Md. Taqi Yasir
Sara El-Amine’s story is that of many Obama supporters who turned from apathetic political bystander to idealistic grassroots organizer. Eight years later, while many of them have moved on to the private sector, or to other campaigns and causes, or even to bashing the president they once adored, El-Amine who was once the youngest female senior staffer and then rose to be a national director of Obama’s re-election campaign was still there. Since December 2014, the 30-year-old has been running the show as executive director of Organizing for Action (OFA), the multimillion-dollar nonprofit birthed by Obama’s campaign machine. It’s her job to use those millions to keep the machine chugging, via its 250 local chapters that train grassroots organizers stumping for Hillary and Bernie alike. It could be “the progressive version of the Koch brothers,” as Sidney Milkis, a University of Virginia political scientist, puts it.
“They’re going to be around for decades to come,” El-Amine bulges out and also swears some 6,000 grassroots supporters. From Organizing for Action they learn phone banking, canvassing and micro targeting. Now, OFA just has to get those bleeding hearts to keep on pitching Obama’s pet projects, such as gun control legislation and the Iran Nuclear Deal, to its reported 30 million email subscribers, said to be the largest political email list ever made. Overall the whole syndrome from the year of 2008, the Obama’s reign had been a massive success.