Organizing for America (OFA) and the Community Action Network (CAN)

There has been a strange phenomenon occurring on the MyBarackObama.com website. The good thing about the website is it has a lot of tools to make organizing events and groups extremely easy. The bad thing is that this has also bred a lot of competition for power within the structure.

The ongoing feud between people who want to join the official Organizing for America or OFA organization, run by the Obama Administration's representatives, or the Community Action Network CAN, run by some very enterprising Obama supporters, is a good example.

Essentially, a tempest in a teapot has begun because the two organizers of the nationwide CAN, which one can join through MyBarackObama.com, Lisa Lindo and Paul Currier, have been, well, organized and enterprising. And lots of people who have worked on the campaign as volunteers, paid or otherwise, are upset.

So, for example, some emails by a woman who worked on the campaign named Laura Velkei, has been protesting vociferously that these people are charlatans, they don't represent the Obama Administration, their agenda should not be heeded, and that, by the way, you can unsubscribe to the CAN emails at the bottom of this email or on the MyBarackObama.com website, seems like professional jealousy. Though the emails were entitled innocuously, "In the spirit of openness" or some such thing, that was clearly disingenuous and what she wanted to do was discredit these people.

There were very restrained responses by Paul Currier and Lisa Lindo, who did say that this was approved by David Plouffe, even if they aren't the official organizing arm of the Administration,
which included that they wanted to organize and help, people are still protesting from all over the country.

It is decidedly strange. After all, if one doesn't want to join, don't. If one does not want to embark upon the campaign suggested by Mr. Currier or Ms. Lindo, don't. Do what Ms. Velkei herself should clearly do: unsubscribe. Do something else constructive with your time.

It is puzzling. The struggle for power and ascendancy, even in this supposedly equalizing forum, is mind-boggling. Actually, it is quite similar to the campaign itself: headed by a person who is clearly passionate about his principles and then supported, especially at the very lowest rungs, by people elbowing each other out of the way as they jockey for power.

How Will Obama Engage His Volunteers

It's a simple question. With a very complicated answer. After all, many of his volunteers are his contemporaries and older, not the Gen-Yers and younger who can move to D.C. because they don't yet have families.

And if this new administration is to truly represent the people, and it is built by those same people, then how can these same people all converge upon D.C.? Will that not make them representative of D.C., and a very self-selecting cohort at that, rather than representative of the place from whence they come? Because after all, if you live most of the time in D.C., it's rather easy to forget what happens in, say, a small town in Virginia like Appomattox Court House. Or in Manchester, New Hampshire.

Of course, that is what Congress is for, to represent the needs of its constituents. But not in the Executive branch, those people represent their constituents in the Legislative Branch. If Obama truly wants to involve these new volunteers, he needs to do it in a more substantive way than merely by making a "digital suggestion box" available to people across the country. He needs to establish an infrastructure that can incorporate people around the country into a system that will utilize their unique skills, visions to contribute to the shape of this new Administration within the Executive Branch of government.