Citizen Power

Getting active and getting involved is always good, especially now. We just elected a new president to make changes in this country and end the war in Iraq. This is what Barack Obama campaigned on. But the campaign is over, and I’m still getting pleas for money from the Obama “campaign”. Most of these emails all contain “donate” buttons, and some of them say the money goes to the DNC. Well, I’m not a Democrat, I’m an independent, so I don’t see the value of donating to a political party I often don’t approve of and often don’t agree with. Other pleas for money contain the information that these donations go to the “transition team”. To my knowledge, the Obama campaign raised over $700 million dollars, so he shoud be awash in money right now, right? Apparently not. The “transition team” — whoever exactly that is — needs money. I have seen stories online that say the Obama campaign staff is getting big bonuses, so I don’t want to contribute to that either. These people are more well-paid than I’ll ever be!

Now, David Plouffe wants me to host a house party. David Plouffe is the campaign manager of the organization known as “Obama for America.” You know, the one that raised over $700 million dollars. Now, I got this information to have a house party on December 9th, and he wants me to hold this party this weekend. That’s kind of short notice, David!

The purpose of this house party, according to Plouffe, is to talk about the future of the “movement” (he does not specify what this movement is) and to “identify some ways to get involved in your community.” We know about change.gov, which allows us to get involved and give Obama our ideas, so I wonder: what is the real purpose of these house meetings? I visited the website to find out.

The website contains David’s squinty video (see above) and this statement: “On December 13th and 14th, supporters all across the country are coming together to reflect on this monumental journey and plan on how they can bring change to both Washington and their own communities.” There is a button there labeled “Learn More”. This is like a treasure hunt! I click the button and it leads to . . . .

. . . . a page which links to yet another page that helps the “host” create this “event”. The “Create Your Own Event” page has you sign up and gives you the direction to choose a “type” of event. These are all pretty good ideas, but I still wonder what they want us to do. (Why doesn’t Obama just ask us to do things once he becomes president?) You can choose to hold a meeting in your home, community center, coffee shop or where ever, to “discuss the issues” and “plan outreach”. This sounds like a continuation of the campaign. There are more links to follow, again. I click, on “host a house meeting”. Another page, more ideas. It’s not that these are bad ideas, but I’m wondering how this will help Obama. I click on the tab labeled “During” (the meeting). This leads to yet another more detailed list of how to host a meeting and what topics to cover, even how long to spend on each topic. Again, these are good ideas. I’m still not sure how this will help the presidency and in my viewpoint, he should be deciding there the country’s biggest priorities are. This almost seems like busy-work to keep us feeling like we’re actually involved. But then, I’m a cynic.

At the end, the instructions tell us to collect “sign-in sheets”. OK, so they are collecting names and addresses, no doubt to send mail to in the future.

What is the purpose of all this? I suspect it’s merely to gather more names and addresses and phone numbers. The DNC makes good use of mailing lists, if you consider getting reams of junk mail from a political party a good use of trees. I downloaded one of the “sign in sheets” and yes, they want your name, your email address, your phone number, your address, and finally, a tiny box within which to put your “issue”. I BET they want your issue!

They got what they wanted in the first five boxes.

At this point, they have you involved and you are more likely to think you are making a difference and therefore, you are more likely to donate to the “transition team”, the DNC, or whoever is looking for money that particular week.
Congratulations, you are not all that involved in the new presidency, but your wallet is!

Can’t we just use Change.gov for submitting our ideas? That’s what I’ve been using it for.

It still makes me wonder why the people who are part of Obama’s transition team need to raise money during the transition. I have heard many other people ask this question aloud too — what do they need money now for? I don’t recall this raising money post-election ever having been done exactly this way before. When John Kerry “lost” the election in 2004, he raised nearly $12 million for his legal defense team that was going to fight to get him the presidency if the numbers looked weird that year. They did, but Kerry dropped out anyway within 24 hours, and no one saw any part of his presidency, his transition team, or their money again. I was one of those donors at that time, and I swore I’d never contribute to a presidential candidate in their last two weeks again. Now that Obama has actually won the presidency, he is still collecting our money — to give to people who are already wealthy.

The biggest value of these house meetings seems to be the connections and networking you would get locally to make changes in your state and community. On that level, I can see that they would be very useful! But the question is, who has time to attend meetings, more than they already do.

In my view, if people have money throw around, they should be giving it to independent media, citizen journalists, and environmental organizations. Not to mention public schools and food shelves!

But, if I weren’t a cynic, I might even hold a house meeting this weekend.