Organizing for America | Misty Fowler's Blog: Utah For Obama Meeting a Wonderful Success!

Utah For Obama Meeting a Wonderful Success!

By Misty F - Feb 18th, 2007 at 4:16 am EST

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Tags: Meeting, organizing, Photos, planning, Utah

Earlier today, Utah for Obama had a very successful first meeting. I am so incredibly excited about this! Even though we've only been planning this since Tuesday, and even though our location was changed less than 24 hours prior to the event, we had an awesome turnout, and I believe our group is going to work together very well to accomplish great things. 59 people responded, saying they would attend. I didn't take a headcount, but our sign-in sheet had 30 lines filled out, and at least a few of those lines represented more than one person. To me, that kind of attendance signals a huge movement in Utah!

I think that given the circumstance of standing around for an hour in a public park, the attendance was at a perfect level. I think people could hear each other most of the time, even me with my small voice. And since there wasn't much in the way of formal organization, I think we managed really well to all be able to speak our mind, without it getting out of hand. We had a very diverse group, as well. At least one woman (I think) was Native American, several were LDS, one worked in the media, one spoke Spanish, another Filipino, and yet another is fluent in sign language. Many different specialties and social backgrounds were represented.

We only had one negative moment, which I am addressing for a reason. Midway through our discussion, a woman approached who was very upset, yelling at us, because we were all white (so she thought) and there was no representation of the black community. I won't go too deep into the things she said, but this could have easily gotten out of hand. Since I was close to her, and she was yelling at our group, and it was so tempting to get upset at her, and shout back, trying to prove her wrong. Proving her accusations wrong would have been easy, but I tried to calm her down, and our group was so good about not shouting back, and I am grateful, because that could have gotten so ugly! Thankfully, Park Security came over, and he was able to guide her away peacefully, so we continued our discussion. I'm very grateful to the security guard for his assistance.

This brings up to points. First, we do need to make sure our group reaches out to the community, whether it be black, Hispanic, etc, to get everyone involved. As a group, we discussed this, and I think that we'll do a good job of it. Secondly, when this occurred, I was grateful that we didn't have any media show up. It would be great to get our group known in the media, but I think this woman's anger would have been the story that was printed. I'm not sure how we could go about handling this type of situation in the future, other than winging it. We were lucky for the security guard's intervention. If there is anyone among us who has experience in dealing with this type of confrontation, it would be good to know, so that if they are in attendance, we can allow them to handle it. So, if you have that experience, and would feel comfortable handling this type of situation in the future, please let me know.

I had prepared a handout today, but when I stopped to get copies, the copy place was closed. I planned to go to the Kinko's across from the park, but never made it over there after feeding my boys. I'll be publishing the document, because I think it'll be an easy Obama reference for people to keep handy.

One of the first things I brought up was the FEC Citizen's Guide. I think that it's very important for each of us to understand the rules laid out there. Until we have serious discussion that indicates otherwise, my personal feeling is that our group should not try to fundraise for itself. While a group fund would be useful, I think we should be directing contributions towards Obama's campaign. Given the tight laws around campaign financing, I think we're better off that way. And as long as I can, within FEC guidelines, purchase a "Utah for Obama" banner for our group, I don't mind dishing out for those types of expenses occasionally. The topic is definitely open for discussion, though. Even if we don't fundraise for our group, anyone doing things like buying shirts to sell at events or hosting fundraising parties really should read these guidelines.

I wish I'd had a chance to take better notes from today, but here are the other issues we touched on:

Media Relations
It turns out that among our group is at least one qualified media expert, who works in the industry. Brad Forsythe will be listed on our website as the official media contact, and anyone interested in helping out in that area can contact him.

Utah Guide to Obama/LDS Connection
I'm not entirely certain who is going to head this effort up, but I think it was probably Bob Aagard. Bob is the admin for the Mormons for Obama group. I know that he has agreed to help those of us who do not necessarily have insider's viewpoints of LDS belief, so that we can talk effectively to our LDS friends and family, and apply Barack's views to the basics of the LDS belief. If anyone hasn't seen it yet, Ed Lalone has posted a really good blog about why his LDS faith is the root of his stance against the Iraq War. So, I think we have some really good resources here, and it tells me that many LDS people will easily see Barack Obama as the best candidate.

I think that we also agreed to put together a guide of sorts, that shows Obama's stance on issues that affect Utahns in General. I don't recall if Bob is heading this effort up, or someone else is. I'm hoping for emails from the persons wanting to help out with this effort will clear that subject up.

Press Release
We agreed as a group that drafting a press release is a very good idea. I am thinking that Gail might be the person who agreed to take this task on, though there were several writers among us, who agreed to work collaboratively on the effort. I'm sure I'll receive emails from those people soon.

