LA Philanthropy Watch

I heard Mary Jane Stevenson relate her story of self at the Camp Obama I attended in fall 2008.  (Zack Exley, “Stories and Numbers – a Closer Look at Camp Obama,” Huffington Post, August 29, 2007, explains how Marshall Ganz introduced stories of self at early Camp Obamas.)   The stories of self volunteers told described their calling – what had brought them to the Obama campaign.  At the beginning of my March 30 interview with her, I asked her to tell her story for LA Philanthropy Watch readers.  Here it is:

MJS: When I moved to LA, it was during the trial of the four police officers who were charged with beating Rodney King.  It was … my entree into LA.  And I was really taken with that trial.  I didn’t know anything about the politics or the racial divisions here in LA.  And I just remember on the day of the verdict being so surprised that the four officers were found not guilty of beating this guy … half to death even though it was caught on camera.

So I just remember at that time thinking: Wow, this is my entrance to this new place that I call home.  And being swept up into – What can people do to help with these types of injustices?  Because I didn’t realize there was so much racial injustice with the way that the police department acted in Los Angeles – and … the divisions.

So I went on and became a reporter.  I worked for a cable channel called Court TV and I covered a lot of criminal and civil trials that showed similar injustices and all kinds of things that I felt like by being a reporter I was helping to make change in the world – although I never quite felt like anything was changing.

So then fast forward to ten or twelve years later:  I had twins, became a stay at home mom, and three years after that – I’ve always been interested in politics, especially in the Democratic Party.  Because when I was growing up in Denver, Colorado, my uncle was the lieutenant governor of Colorado.  We used to do canvassing for him and stuff like that when I was a kid.
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And I just remember wondering who was going to get the Democratic nod.  Then I heard on “Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me” on NPR an interview with then-Senator Obama and I was just totally taken by him.  And I thought he was so authentic – and just something totally different than the candidates that I had been looking at up until then.

And starting that day I became very interested – and bought his books, started reading all his stuff and listening to webcasts that he did.  And this is when nobody really knew him or thought he had a chance of becoming president.  So I decided to volunteer for him.  And there wasn’t much of an organization at all in Los Angeles.  I went to a meeting where there were four people. And then the first thing that I signed onto was a canvas in South LA.  You know, the same place that had broken into rioting and uprising after the verdict of these four police officers who were found not guilty.

And – back nearing the time of the rioting, I had actually gone to South LA to do a newspaper story.  And I just remember it being so torn apart and such a sad community.  And when I went back to do this canvass for Senator Obama, it was like a whole different place.  And people were so excited to be talking about this fresh face that was coming into politics – even though at the time people were still very pro-Hillary Clinton in that neighborhood.  But they were really excited to talk about Obama.  To talk about, like I said, this fresh outlook on politics.

And so it was a really exciting day.  And we had over a hundred people canvassing and talking about Senator Obama.  And I just thought to myself at the time, boy, this is a completely different place.  And he sort of changed the world as I know it – just by virtue of the fact of running for president.  Imagine what he would do if he won.

So I jumped in full force into the campaign.  I started volunteering full-time, went to trainings – eventually became the field director for the general election.  And I just remember talking to my husband and saying, I’m so worried that if he doesn’t win – all the people who are coming out – out of the woodwork to get involved again – either people for the first time getting involved or for the first time in 40 years finally getting back involved in politics.  If he doesn’t win, all those people are going to go back into their corners.  And it’s going to be sort of this dark period again in American politics.

And my husband said, I can think of a worse scenario.  And that is if he wins and he doesn’t succeed as a president.

And that really struck me.  And that’s why I have stayed with this.  And accepted the job as state director for Organizing for America because – you know, it was one thing to get him elected.  And as hard as that was – that’s now – we can now look at that as the easy part.  And the much harder part is to help him govern.  And he needs all of us to help him govern.  Because, just like he couldn’t win the election alone, I don’t think he can govern without the same kind of grassroots effort that went into his campaign.

(Photo of Mary Jane Stevenson by Mara Evry.)

Previous posts in this series:

• Fourth post: OFA-CA: “On the Inside…Working with the President”
• Third post: How OFA-California’s Role Evolved in the First Year
• Second post: OFA-CA Reaching Out to First Time Voters
• First post: 2010 Agenda for Organizing for America – California

Fourth post in a series based on an interview with the California State Director of Organizing for America (OFA-CA).

I get an email alert every morning with a summary of links, reports, and discussions of a group of highly committed progressives active in electoral politics.  These messages, during several months as health care reform legislation became bogged down and watered down, were often critical of OFA.  I mention this criticism from the left to Mary Jane Stevenson.

