Recap on Cleveland Obama Organizing Meeting

Yesterday I took a break on trying to surmount (read=gave up) the steadily growing pile of law reading I need to make up to attend the Cleveland Obama organizational meeting at the Civic/New Spirit Church on Mayfield. It's been a long time since I've been in a room that had so much energy.

As the program started to begin I scanned the great hall and counted over 400 folks in attendance. We had people from the Heights, Cleveland proper, Brecksville, East Cleveand, even folks from as far west as Bay Village. It wasn't too bad for a late Sunday afternoon. And to top things off, the campaign announced that it was the third straight day they'd been able to turn out over 300 folks for an event (there was a rally on Friday and Ted Kennedy was in the area Saturday morning). 

Finally Dino Martino, the Northeast Ohio regional director, took the stage and shouted out to the crowd, "Fired up?" And of course, without missing a beat, the shouted in unison back "Ready to Go!" It really is kind of electrifying  

Later today another frontpager will be filling folks in on the differences between the Clinton campaign and Team Obama as far as organizing strategies go, so I'll leave that discussion to him. However, I do think it's worth noting now that Northeast Ohio has a slew of field organizers championing up different regions around NEO. My region, Cleveland Wards 7, 8, & 9, have an organizer, Matt Kirksten, assigned just to it - as do many other comparably sized locales.

Sabre Pierce Scott and others spoke to the crowd to get us all stirred up to fight for Barack, but the keynote was the impressive Congressman John Conyers of Michigan. One of the stalwarts of the civil rights front in Congress, Conyers gave a particularly pognant call to arms to folks in the room, assuring us that we're on the right side of history on this one. The good Congressman described how Barack approached him prior to his announcement with this "idea he was throwing around, subject to the approval of his own wife." Conyers said that at the time he was excited, and thought Obama would make a strong candidate, run a respectable campaign, and ultimately settle back in the Senate after the powers that be in the party ultimately settled on someone else on the nomination. And here's where the Congressman got quietly pleased as he said something that struck me, "no one told us that 2008 was going to be the year." No one told us that we'd be on the verge of so much change, so much historic change, now.

We are on the verge of real change. And I'm looking forward to continuing to be a part of that change. Folks who aren't on the right side of history can continue to call this movement shallow, or belittle what the change actually means, but I think all of us working towards 2008 know that "change" means a little something different to us all.

As for me, I'm looking forward to a lot of things, a change in our political discourse and merit system largely at the front of all that. But I can't tell you what "change" my neighbors looking to. That's up to him.

Clevelanders, I'll have more specifics on the NEO campaign later today, but if you want to get invovled give the temporary office a call. For the next few days Team Obama will be headquartered out of SEIU's Local 3 office at 1368 East 34th St. Canvases and phonebanks start today. Head on in.