We're all so interconnected, even those with the greatest foresight can't really predict what effect their actions will have on others. And no story you tell can put any kind of finality or cap on that fact, because it will go on being the case until the sun burns us all up (or we do), or God calls us home, or maybe forever. Who knows?
This is my first post after years of reading here on DKos: it's a post about beautifying DC schools in our city for the Obama campaign. But it's also a post about an idea, and it's a post about people.
Also, it's a post about almost getting sunstroke in the DC summer sun, about seeing your best friend pummel a stone wall with a sledgehammer and watching a Lutheran reverend go crazy with power tools... and ultimately it's about watching those interconnections weave their way through people you know and people you don't.
This past Saturday, the Obama campaign officially launched "Generation Obama," the outreach project aimed at the generation X+Y demographic. I had recently gotten involved on a volunteer basis with the campaign and remembered a post I'd seen here on DKos that stuck in my brain. Devilstower was commenting on the ungodly sums being racked up by Democratic candidates via Internet fundraising. But there was something bigger there, too:
I'd like to propose that Democratic candidates for president demonstrate their boldness by taking a different approach to their campaign spending this year. I want them to give it away. Not all of it, mind you. Just 10%.
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The candidates can use their choice of charity to demonstrate their concerns. These kind of dollars could make a huge difference in funding for widespread problems like autism, or make possible cures for an "orphan" disease. A candidate might fund a "Meals on Wheels" program for a year, or after school programs for at-risk youth, or free clinics for those lacking health care. Heck, they could put their names across the back of every Little Leaguer in New Hampshire and it would still be better than paying millions for an ad firm to create another vacuous flag-waving sixty second spot and millions more to run it in the Tivo-bypassed wastelands.
In addition to putting out the funds, candidates should send out the volunteers. I was not at the first Dean organizing meeting in my area, but I was there for the second. Within a couple of months, we went from a half-dozen people meeting in someone's living room, to more than a hundred people crammed into a banquet hall. If you were involved in a similar group, I don't have to tell you that the level of enthusiasm, the idea that we were going to change things was heady. But almost from the beginning, there was another note that circulated among all the hope and fervor -- frustration. One person after another came through the door with one question on their lips, "what can I do?"
This really rang a bell for me. Not only was it hilarious, and right, but it reminded me something Obama had hinted at on several occasions. "I need your help," he'd said, when announcing his candidacy. And we all know the famous "Audacity of Hope" speech -- the child learning to read, the elderly grandmother in need of medication. There was something to this.
So I proposed we kick off the DC Generation Obama event with a community service push. And it just so happened that that very same day, DC public schools were holding their annual beautification day, a volunteer-driven event aimed at getting all the city's schools, from all socioeconomic and ethnic neighborhoods, into shape in time for the students to come back.
Up and down, from the volunteer staff to the local grassroots, there was a warm reaction to the idea. It seemed almost like a natural extension of what we were all involved in the political process for in the first place.
So we got volunteers. At first there were just a few, mostly my friends and the really dedicated DC for Obama folks like Adam Barr. Then, all of a sudden, the list grew. Young Lawyers for Obama sent a handful. Northern Virginians for Obama sent some more. Local twentysomethings and a housewife or two sent me emails asking to be put on the list.
Keep in mind, getting even 10 or 15 people out of bed early on a Saturday morning in the blazing DC-in-August sun "because they believe in it" is no small task. By the Friday night beforehand, we were up around 50 volunteers. It wasn't entirely surprising, but it was exciting.
What I didn't expect were the reactions -- from total strangers, from organizers, from volunteers themselves. The fact that there was this "thing" -- this idea out there -- where people were connecting the hope they drew from the campaign to the hope they had for their community, was totally transformative.
I'll talk about the event in tomorrow's post. But needless to say there are now 40 or 50 Washingtonians with a whole new perspective on what a campaign can do with its resources.