just weren't that many unpaid activists capable of running high-quality canvasses?
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Respect. Empower. Include.
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"When we identify a volunteer or a potential volunteer we always hold a one on one meeting. Movements aren't built on individual people—they are built on relationships. Then we ask our volunteers to make deeper commitments. We coach new volunteers and facilitate the process for folks who are old hat at this stuff through an organizing activity. Usually the organizing activity is hosting a house meeting but it can be hosting a community meeting or a faith forum or recruiting seven plus new volunteers to take the first step and come to our office. Once someone has succeeded at an organizing activity we ask them to try their hand at leading a voter contact activity. Mostly we are interested in how well they train fellow volunteers to make phone calls or knock on doors. Training is a huge part of quality control and we need our leaders to be good trainers. If a potential leader is a successful trainer then we meet with them again to ask them to take that next step and become a Team Coordinator or Team Leader. If at any moment in this process a volunteer isn't successful our organizers are trained to spend time coaching them through getting better. We are an inclusive team here and our goal is always to make people better."
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26 Dec 08
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18 Nov 08
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07 Nov 08
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Jim McGeeA case study of the principles and approach behind the ground level volunteer organization in the Obama campaign. Some good insights into how to take full advantage of a motivated volunteer force with the right organizing principles and the right supporti
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02 Nov 08
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31 Oct 08
Andy Kaplan-MyrthHuffington Post article on Obama's grass-roots organizing
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20 Oct 08
Joe CrawfordIncredible organizational and empowerment techniques contained therein. They take work, but seem to have worked well.
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17 Oct 08
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16 Oct 08
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15 Oct 08
Rene Clausen Nielsen"Inside the Obama campaign, almost without anyone noticing, an insurgent generation of organizers has built the Progressive movement a brand new and potentially durable people's organization, in a dozen states, rooted at the neighborhood level."
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14 Oct 08
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13 Oct 08
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11 Oct 08
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10 Oct 08
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09 Oct 08
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Christopher RiceFascinating and detailed look at the new form of ground operation Obama has built.
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08 Oct 08
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Serena BlaizThe incredible organizing that has taken place this year inside Obama's campaign—and also here and there in Clinton's—needs to be thoroughly understood and celebrated.
organizing obama democrats democracy progressive politics elections netroots grassroots
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