The heady, local, grassroots movement behind Barack Obama’s campaign lives on and thrives as activists build on their success.

In a satirical video by The Onion, an Obama supporter lies on his sofa in a post-election stupor. Other Obama-ites wander aimlessly, wondering how to fill their days without voters to register or precincts to canvass.

While work in some communities culminated with the once-in-a-lifetime election and then deflated, here in the activist East Bay, Obama supporters are anything but aimless. At gatherings in homes, restaurants and community centers, they’re posing the question “What next?” and finding answers with a vengeance. Montclair organizer Natalie Van Tassel says that in her Obama for America group, Montclair 94611 for Obama, “people share the feeling that working on the campaign was fun and felt effective; now we’re energized and want to continue.”

From the beginning, Obama’s message attracted unprecedented numbers of steadfast volunteers. Unpaid leaders devoted evenings and weekends and took time off from work or school to help get Obama elected. “People want to make a meaningful contribution—you just have to give them a chance,” says Allison Ruby Reid-Cunningham, who served as a deputy field organizer and then as a site manager during the campaign. A U.C. Berkeley graduate student, Reid-Cunningham describes her campaign experience as “the first meritocracy I’ve ever been a part of.”

During the four days prior to and including election day, nearly 14,000 East Bay and San Francisco volunteers made more than 875,000 calls to swing states. And just days after Obama’s victory, volunteers were back in action, calling likely voters in the December 2 runoff for the Georgia Senate. Although that victory ultimately belonged to the Republicans, Northern Californians showed their ability to remobilize, making 51,000 calls in two weeks.

Beyond the Georgia race, the larger post-election task has been to harness the powerful volunteer energy behind Obama. Attorney Arisha Hatch, a former Oakland resident and a regional field organizer during the campaign, raises a key issue about maintaining volunteer momentum: “During an election cycle we have a clear goal,” she says, “and now there are many diffuse goals.”

And while nobody says it’s going to be easy to transform the excitement and volunteerism of the campaign into the messier work of legislative change, East Bay activists are committed to trying. Whether it’s through local political organizations like MoveOn.org, the Obama website or neighborhood phone-banking groups, thousands of East Bay volunteers energized by the long presidential campaign are figuring out how to be a strong grassroots base for the Obama administration while pushing reforms on issues such as education and health care. One bonus is that many of those involved aren’t tainted by past political failures. because the Obama campaign was their first foray into politics.

Berkeley resident Molly Tsongas helped run the North Berkeley phone bank center for the Obama campaign. “My story is similar to that of so many others,” she says. “I went in once to make calls and ended up being part of the leadership.” Tsongas, 27, has now returned to her true passion: energy and climate work. She’s developing a short video for college-age people about how they can create the transition to a clean-energy economy. “The answer may not come from on high,” she says. “Individuals will continue to take the initiative and pull our communities together. It’s people who know and care about each other who will get together to be the partners that Obama needs.”

What Is Next?

On a cold, rainy Sunday in December, 150 volunteers from Alameda, Marin, San Joaquin, Santa Clara and Contra Costa counties meet at the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) 1021 union hall in San Francisco. Pamela Coukos, who served as the campaign’s regional field director for the East Bay and San Francisco, hosts this Change Is Coming gathering, one of thousands taking place across the country and organized through the Obama website. “You can’t escape the fact that our nation and our communities need us,” says Coukos, “and that’s why we’re here today.” The three-hour meeting alternates between presentations to the whole audience and discussion in small groups, with energetic clapping and call-and-response cheers of “Fired up—ready to go” during transitions.

Seated on folding chairs, activists debate questions like these: What does it take to be an effective community organizer? Which issues will demand our attention in the coming months? How much should we focus on the administration’s legislative agenda versus local needs? And what might a statewide network look like? For this group, priority issues include health care, job creation, public school reform, green energy and the California budget crisis.

Although enthusiastic about working with President Obama, many progressives favor taking the lead when they find the administration’s ideas too centrist. For example, Obama’s health-care plan would maintain the current system of private insurers, but make it more efficient by improving health information technology and coordination of care. However, some activists, including a group of nurses at this meeting, endorse a single-payer system (one that will eliminate the for-profit insurance companies), and they plan to push Obama on this issue.

Meeting participants had more ideas than time allowed and seemed eager to launch back into political work. They also wanted to hear from Coukos and other leaders about a new national organization that the Obama transition team and volunteer organizers are launching that will link the White House to the grassroots, mobilize support for legislation at all levels of government and train local leaders.

Following the meeting, Berkeley activist Mary Nicely expressed disappointment that too much time was spent rehashing the campaign rather than addressing particular issues like redistricting and health care. “We weren’t left with a specific task,” she said, adding that some of the smaller Change Is Coming house parties had resulted in action items like plans to help area homeowners with earthquake preparedness or with the paperwork needed to avoid foreclosure.