MJS: It’s okay though.  I mean, it’s good for us to be second-guessed.  It keeps us on our toes.  But sometimes people make a sport of second-guessing OFA.  And eventually you have to keep your focus on your work.  We’re too busy working on stuff to get into that whole brawl.

Later I return to the topic of the daily email messages and the discontent that had been evident for several months, marveling that Ms. Stevenson seems above the fray.

MJS: They’re not OFA. … I had to just remove myself from those groups, because I can’t – if I’m in the fray, I don’t have time to do the work.

I persist, reading her the first lines of a number of critical posts – mostly from December 2009, when the Senate still hadn’t passed the bill and many Democrats (especially activists committed to health care reform) were demoralized and disheartened by the whole spectacle of securing the votes of 60 Senators just to bring the legislation to the floor.  Some comments suggested that (because of the compromises) it might be better to defeat the bill at that stage.

MJS: I know.  I know.  You know, I really think it’s okay.  … I can’t let that kind of stuff get to me because there’s all sorts of ways that you move – that you have a movement.  Right?

PG: Yes.

MJS: Some of us have to be on the inside.  And I’m sort of on the inside, because we’re working with the President.  And then some have to be on the outside – pushing, you know, pushing the President’s agenda further to the left.

And you know, they did.  And people pushed Dianne Feinstein further to the left and she accepted the public option and that was great.  And I feel like there’s room for all of us.  But when it comes down to it, you know, supporting getting 32 million insured, over doing nothing – that actually turned out to be the agenda of almost all of the Democratic or progressive groups in the end.

I think they really thought and threatened to kill the bill and did all that stuff, up until – and even Congresspeople did.  In California, even some of our Congressional members did. But when push came to shove and it was time to vote for reform or no reform, I think everybody jumped on – most people who are affiliated with the Democratic agenda – whether they consider themselves more progressive than the President or not, you know, got on board with reform over no reform.

… That’s what makes me happy at the end of the day.  And all this sort of bickering in between – you know, if you’re in my position, you do just have to … focus and do the work that you know that – You know, I can only control so much.  And I just have to focus on the work that I can control.  And I can’t control all of that other bickering on the outside.

PG: Uh-huh.

MJS: But you know all of that, I call it bickering, all of that … conversation is possibly moving people further to the left.  And that’s okay.

And once – if there’s somebody who has an agenda that’s further to the left of the President, they should continue to push the President on that agenda.  And if that becomes the President’s agenda, then it’s going to be my job to support that agenda.  Because I support the President’s agenda.

PG: Okay… my guess is, most of OFA-California volunteers – the ones who are most active – are further left than the members of the U.S. Congress.

MSJ: Yeah.  Well, you know, it’s hard to be an activist and then, sort of, become a part of the governing body.

PG: Right.

MSJ: You know, historically, those two things haven’t meshed all that well.  And that’s why OFA is so exciting.  Because it’s allowing that to happen.  In a way that at first might take people out of their comfort zones.  But so far has been very successful.  I think.

PG: … I’m just going to assume that you’re probably to the left of the typical Congressman or Senator.  You haven’t been uncomfortable with that because you’re pragmatic enough to realize, ‘Hey, we’re just going to do what we can and make the best deal possible.  I’m going to try to make it work.’

MSJ: … I made a decision that I worked so hard to get this President elected, that I’m not going to let my work stop there.  And I’m going to work hard to do what I can do, you know, in my limited ability to help make the change that voted for and worked so hard for actually happen.  And I feel like, in this position that I’m in, I can do that a little bit.

PG: Uh-huh.

MSJ:  And if I can do that a little bit and someone else next to me can do that a little bit, you know, again: This is what change looks like.  It’s just a little at a time: a little here and a little there.  Then I feel like, you know – I feel good at the end of the day.

[May 6 update: I revised my introductory comments to make this post consistent with an established protocol of which I had been unaware.  None of Ms. Stevenson's responses (or my comments during the interview) have been changed.]

Next post: Story of Self: The First Tool of a Campaign Organizer

(Photo of the Los Angeles office of Organizing for America-California.)

Previous posts in this series:

• Third post: How OFA-California’s Role Evolved in the First Year
• Second post: OFA-CA Reaching Out to First Time Voters
• First post: 2010 Agenda for Organizing for America – California

This is the third post based my March 30 interview with Mary Jane Stevenson, Director of Organizing for America – California.  The first two posts looked at OFA’s 2010 agenda; this one looks back at the first year+ (roughly January 2009 through March 2010) of OFA’s existence.