Events
There were many good suggestions for events, and volunteers for many of them. Some are community events, such as parades, others were events we will host.

Book Groups
Jacquie (Jackie?) and Allie (I'm so sorry if I've chopped your names up!) volunteered for a book group. They would like to head up an effort to get people to read Obama's books, and want to have a group at a bookstore, such as Barnes & Noble. I really like this idea, and I want to mention again that if anyone wants to borrow a set of the books from me, I'd be happy to give them to you, as long as you promise to pass them on to other people when you're done, so we can really get these books circulating in Utah. I hope Jacquie and Allie will post their events on the web site once they are scheduled. If anyone else wants to host events such as book groups at bookstores, I think there are enough of them around the valley that they won't overlap, so feel free to coordinate and get this idea going!

Meet-n-Greets
These can take on various forms. Personally, I'm planning to host a weekly event at a coffee shop, where people can come hang out, play a game (Apples to Apples!) and have a cup of java. My event will be for both the supporters who want to socialize, and the general public who want information. Others might do things such as neighborhood BBQs or house parties with an Obama theme. I think we should share ideas on this, so that we can each maximize the potential of these events, but in the end, these can be held by each of us, however often we want to, without needing any group decisions.

Parades/Festivals
Again, I didn't get names for this. I know that there were a couple different people who wanted to do this, and Janet has emailed me about the Utah Pride Festival. A couple others wanted to arrange something with the St Patrick's Day parade, and Janet has offered to help with that one, as well. I hope each of you will keep an eye out for local events, such as the Avenues Street Fair, that we might be able to get involved in. Please offer suggestions on these, I think they'll be very effective for us. And we'll need a lot of help for each of them, so as our interest in any specific event is announced, let the person heading up the event know how you're willing to help (setup, takedown, manning the booth, marching in the parade, etc). It was mentioned that we might sell Obama t-shirts in the booths, and we need to check out the FEC guidelines, and if that is ok, we need to see how we'd fund something like that. It would get expensive quick!

Web Presence
Our group owns UtahForObama.org. Soon we'll have content up, but for now, it redirects to our site here on my.BarackObama.com. I'll have more on that later.

TJ volunteered to set up a group on MySpace for Utah For Obama. If any of you use that site, please check it out after it's announced, and let's spread the word. MySpace is definitely effective at that. And if anyone else uses any sort of social networking site, please let us know if you create a profile or group promoting Utah for Obama.

Community Outreach
We have among us somone who speaks Spanish, another who speaks Filipino, and another who is a Sign Language interpreter. We can definitely use these resources to reach out to other community groups. I'm not certain that an outreach to ethnic groups was assigned. If it was, or if you're willing to help out in this, please email me.

If anyone has an objection to name badges, please speak up. I'll be printing up badges for us to wear in plastic pin-on holders. They're not required for anyone, but I would find them helpful, and others mentioned that they liked the idea.

We agreed that a bi-weekly meeting seems to be a good idea, so we'll continue with that idea.

We also agreed that we'd like to have a goal of eventually getting Barack Obama to visit Utah on the campaign trail. I would say that acheiving that goal would be a huge success for our group. I can't say I expect this, but I think it will be really good to work toward making that happen.

I'm sure there were many other specific ideas covered, but I don't have a full listing at this time. I did ask certain people to get in touch with me in relation to specific assignments that they'd volunteered for, so I hope that anything that I did miss here will come back to me through those emails. (For those of you who haven't yet gotten back to me, please email me when you can, even if it's just to say you volunteered for the assignment, regardless of how far you've gotten into planning or executing it.)

As soon as I have an assignment list, I will put that together and make it public with first names. In the meantime, if you want to get in touch with someone working on a specific topic, please email me and I'll convey contact information both ways.

Also, if you've given me contact information, and would prefer that I don't share it for any reason, please let me know. I am generally a very concerned with privacy, so I'm not going to post this type of information on our website, or hand it out to the whole group. But, as an example, if you're working on parades, and someone else wants to help out, I would probably pass contact information on. I definitely don't want to violate boundaries with this, so if you have concerns, please let me know.

I don't remember now who took my camera to take photos of our group, but I'd like to say "thanks", and give credit, so let me know. The photos are up on our flickr group. A short video (with no sound) can be seen on YouTube My camera takes horrid video, so I am not sure why I'm throwing the video on there, but it's there for anyone that wants it!

In closing, I want to thank each and every one of you that showed up today and helped make this meeting such a success. I hope I'm not being too cheesy here, but I really look forward to working with all of you, because I think you are going to be what makes this work. None of us can do this alone, but I think that we have a really good thing going and will be able to work together on this common cause, and I also think we're going to have a lot of fun doing it!

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