Organizing for America | Another Mama for Obama: Dayton Mamas for Obama

Dayton Mamas for Obama

By Andi - Jul 1st, 2008 at 1:28 am EDT

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Tags: kids, moms, organizing, volunteering

I've had a busy week. The drop spindle that I talked about in my last post came out of the kiln yesterday afternoon. I put it together as quickly as I could and started spinning a red-white-and blue blend of wools at my knitting group last night. This afternoon, I met with a fellow/volunteer coordinator at the Dayton Obama Headquarters about my ideas about getting moms more involved with the campaign. Below is a copy of a post that I wrote in the forums at 937moms.com.

As the mother of a very active 3 1/2 year old, I have found that I'm not as able to get involved in political or activist organizations as I was before my daughter was born. I miss that connection and I feel, in some ways, like I'm cheating my daughter by not being more involved. I believe that it is important for our children to see us working toward the things that we believe in, the things that are closest to our hearts.

I'm in the process of working with the volunteer organizers at Obama Campaign Headquarters to set up some non-traditional volunteer sessions for people interested in working on the campaign. I have seen in quite a few forums that women (men, too) whose primary responsibility is caring for at-home children are often unable to commit to volunteer work because of child-care concerns. It doesn't matter how important a cause is, if you can't take your children it's almost impossible to work for your dreams.

In keeping with Obama's efforts to run a different type of campaign, I want to see a group of women who are often excluded from the political process united by it. The goal is to schedule child-friendly volunteer shifts. These shifts would involve a play area in a room adjacent to the volunteer work space where the children would be able to play, pursue arts & crafts, have story time, etc while moms made phone bank calls and did other volunteer tasks essential to the campaign.

We've scheduled a strategy meeting to discuss ideas and give everyone a chance to meet. It is our hope that interested moms will bring their children with them to this strategy meeting so that we can get a sense of how to structure these sessions and how best to ensure the safety and happiness of the children while giving moms a chance to get directly involved in the grass roots effort to assist Obama in winning this election.

If this works, Dayton could be a proving ground for this model. Other local campaigns in other cities in other key states would be able to look at the work that we do together and find ways to adopt similar plans of their own. Women, and particularly mothers, could be involved in the political process in a very meaningful and significant way.

Please contact me if you think that you'd be interested in getting involved. I really believe that we moms have been largely ignored in the political process of the past decade (or more) and that this is a real opportunity to make our presence mean something.

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