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Obama's Movement

Proposals for Post-election Activities

Recommendations to the National Office

In reference to tomorrow's Chicago Summit reported on by the LA Times, following are five key principles underlying the recommendations concerning the shape of the post-campaign organization that I’ve previously presented .

1. We need an inspiring long-term vision. Drawing upon Barack’s language, I offer a possible mission statement. It reads:To transform the nation and help implement the goals of the Obama campaign by:
   1. Reclaiming the meaning of citizenship.
   2. Mobilizing millions of voices to call for meaningful change.
   3. And restoring our sense of common purpose, based on these core moral principles:
      1. Stewardship.
      2. Service to others.
      3. Personal responsibility.
      4. Shared sacrifice.
      5. And a fair shot for all.
2. Though methods should be established to enable others to participate in other ways, the primary foundation of the organization should be small teams that meet in one another’s homes (which enable everyone to have a full voice).
3. The national office should encourage members of those teams to consciously nurture supportive friendships (rather than merely treat each other as instruments).
4. The national office should establish a mechanism to enable those teams who wish to do so to select representatives to relatively small councils of fellow representatives who would communicate horizontally with one another in a deliberate, thoughtful manner to share reports on their work, ask questions, provide mutual support, and develop recommendations to send upward toward the national office through a layer of such councils (e.g., town/city, intra-state regions, state, regional, national) – so that the national office would pay more attention to recommendations from the national council than they ever could to tens of thousands of recommendations from individual members.
5. Given that: 1) most individuals have limited time for activism; 2) efforts to persuade Congress to take action on a particular issue often need to be undertaken in a timely manner, and; 3) to be effective such efforts need to involve massive numbers of individuals acting in unison at more or less the same time, the national office needs to issue occasional, perhaps monthly, appeals to all Americans to communicate the same message at the same time to their Congresspersons, Senators, and/or the President.
6. The national office should try to establish a national coalition that would participate in these (monthly?) actions.

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