Cairns Blog on Obama

ObamaWorks Launched

Beth from San Francisco, CA — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 17:10:44 EST

A few days ago, I posted an excerpt from an editorial by two Yale students (David Manners-Weber and Justin Kosslyn) who, inspired by the Obama campaign rhetoric, put out a challenge to their peers to take action in their own neighborhoods. (Incidentally, there's a new site called The Point, which is designed to help people issue challenges, to others. I'll do X if 10 other people do Y.)

The Yale article intrigued Princeton graduate student Arvind Murugan, who wrote about the article on a few listservs which were, in turn, read by Philadelphia area residents who started collaborating through emails and impromptu meetings to launch a grassroots movement dubbed Obama Works. ObamaWorks is a means to create visible public service projects and inspire collective action.

On March 1, Philly residents will hold a "Philly Sweep" and it is expected that other neighborhood clean-ups will take place around NYU and Yale, too. As one of the authors wrote me, "I couldn't be more thrilled to let you know that, with the help of people I've never even met, words are getting turned into action."

Manners-Weber goes on to say in his email about my earlier blog posting: "In your post, you wrote of "people collaborating to improve their own social conditions." Well it looks like folks are starting to do just that - within 24 hours, 100 people signed up to participate in the "Obama Philly Sweep," where volunteers will be cleaning up the streets around the Graduate Hospital area."

Here is their press release:

Philadelphia, March 1, 2008... Within only 24 hours, 100 supporters of Barack Obama signed up for the first Obama Philly Sweep, which kicks off at 2227 Christian St. in the Graduate Hospital area on Saturday, March 1st, at 1:00 pm. Street cleaning tops the agenda for this community service event - signaling the start of a new breed of political campaign that brings volunteers together around a constructive purpose. The Obama Philly Sweep is the first local event hosted by Obama Works, a grassroots organization currently taking shape in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and New Jersey. Obama Works intends to implement Barack Obama’s message of change through community service projects. According to organizer Amirah Naim, the group is “working to transcend our differences and transform our country.”

Obama Works will sponsor additional clean-up efforts in other Philadelphia neighborhoods prior to March 24th, the voter registration deadline for the Pennsylvania primary election. After the primary, Obama Works will continue to develop and organize a variety of community service outreach projects.

Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things

Beth from San Francisco, CA — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 22:10:56 EST

""Hope is the bedrock of this nation. The belief that our destiny will not be written for us but by us....by all those men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is, who have the courage to remake the world as it should be," said Obama in his Iowa victory speech on January 3, 2008. "Together ordinary people can do extraordinary things."

Justin Kosslyn, a junior in Ezra Stiles College at Yale University and David Manners-Weber a sophomore in Yale's Calhoun College take the message to heart. In an article the Yale Daily News, Kosslyn and Manners-Weber imagine that, instead of simply getting out the vote, young people follow Obama's exhortation to make change happen in the world.

We have three examples of what such projects might look like. The first is simple: neighborhood cleanup. Residents driving through town squares and walking through local parks would find groups of enthusiastic Obama volunteers picking up cigarette butts and candy wrappers. The volunteers on this project, and all such projects, would be decked out in Obama T-shirts, stickers and buttons."

Our second sample service project is a 5K run through Main Street to raise money for a local charity. In Connecticut, our state, we could support Operation Fuel, which subsidizes heating for low-income families. Obama has spoken about the impact of high fuel prices on working families, so this type of service complements Obama’s message.

Finally, Obama volunteers could work through local YMCAs to further a myriad of small-scale local projects. These range from re-tiling the bathroom in a local women’s shelter to distributing children’s books from the local book bank. Though often less visible than traditional campaigning, these efforts have the potential to generate tremendous word-of-mouth credibility and support for Obama.

They have the right idea. Unlike the Republican leaders who after 9/11 called for us to shop as a sign of patriotism, these Yale students, inspired by Obama's leadership, talk of becoming engaged and involved. They do not ask what Washington will do for them nor do they contentedly envision their role as passively voting every fourth year. These are the young people who want to make change happen for themselves in their own communities. Working together, people have the ability to do what they cannot do alone and the projects they envision imagine people collaborating to improve their own social conditions. Obama's message, strongly echoed in the Tech Plan's new vision for government, puts inspired students like Kosslyn and Manners-Weber at the center of the solution.

Freedom to Tinker Covers Obama Tech Plan

Beth from San Francisco, CA — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 16:47:59 EST

Princeton Computer Science Professor, Ed Felten, Director of Princeton's Center for InfoTech Policy and renowned blogger on Internet freedoms has an extended posting and commentary (http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1241) on "Obama's Digital Policy." The blog states: "A quick glance at the sites of other candidates suggests that Obama is an outlier -- none of the other major players has gone into anywhere near the level of detail that he has in their official campaign output."

"My favorite part of the document, by far, is the section on government transparency."

Obama Unveils Unprecedented Tech Plan

Beth from San Francisco, CA — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 16:24:23 EST

This is a reposting of a blog posting from Novembr 14, 2007 from the Cairns Blog, setting out why the Obama Tech Plan is such an important statement about the vision of democracy.

George Bernard Shaw once wrote, “All professions are conspiracies against the laity,” and nowhere is this more the case than in a democracy where we organize government as the closed domain of governmental professionals.

And what’s the result? Because we assume that government alone possesses the expertise to make public-policy decisions, the way we “do politics” is broken.