The Change Is Coming meetings are just one example of how the campaign used the transition months to further engage Americans in creating change. Eleven million supporters received an email survey asking them to prioritize the goals and issues they’d like to spend time on. The transition website, Change.gov, offers a signup for service programs like the Classroom Corps and the Clean Energy Corps. Through his My.BarackObama.com site (known as MYBO), Obama requested the Change Is Coming house meetings as a way “to take the next step and begin bringing change to your community and country.” Twenty-seven such events, with names like Oakland Ready for Change and Orindans Organizing for Change, took place within 10 miles of Berkeley.

Some concrete grassroots actions started during the Obama campaign and haven’t missed a beat.

Hope in Action began within and during the campaign with projects like a cleanup at Lake Merritt and bagging food at the Alameda County food bank. These community service projects were sometimes combined with voter registration efforts and emphasized Obama’s commitment to concrete grassroots action. Organizer Katie Balk, an Oakland resident, says the power of this program goes beyond giving back to the community in a meaningful way. “This type of work also allows the volunteer to change by understanding firsthand what’s going on in his or her community,” she says. Hope in Action, with branches in the East Bay and Silicon Valley, didn’t disintegrate after the election. During the holidays, the group expanded beyond its local focus to create care packages for soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

At a post-election meeting, Hope in Action members expressed interest in continuing their community service through projects that range from tutoring adults and teens to serving food at local soup kitchens.

Moving On

Many volunteers who supported Obama’s positions are affiliated with progressive organizations apart from the campaign. Following the election, members of Berkeley-based MoveOn.org met at 1,000 “Fired Up and Ready to Go” gatherings nationwide to brainstorm ways to maintain momentum and help President Obama pass progressive legislation. In Albany, 20 MoveOn members highlighted priorities that included ending the electoral college, leaving Iraq, shifting from military to national service, and creating a Wikipedia-type synopsis for legislative bills. Members debated the pros and cons of pressuring the president versus giving him time to move his agenda forward.

At a Fired Up gathering in Oakland, members of the group spoke about next steps, but also spent time reflecting on the role of the Internet in the campaign. According to host Rosemary Nocera, “We talked about the phenomenon of the online community as making this election possible; it adds to a new democratic ideal by allowing people to connect and mobilize in an unprecedented manner.”

At the MoveOn meetings, people signed up to take photos for the organization’s “Real Voices for Change” campaign, in which Americans will be photographed with signs such as “I stand with Obama for health care,” or “I stand with Obama for clean energy,” or any issue of the person’s choice. MoveOn will bring these photos to members of Congress to represent Americans who stand for change.

Like MoveOn, Democracy for America (DFA) is a national organization with local branches. Activists from DFA Oakland helped elect Pleasanton environmentalist Jerry McNerny to Congress in 2006; they also sent a planeload of volunteers to Colorado to get out the vote for Obama. The group plans to continue to focus on grassroots-fueled campaigns and citizen empowerment. According to organizer Janet Stromberg, key upcoming issues include repealing Proposition 8 (the same-sex marriage ban passed by California voters in November), ending the requirement for a two-thirds vote to pass the California state budget, advocating for fairness in media coverage and increasing the role of grassroots activists in the California Democratic Party. “We’re a bottom-up organization,” says Berkeley resident Stromberg. “If someone in our group has an idea and they want to run with it, we provide networking opportunities to help them get started. If enough people get inspired to work together on it, it becomes one of our ongoing actions. This is how we got hundreds of people working on the McNerney campaign and how we elected a couple dozen people to seats on the Central Committee of the California Democratic Party.”

Staying Local

Many of the political groups that sprang up to support Obama were rooted in neighborhoods and not affiliated with a national organization. In Montclair, a small group (self-described as “boomers and older”) got started by holding a neighborhood rally in August at Montclair Park with speakers, music, food, signup sheets and a banner that children signed and sent to Obama. They eventually developed a database of 650 names; during the campaign, they made 32,000 calls to swing states at the Montclair Cultural Women’s Arts Center, an airy, brightly painted building often rented out for weddings.

A month after the election, the core group reconvened. Now called the Montclair Community Action Group, members want to stay together and focus on action-oriented work during the months ahead. For this group, as for many others, the days since the election have shown that getting behind a candidate is a lot easier than agreeing on a health-care plan or even a community project.

Montclair organizer Sam Burd explains that setting a post-election agenda for the group means giving everyone a voice. Even as they are filled with hope as Obama takes the helm of the nation, Burd and other organizers know that political change is about participatory democracy more than one great leader. “It’s an organic growth of action,” Burd says, “rather than a top-down one.”

The group has identified education as its issue of top priority. On February 10 they will meet to discuss how to begin their work on that issue.

During the weekend leading up to the inauguration, East Bay volunteers participated in the National Weekend of Service by organizing more than 50 community service projects, ranging from serving hot meals at Berkeley’s St. Mark’s Episcopal Church to restoring native plants on Albany Hill.

As local activists grapple with the challenges of moving from political victory to societal change, they remain optimistic. “The common thread is that people enjoyed working in this grassroots campaign,” says Van Tassel. “We saw that we can work together, and everything we’ve done has made us want to do more.”

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Rachel Trachten is a freelance journalist and copy editor and a regular contributor to The Monthly.