It’s March—now two months into OFA’s campaign to defend Obamacare from repeal—and this fight is igniting passions across the map.
In early February, OFA launched a series of online trainings, including two hosted with our partners over at Indivisible. And throughout the month, OFA worked with folks at the Town Hall Project to invite organizers and supporters in every corner of the country to town halls during Congress’ recess, when representatives were back in their home districts. We even created a guide for attending a local town hall to help attendees prepare and understand best practices for making their voices heard in an effective and respectful manner.
The pressure that organizers, volunteers, and concerned citizens are putting on representatives at these town halls is working—it’s changing the fight, causing many opponents of Obamacare to walk back their threats of immediate repeal since we launched our campaign in January.
And on top of that, we’re starting to see people take action in parts of the country that have, in the past, typically lacked a strong progressive infrastructure—places like Arizona, Louisiana, and Utah.
While a disturbing number of congressional representatives have been unwilling to even sit down with their own constituents, afraid to hear the pleas for the security of their health care, some representatives are embracing town halls and thanking groups like OFA for driving constituents to their events.
.@ My third townhall of the recess. Constituents want the ACA to be saved. Thank you @ppazaction and @OFA for organizing it! pic.twitter.com/aIQA9U8JCi
— Ruben Gallego (@RubenGallego) February 24, 2017
With a new groundswell of activism and civic engagement sweeping across the country, OFA is channeling that energy into building long-term capacity for the progressive movement. As more and more folks express interest in getting engaged and “doing more,” OFA is empowering experienced volunteer organizers to help lead others toward becoming lifelong organizers and leaders for their communities.
We’ve seen an incredible number of new applicants to OFA’s organizer fellowship program—so many that we just accepted more than double the amount of graduates from all of 2016 into the spring program alone. And due to a surge of interest among students, our first semester of the Campus Organizing Academy has already tripled in size from similar programs introduced last year. This outpouring of enthusiasm puts OFA on track to graduate more than 1,300 fellows in 2017!
To meet the heightened demand, OFA also onboarded veteran progressive leaders from 24 states to volunteer to coach these programs. These leaders joined together at our headquarters earlier this month to train up on the latest tools and best practices they’ll need to make their programs a success.
If you’ve been watching but haven’t yet jumped in, take the first step and let us know that you want to get involved by signing the petition to protect Obamacare.
Once you’ve added your name, we’ll follow up with more ways you can take action.
Don’t sit this fight out. The momentum is building now, and people are organizing across the country—many for the first time.
Be a part of history.
