Morning News: ‘South L.A. Obama Activists Target November Mid-terms’
The heart of Organizing for America is our volunteers—some of whom spend around 20 hours a week as community organizers working alongside OFA staff in their states. Sandi Cook is one such OFA community organizer in South Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Wave reported on how folks like Sandi are working to build grassroots momentum for candidates who support President Obama leading up to this year’s elections:
With less than four months to go before the crucial mid-term congressional elections — essentially a half-term report card on the performance of Barack Obama — Democratic activists in South Los Angeles are looking to mobilize the kind of grassroots army that helped elect the nation’s first Black president.
Organizing for America (OFA), the network that succeeded Obama for America, has been engaged in a full-on effort to prove many of the political pundits wrong...
Meanwhile, organizers are hoping that Sandi Cook — a 49-year-old health insurance sales representative born and bred in the Crenshaw District — is the kind of centrifugal force that is being overlooked by purveyors of the conventional wisdom.
An OFA community organizer for Congressional District 33, Cook commits more than 25 volunteer hours a week to the cause.
She leads five active field teams, each consisting of a neighborhood team leader, a data coordinator, a volunteer coordinator and an event coordinator.
On Saturday, Cook set up her table for a voter registration drive at the Cherrywood/Leimert Block Club barbecue, which had a couple of well-known political visitors pass by, including 10th District City Councilman Herb Wesson and L.A. County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas.
She was joined later in the afternoon by her de facto boss, Philip H. Gaskin, the regional field director for South Los Angeles, himself a former community organizer.
“OFA is now president Obama’s national volunteer grassroots field team,” he said. “It’s the first-ever grassroots field team for a president. That’s historic and I’m sure it’s a model other presidents will try to duplicate. We’re in all 50 states and have teams in all 435 congressional districts.”
Cook spelled out their task. “The mission of OFA is to support the president and his agenda,” said Cook. “So that’s what we are doing, we know how important it is for people to vote [in this election]. At the beginning of the year, we have been … organizing nationwide, especially in California.
“There’s still a lot of support, but we need to build our capacity and reach out to people. This kind of work is grassroots; it’s neighborhood by neighborhood, door to door.”
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