Obama fever swept through town again, animating David Manners-Weber and Justin Kosslyn to organize a community clean-up.
They called it an “Obama Sweep.” Some 15 young people showed up on the Green Saturday, grabbed their Obama buttons, brooms, and trash bags and headed over to Edgewood Avenue, where Manners-Weber had arranged with Alderwoman Gina Calder to do a clean up in the general area of Timothy Dwight School.
The Obama campaign swept New Haven last month, too, at the polls.
Was Saturday’s sweep a political event or a community service event?
“Both,” said Manners, a Yale student who comes by politics in part through his mom, who’s a selectwoman from Ridgefield, Connecticut. “Politics is about serving people, she always has told me. What we’re doing is not exactly a response to people who criticize Obama for too much rhetoric as much as it’s a kind of bringing to life of his message that ‘we are the change that we seek.’”
He and Kosslyn, a fellow student who hails from Massachusetts, were energized by their experience working for Obama in the New Hampshire primary. They conceived of a new breed of political campaign that brings together volunteers, in the spirit of the candidate, not just to rally and to hoot but also to work to improve the world, starting on their own doorsteps.
They articulated their idea in January in the Yale Daily News (click here), it circulated, and the Obama Sweep idea was born. This same Saturday morning, three or four other sweeps were taking place in New York, New Jersey, and the largest in Philadelphia,where 100 volunteers were expected. The latter, Manners-Weber said, was boosted by the upcoming Pennsylvania primary.
“The real goal,” he added, “is to go beyond the primary. To develop a kind of toolkit on the evolving website , so people can organize around issues that matter to them any time, regardless of whether an election is looming.”
Without the young people stating it in so many words, the Obama Sweeps activity emulated the grassroots community organizing work — or at least its spirit — out of which their candidate’s values and approaches appear to have been formed.
Many of these young people are already involved as community-minded volunteers. This sophomore crew (left to right, Libby Davis, Laura Gottesdiener, Michelle Mirabal, Bhakti Nagolla, and Juliann Rowe) was setting out to clean Edgewood Avenue this weekend morning. During the week many of them are also volunteer tutors at local elementary schools through Yale’s Dwight Hall.
David Kohn, who coordinates some 20 Yale tutors at Wilbur Cross High School, donned his surgical gloves for the pick-up ahead along Platt and Beers streets. “The idea here is that people can take it upon themselves to change conditions that bother them. People, without waiting for government to do it. And this idea,” he added, “sets Obama apart from Clinton.”
Some 40 minutes later, Manners-Weber and his friend, Houston sophomore Eva Galant, had filled up a good half bag of trash on one side of Edgewood, while a second group of Obama sweepers worked diligently on the other side. “Cars were honking in a positive way,” he said, “and there were a few shouts of ‘si se puede’ as well.”
Bhakti Nagolla said he liked the example the event set for kids in the neighborhood. One young man, visiting the area from Hamden, walked out of the Dwight School hardly noticing the dozen college kids on their knees picking up trash. Upon hearing the Obama-clean-up explanation, he thought for a moment and passed judgment for a reporter. “That’s cool, “ he said. “Yeah, I like it.”
David Kohn said he couldn’t imagine anyone objecting to people cleaning up garbage. But he had other thoughts also on the more pervasive effect of the “we are the change we seek” idea that is clearly permeating this crowd.
“This creates an atmosphere,” he said, “so that if you want to give two years to teaching, such as joining Teach for America, or doing some other public service calling, Obama’s message makes that much more acceptable in society. If I make that career choice for myself, I’m supported now by this new sense that’s growing out there, and that’s new and important.”
For upcoming sweeps and other campaign activities that incorporate public service projects both in New Haven and beyond, check the website or call Paul Selker (617 – 429-7276).