Following the election of Barack Obama, there was much discussion about how to sustain the grassroots energy and vitality of his presidential campaign as he took office.  In January 2009, President Obama announced the formation of Organizing for America, which was placed within the Democratic National Committee.  The focus of this group dedicated to field organizing was not on re-electing the president (that will come later), so much as on helping him enact his agenda.

I asked Mary Jane Stevenson to tell me how OFA’s role had developed over the preceding 14 months.

MJS: We have staff in 50 states now.  This is something that’s never been done before.  It’s a grassroots organization that is basically helping the candidate that we got elected to govern – by getting people involved not just in the electorate, but actually in the governing of their country.

We had thousands of people visiting their Congressional offices during August.  That’s never happened before.  This is what change looks like.  People actually being involved in the governing of their country – and knowing that they have more power than just the power at the ballot box.  But that they have power to make their wishes heard at their Congressional offices and at their Senate offices.  And to have an actual organization that helps people to find that footing is – like I said, it’s never been done before.

And the fact that we – what we did over the past year was build the kind of operation that could make hundreds of thousands of phone calls into Congress to fight for health insurance reform.

And there are many Congressional members who have said that it wouldn’t have happened without the help of Organizing for America.

At this stage, I noted my experience as a former campaign volunteer who continued to receive OFA and OFA-CA email messages.  At OFA’s prompting, I visited Dianne Feinstein’s office in November 2009 to drop off a letter in support of health care reform legislation in the Senate – and with this annoyingly ‘centrist’ Senator, I thought it was probably important to do so.  In a March 11 email from Mitch Stewart I was also asked to call Diane Watson’s office (she’s my Member of Congress) to say “thank you.”  Finally, perhaps a week before the House vote this spring on the Senate bill, I was contacted about Loretta Sanchez.  I asked Ms. Stevenson why someone from outside her Congressional District would be asked to call Representative Sanchez.

MJS: First of all, we didn’t ask people to call Loretta Sanchez from outside her district.  We never asked people to do that.  We asked people to call people inside her district.

PG: I see …

MJS: We never ask people outside of any Congressional person’s district to call that Congressperson.  That is an absolute non-practice of OFA.

PG: So you were trying then to get people to make calls from her district …?

MJS: Yeah, we were trying to get people to call into her district – right?  And that’s – if you go back and look at the email, that’s what it would have said – to call people in her district to ask them to call her and let her know that they support health insurance reform.

[This is correct: A look back at that March 20 email message, which was from Mary Jane Stevenson, began with these words: "We need one more California Member of Congress  to commit to voting YES on health insurance reform. Please make calls NOW to constituents in Congressional District 47, home of Loretta Sanchez. Rep. Sanchez voted Yes for health reform last fall. Tell people to let her know she MUST support it NOW."]

And … Loretta Sanchez’s staff, in fact, Loretta Sanchez herself – and we’re having a rally at her office with her on Thursday – you know, they said they really appreciated the support from her constituents, showing that they support this bill.

She had some problems with the bill.  She wanted the public option.  She wanted to know that her constituents supported this reform, even if it didn’t include the public option – that this was a better choice than no reform at all.

So … we called people in her district and asked them to make sure that if they support her and they support health insurance reform to let her know – because she needed that kind of support in order to make her vote public.
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PG: I see.… What was her percentage of the vote last time, do you have any idea?  I assume she’s in a pretty Democratic district.

MJS: She is the only Democrat in Orange County on the House of Representatives.

PG: Okay.

MJS: I don’t know her exact percentage – I am actually working on our state plan right now and should have that number.  You know … no seat is safe in Congress – this year especially.  Generally when a party is in power that party loses at least 20 seats in the House of Representatives.  And we’re not taking anything for granted in California.

Next post: OFA-CA: “On the Inside…Working with the President.”

(Image of Mitch Stewart, National Director of Organizing for America, speaking at May 3, 2010 strategy session in Washington, DC.)

Previous posts in this series:

• Second post: OFA-CA Reaching Out to First Time Voters
• First post: 2010 Agenda for Organizing for America – California

My first post (”2010 Agenda for Organizing for America-California“) featuring my interview with Mary Jane Stevenson, California Director of Organizing for America, concluded with her comment that “throughout California we’ll be supporting the statewide races.”  In this excerpt, she explains how.

MJS: And the way that we’re going to do it is by reaching out to the first-time voters of 2008.  Those are all the voters that you were talking to on the phones when you were volunteering in our office.  So that includes people who – well, you were talking to people out of the state.  I take that back.   We didn’t talk to California voters during the general election. But we are going to engage the people who registered to vote after the 2006 election and voted for the first time in their lives in the presidential election of 2008.  We feel like we’re a unique operation to be engaging these people.

