Grassroots Army
This blog entry is part of a Fall 2008 blogging exchange between American University in Cairo and Stanford University's Online Activism class. To read all the entries, follow this thread; be sure read the earliest entries first.
We are commenting on the Obama campaign website (www.barackobama.com) for our PWR 2 class, The Rhetoric of Online Activism.
Obama’s history as a community organizer has been the target of frequent mockery from the McCain campaign, with VP candidate Sarah Palin joking that “being a small town mayor is like being a community organizer, except you have actual responsibilities.” Despite the overwhelming cheers from the Republican Convention crowd, Obama has used his experience as a grassroots organizer to further the interests of to his campaign. Using his website as his primary tool, he has established a strong base of local volunteers eager to canvass, fundraise, and hold community events to support his campaign.
As soon as visitors access his website, they are immediately confronted by a barage of images imploring them to take direct action in support of the Obama campaign. The opening page of the website asks visitors to “Join the Movement” by supplying their email address and zip code, allowing the Obama campaign to contact them (often multiple times a day), informing supporters on the daily news of the campaign, offering ways to get involved,and, of course, asking for money.
If visitors choose to skip the signup and go directly to the main page, they are immediately greeted by links and graphics telling them how they can get involved in the campaign. Perhaps the most interesting of these is a tab titled “Neighbor to Neighbor, which if clicked on links to a page where visitors are told how they can make an impact for Obama by volunteering in battleground states.
The site says,“Talking directly to voters is the most important way you can help win this election for Barack Obama.” Importantly, the emphasis is on what “you,” a campaign outsider, can do to influence the election. It stresses the importance of everyday Americans in effecting change and empowers ordinary citizens to take some ownership of the campaign. This is where Obama’s background as a community organizer clearly manifests itself in a positive way for the campaign. The strength of the Obama campaign’s volunteer network shows that his years spent as a grassroots organizer was time well-spent.
Mark Garret
Susanna Sheehan