President Obama’s old campaign organization turned-nonprofit, Organizing for Action, claims it’s not a partisan group anymore — but even progressives are having trouble buying that.
During OFA’s roundtable at the 2013 Netroots Nation Conference on Thursday, several audience members called out the organization’s management for trying to hide that it only supports Obama’s policies.
“It’s fine if you’ve made the decision that we really are taking our guidance from the administration,” said audience member Liz Butler, network organizing project director and senior fellow at the Movement Strategy Center. “But I think it’s disingenuous not to tell the base that. So it’s like, be transparent.”
“But we have,” OFA Executive Director Jon Carson responded.
“So say, ‘We won’t take action on issues the administration opposes,'” Butler shot back.
She said OFA was claiming that it was “crowd-sourcing” what issues the nonprofit would pursue, when the direction was really coming from the White House.
“BarackObama.com,” another audience member pointed out in response, implying that OFA had already been clear about its relationship with the President. Carson agreed, saying the organization had, in fact, been clear from the start that it wouldn’t confront the Obama administration on policy disagreements.
But earlier during the roundtable, the OFA staffers had tried to distance the nonprofit from the White House. Carson stressed there’s a difference between now being an “issues organization” instead of an “electoral organization.”
“Everyone needs to know, we are not a partisan organization,” Carson said, reiterating OFA’s continued stance on its relationship with the Obama administration.
Sara El-Amine, OFA grassroots organizing director, added that 19 percent of attendees at OFA events were people who never volunteered for the Obama campaign in 2008 or 2012.
But as Butler and other conference attendees pointed out, OFA still aligns itself only with issues that President Obama supports.
“Is it the case that if the administration is causing a harm or standing in the way of change, OFA is just not — that’s not their role?” asked Robin Beck, senior innovation strategist at Citizen Engagement Laboratory.
Carson responded that OFA wasn’t asking its supporters to fully align themselves with the President.
“So it’s not crazy to go ask you to partner on a specific action that targets some part of the administration and make a different choice than what they’re say they want to do, like on domestic spying?” Beck pushed.
“Not crazy at all,” Carson answered, countering his earlier statements that day.
The nonprofit reincarnation of OFA has received flak since its inception, with critics expressing concern that the group did not qualify to be a 501(c)4. And now that nonprofit status seems even more far-fetched.
So the question remains: Is OFA an organization that takes its cues from President Obama or a group that pushes progressive issues regardless of the administration’s stance on them? Ultimately, it should probably be a bit more clear with that — because even its own base is feeling confused and misled.