We’re found through research that we’ve done – polling and focus groups and stuff like that – that these people really respond to the Obama presidency.  They want him to succeed as President.

And so we’re going to be reaching out to them and talking about how the President needs allies in Congress and in Governorships and in the Senate to make sure that his agenda continues to flourish.  And we need them to go to the polls.  So it’s going to be really exciting because we’re turning first-time voters into regular voters.  And if you can get them in the habit of voting, you’re changing the electorate.

And in addition to that, we’re going to be registering new voters throughout California – and changing the face of the electorate that way.

PG: Now you mentioned statewide races. Lt. Governor –

MJS: I’m talking about Governor, – So what we’re doing is – we’re taking the first-time ’08 voters across the state, and taking that off the plates of all of the elections.

PG: I see.

MJS: And saying, we will reach out – There’s about – the targeted ones that we have, that we know they were Obama supporters – there’s one point two five million (1.25 million) or something like that.  We are going to try –

PG: In California?

MJS: Mm-hmm.

PG: Okay.

MJS: … We’re working with all the different campaigns.  They know that we’re doing this and we’re working closely with them.  And we’re saying, we’ll take this off your plates and you guys can reach out to the base and to the people who vote in the mid-terms and make sure they get to the polls.  We’ll make sure these new people get to the polls.

… If they can get their percentage up to 48%, then we can probably make the difference with the new, with the first-time voters of ’08.  So that’s our plan.

And  we’re going to need a lot of help to do it.

PG: Now, ACORN isn’t going to be in the business of registering voters anymore.  Is there another group?  I know Project Vote was involved with ACORN last year.  Is there another group that you think is going to step up and make that a campaign in California?

MJS: Well, we’re going to be registering voters. It’s going to be a big priority – We’re having a voter registration kick-off on May 8.  We’ll be registering voters.  I know the Democratic Party’s going to be registering voters.  We’re going to work with other allies … in labor, Democratic Party, party clubs, all of those types of things to do some really robust voter registration throughout the state.

So those will be our focus – the new voters in ’08 and then the new voters of 2010.

And we’re really going to focus on the youth as well: reaching out to colleges and high schools and all that good stuff.

PG: I assume the agenda’s set nationally.  So what California’s doing is very much like what’s happening in other places….

MJS: Well, the plan to reach out to ’08 voters is a national plan.  We’re doing that all over the country.  How we do it in California is up to me.  And it’s up to our – So we’re doing these strategy sessions.  We have, like, 80 strategy sessions that are planned.  And we’re going into communities and saying, you know, we want to reach out to the ’08 voters.  What’s the best way to do that in your community?

And then we’d listen to what the communities say.  And, you know, some people have really important local races that they want to focus on.  And so we talk about those races and talk about how reaching the ’08 voters can help in those races.  And how different voter registration projects can help in those races.

So it’s a national plan, which is implemented more at the statewide level and the grassroots level.

Here’s a link to the video of President Obama announcing Vote 2010 earlier this week.

Next post in this series: How OFA-California’s Role Evolved in the First Year.

First post in this series: 2010 Agenda for Organizing for America – California.

“On January 17, 2009 … the Obama for America Campaign was converted into Organizing for America (OFA), and incorporated as an arm of the Democratic National Committee.” (Ari Melber, “Year One of Organizing for America: The Permanent Field Campaign in a Digital Age,” techPresident Special Report, January 2010.)

What does “the permanent field campaign” look like in California?   Just what is OFA-California up to?

To find the answer, on March 30 I sat down with Mary Jane Stevenson, Director of Organizing for America-California.  Ms. Stevenson was the California State Field Director of the Obama for America Campaign leading up to the November 4, 2008 general election.  (Full disclosure: I was a campaign volunteer from the end of summer through Election Day; Mary Jane Stevenson had an office just down the hall from my nook near the phone bank.  While she took no notice of me, one of hundreds of volunteers at the Motor Avenue headquarters every day, it was impossible to miss her – a tall redhead – striding through the office.)

I will feature a number of posts over the next week or two based on our interview.  In this post, Ms. Stevenson describes the structure of OFA-California and the races the organization has already begun to focus on.

MJS: Well, okay.  So what we do is – we’re organizing the same way we did during the campaign.  We have a team structure.  … On staff, we have regional field directors and they are in charge of recruiting, training and managing community organizers.

