Obama's online grass-roots effort continues to grow

They got their man elected president on Nov. 4. But for Pat Okerlund and thousands of other Barack Obama volunteers across the nation, the job is far from finished.

Obama, who built an extraordinary grass-roots organization en route to his historic victory, isn't folding it up now that the election is over. In a still-evolving effort that insiders have dubbed "Obama 2.0," he is remaking his army of campaign volunteers into an ongoing nationwide support group to help him achieve his agenda for change.

Okerlund is one of more than 4,000 Obama volunteers who hosted "Change Is Coming" meetings in their homes and other gathering places the weekend of Dec. 13-14.

Okerlund's was one of the largest. About 50 people jammed a meeting room at the Chesapeake Central Library on Dec. 13. There were about 15 such gatherings, most attracting five to 10 people, around South Hampton Roads.

The idea is to continue capitalizing on the enthusiasm of Obama's grass-roots supporters.

"Everybody's still excited," Okerlund said. "We all worked real hard to get him elected, and we want to continue to help out any way we can."

The Obama campaign provided logistical support for the meetings, using its list of 13 million e-mail addresses to recruit the hosts. They were invited to sign up on the campaign Web site, where details of the meetings were posted.

Hosts were sent a how-to packet, including a DVD, and were invited to listen in on a nationwide conference call with organizers a few days before the meetings.

It's a new kind of political undertaking, one that is taking shape outside the existing party structure. Obama organizers admit to making it up as they go along.

"It's a work in progress, and will be, I think, for the next several years, because this hasn't really been done before," said Marshall Ganz, a Harvard professor and veteran organizer who has been an adviser to the Obama campaign.

The way the campaign built its organization from the ground up, fueled by the power of the Internet, gave it legs that most campaigns in the past have lacked, Ganz said.

"So now there's a bunch of people out there, and they're associating with each other," he said. "And to the extent that they're associating with each other, they're able to become an organized movement."

There were four goals for the meetings:

- Direct two-way communication. Attendees were encouraged to identify the issues of most concern to them, which the hosts relayed back to Obama's Chicago headquarters. Among the issues most frequently cited at the local meetings were the economy, health care, education, the environment, alternative energy and the Iraq war.

- Establishment of a lobbying network. Participants began familiarizing themselves with their congressional representatives so they'll be ready to contact them to urge support for Obama's legislative agenda.

- Electoral organizing. Obama supporters were encouraged to seek out and support like-minded state and local candidates - and even to consider running for office themselves.

- Civic engagement. In perhaps the campaign's most unusual initiative, supporters are being encouraged to become involved in community service projects in their localities.

"President-elect Obama wants us to hold a service event to celebrate his inauguration," Okerlund said. "I think it's really neat, instead of having big parties and balls and dances, that we do something to help people. That's what he's all about."

Okerlund's group decided to target homelessness in Hampton Roads. Participants will put together care packages of scarves, gloves, socks, toiletries and food and pass them out to local homeless people during a nationwide count of the homeless during the last week of January.

Another unique feature of the effort, Ganz said, is that it's a movement of people brought together around shared values rather than any one particular issue.

"People found themselves working with people that they never expected to be working with," he said. "It's a pretty eclectic kind of scene. That's a great strength, because it brought people out of their issue silos."

In many cases, participants in the meetings had never met each other before. Organizers said most gatherings were racially, economically and socially diverse.

Among the nine people who showed up at Staci Walton's home in Suffolk, for instance, were a doctor, a college teacher, an artist, a computer technician, a waitress and a laid-off construction worker.

One woman plans to bring a Republican friend to the next meeting, Walton said, reflecting the Obama campaign's intent to reach across party lines.

"In order to get things to happen, it's very apparent that it can't be Republican or Democrat," Walton said. "If we really want to see health care reform, we have to work together. If we want education reform, we have to work together. It can't be Bush-bashing. It has to be forward-thinking."

The evolving Obama organization is noteworthy for its direct, headquarters-to-grass-roots structure, bypassing the Democratic Party apparatus.

"I think it's a good strategy," said Richard Cranwell, Virginia Democratic chairman. "Look, this country has got to deal with some very, very significant issues, probably more difficult issues than any president has ever faced. Clearly, that's going to require a very ambitious agenda that's going to have to move through Congress."

Does opening up the process to Republicans give him any heartburn?

"Absolutely not," Cranwell said. "It may be a garden for converts, who knows?"

Bill Sizemore, (757) 446-2276, bill.sizemore@pilotonline.com