Brooklyn Democrats who supported Obama want to support his health care reform — but don’t know what it entails. — Photo by Mimi Luse

Organizing For America (OFA) was originally developed as Barack Obama’s campaign tool, a wired social network that would replicate the grass-roots viral success that Howard Dean had in his own 2004 bid for president. After he was elected, the network and newsletter, 13 million e-mail addresses strong, changed slightly in name (from Obama for America) and has persisted in supporters’ in-boxes as an unprecedented means of bypassing traditional media and communicating with supporters one-on-one.

It may first have been strange getting e-mails with subject lines like "Urgent Message From President Obama," but the venture so far seems successful. In the program’s first year, 1 million new people joined, and since then OFA claims to have found nearly 3 million people willing to volunteer time, or call members of Congress on its behalf. Since e-mail announcements target recipients based on the zip code they provided upon registration, the e-mail base will serve as a tool for the upcoming congressional elections, and will surely be invaluable in pinpointing red districts when Obama faces reelection.

In the meantime, OFA uses this function to announce local events, and has acted as an umbrella for Democratic and community groups, hosting an average of 819 local events nationwide every week. This week the South Bushwick Residents Association (SBRA), together with Brooklyn chapters within OFA, held its first of what will become a regular joint event.

The event was intended to fortify outreach efforts — find and begin the training process for volunteers who will man phone banks, go door to door, and eventually register voters — but it also served as a means of airing local grievances and personal experiences so far as they related to domestic policy. Supporters looking for OFA’s help in explaining the health care reform bill to the public left the event disappointed.

Democratic National Commitee (DNC) Deputy Field Director Keith Kinch, a Brooklyn native and founding member of Brooklyn for Barack, was joined by Alejandro Echeverri, a community liaison to 34th District City Council member Diana Reyna and an SBRA representative. Echeverri provided translation for a group of Spanish speakers while Kinch introduced himself, stating clearly, "our goal is to push the president’s agenda." He asked the crowd of 40 attendees, 16 of them women, to break into smaller groups to draw from personal experience and discuss the issues they thought needed the most attention on a local level.

Affordable health care seemed to weigh heaviest on the minds of those in attendance. His voice tightening, Raymond Tuissant, a social worker in the health care field, spoke. "I got laid off, I don’t have any health care plan. I have 4 kids. [My wife] works part time, so she doesn’t get health care. One of my children is near-sighted, she needs glasses. It costs $100 a month to see the doctor."

A young pharmacy technician explained that the day to day duties of her job, dispensing medicine and resolving adjudication of patients’ insurance or state programs, gave her perspective on what she considers the unfairness of the current system. "Every day I see who gets denied treatment and who gets it."

The discussion turned to a critique of the White House for its inability describe what exactly the Health Care Reform Act entails in a way that those intended to benefit can understand.  

Mary McClellan, a representative of the Broadway Bushwick Community Coalition, shared her exasperation. "I need more information about health care, I’m not getting the details." 

"We need a very simple message that we can use [to speak to others]. The communication is not getting out clearly enough," said another woman.

Participants blamed part of the confusion, too, on legislative red tape, which has only been further aggravated by Scott Brown’s Senate election and the loss of the Democrats’ 60-seat margin.

Atendee Silvana Tropea asked Kinch directly, "What is the message of the Democratic Party? Are they voting for the Senate, or the House bill, or reconciliation?"

Kinch admitted that the technicalities of passing the Senate bill, which needs House ratification and then Senate reconciliation, have been lost on a nation of people dealing with their own day-to-day affairs.

"People are fatigued," he said. "If you’re not really dialed into the process, it’s difficult."

Kinch did mention Obama’s State of the Union apology for being unclear about the bill, but said, problematically for proponents, that the bill was impossible to explain in a simple way. "The bill is too complicated to break into four points. It’s 2,300 pages long, and though it’s been reduced to a 17-page hand out, even that’s too long." Kinch urged the assembly to e-mail him for futher details but explained that the OFA and DNC lines on the bill were to simply get it passed and work on amending it later. This may prove difficult without the public’s support, which depends on their understanding.

Kinch turned the conversation to the next steps for supporters interested in direct action. He identified the first targets of phone calls to congressional offices: the three New York State Congressmen who had previously voted ‘No’ on the Health Care Reform Act: Scott Murphy, Dan Maffei, and Mike McMahon, the latter a representative of Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst, and Staten Island.

"Since last Wednesday we’ve had phone banks calling these people," said Kinch. "They get aggravated by the repeated calls, but that’s how it works. That’s grassroots 101." Step two will be making out-of state calls, and step three will be the recruitment of more volunteers.

After the meeting, Jack Savage, who had biked from the Lower East Side to attend the event, said, "I’m still not getting a real clear sense of what exactly everyone’s going to get out of health care reform and I wish the White House could summarize it. We already have socialized health care: the emergency room, and that in itself is proof of the dire need for reform."

The OFA Organizing Meeting (RSVP) will be held every first Wednesday of the month, from 6-8pm, in the basement of the DeKalb Public Library at 790 Bushwick Avenue.