Our community organizers are volunteers, who commit to 20 hours a week.  We have roughly 40 community organizers right now in California.  Those community organizers in theory, and we’re still building up to this, would manage 5 teams of volunteers each – throughout the state.

We have volunteers in every corner of the state of California – literally … from Ukiah to El Centro, I am willing to say, and everywhere in between.  We have either prospective teams or teams already built or community organizers who are reaching out and recruiting team members.

So, what we do generally is – we train these volunteer teams.  We train our community organizers and we get them involved in – basically last year it was issue-based advocacy, mostly health insurance reform: getting people to interact with their members of Congress, getting people to interact with other citizens, talking about the health insurance reform bills, educating people about them, and publicly talking to Congress about supporting the President’s plan on health insurance reform.

So most of last year was spent doing that….

This year we will be using these teams to do some more issue advocacy – probably financial regulatory reform.  Some education pieces might come up.…

You know, the President’s really going to be focused on jobs.  And so anything that we can do as a grassroots organization to help push that jobs agenda we will be working on.

But we will also be working on electoral advocacy: working very hard on making sure that Democrats are getting seats in California – including Senator Boxer, Jerry Brown for Governor.  There are 5 really important Congressional districts that are in play:

Congressional District 11, which is Jerry McNerney, He is a Democrat whose seat might be a little bit vulnerable.  So we’re going to be making sure we support that race.

In CD 3 – which is here, Sacramento area – Dan Lundgren is running.  He’s the Congressperson there now.  He’s a Republican.  His seat is extremely vulnerable.  His opponent is a guy named Ami Bera, who’s a great fund raiser.  He’s a doctor, a really great Democratic candidate…

CDs 44 and 45. [She gets up and points to a map on the wall]  Here’s 45; here’s 44.  So, Riverside and then up Palm Springs area.  These are both held by Republicans – Ken Calvert and Mary Bono Mack.  Both of those seats are vulnerable.  We have 2 really good Democratic candidates.  We’re going to be making sure that we’re building good teams in those areas to support those races.

And then Loretta Sanchez in 47.  We’re going to be making sure our teams there are really strong to support that race.

And then of course throughout California we’ll be supporting the statewide races.

In my next post in this series I will look how OFA-California will be supporting the statewide races: OFA-CA Reaching Out to First Time Voters of 2008.

[Photo of Mary Jane Stevenson at her desk.]

The headline and subhead (in a story by Janet Hook and Noam N. Levey) in this morning’s print edition of the Los Angeles Times: “It’s now up to Obama, Pelosi: The healthcare overhaul may rest on his leadership and her power of persuasion.”  That sounds right.

As the President has begun to campaign on behalf of health care reform, and the legislation is under threat from both the left and right flanks of Congressional Democrats, a number of progressive commentators have begun to rally ’round the reform flag.

Last Friday at TPM Café Theda Skocpol (Harvard sociologist and political scientist, whose scholarly focus has included the nonprofit and voluntary sector) called on Democrats of all stripes to get on board with health care reform while the window of opportunity to pass it is still open.

“At the risk of irritating people on the left, this is NOT the moment for ‘progressives’ to demand a public option. Nor is it the moment for either pro-choice feminists or pro-life Democrats to derail reform.”

I emphatically agree with her that there is a critical need now to turn attention to getting the job done (and that her abrasive tone will irritate).

At Mother Jones Kevin Drum links to Dr. Skocpol and suggests, “The current bill isn’t perfect, but the combination of community rating at the national level with an individual mandate is likely to be the beginning of the end for private health insurance as we know it.”

At The New Republic Jonathan Chait thinks we’re suffering from myopia about the historical nature of this legislation. He objects to Jane Hamsher on the left, John McCain on the right, and the editorial board of the Washington Post in the middle. “It’s natural to focus on improving a piece of legislation whose details remain in flux. The problem comes when the desire to improve becomes the sole focus for evaluating it. Nearly any of the great political advances in American history, viewed from ground level, looked like a pastiche of grubby compromises and half measures. At some point the imperative is to take the broader view.”  [Editor's note: typo corrected.]

At Think Progress Matt Yglesias notes that (FireDogLake aside) the left is solidly on board with reform: MoveOn.org, SEIU, AFSME, the NAACP, LLUAC, and the liberal columnists at both the New York Times and Washington Post have all endorsed passage of the legislation.

As President Obama campaigns – with an eye on wavering Members of Congress, can Speaker Pelosi round up the votes in the House?  We’ll know soon.

(Image from February rally for health care reform in front of Los Angeles offices of Anthem Blue Cross.)