The OFA Diet: One Week of Steady Volunteer Advocacy
BY Nancy Scola | Thursday, March 11 2010
Credit: Organizing for AmericaOrganizing for America is focusing energy on what it's calling its "Final March for Reform," a week-long health-care push that gives volunteers discrete, structured tasks for each particular day. It's like the Jenny Craig meal plan of political advocacy. OFA has gotten knocked for giving its grassroots allies unstrategic* work to do that doesn't have much of a direct impact on what's happening in Washington (though that's the work's stated aim). It's a criticism that can probably be leveled at the opening stages of the Final March program too (see below). But the program probably deserves extra points for making non-campaign advocacy manageable. Like Jenny Craig.
Day one's task is to "spread the facts":
If you haven't already, please download the fliers and posters below, and make sure everyone in your community sees the facts about reform.
The mission for day two (a.k.a. today) is to call Congress:
Everything we've worked for depends on winning this upcoming vote in the House of Representatives, and it's going to be very, very close. There's no time to spare. Call today and make it clear that Americans support reform
What's up for days three through seven? Stay tuned.
Meanwhile, the White House is keeping up its dead-simple approach to giving health care traction, a media push it's calling "By the Numbers." Each day brings a new figure, disseminate through blog, Facebook, and Twitter. Today's number? 625, as in the number of people, according to ThinkProgress, who lost their health insurance each and every day of 2009.
*Unstrategic isn't actually a word, it seems. But it works there, no?