Much has been written about the historic nature of the Obama campaign. The multi-year, multi-billion dollar operation elected the nation's first black president, raised and spent more money than any other election effort in history, and built the most sophisticated voter targeting technology ever before used on a national campaign. What is missing from most accounts of the campaign is an understanding of how Obama for America recruited, motivated, developed, and managed its formidable army of 2.2 million volunteers. Unlike previous field campaigns that drew their power from staff, consultants, and paid canvassers, the Obama campaign's capacity came from unpaid local citizens who took responsibility for organizing their own neighborhoods months--and even years--in advance of election day. In so doing, Groundbreakers argues, the campaign engaged citizens in the work of practicing democracy. How did they organize so many volunteers to produce so much valuable work for the campaign? This book describes how. Elizabeth McKenna and Hahrie Han argue that the legacy of Obama for America extends beyond big data and micro-targeting; it also reinvigorated and expanded traditional models of field campaigning. Groundbreakers makes the case that the Obama campaign altered traditional ground games by adopting the principles and practices of community organizing. Drawing on in-depth interviews with OFA field staff and volunteers, this book also argues that a key achievement of the OFA's field organizing was its transformative effect on those who were a part of it. Obama the candidate might have inspired volunteers to join the campaign, but it was the fulfilling relationships that volunteers had with other people--and their deep belief that their work mattered for the work of democracy--that kept them active. Groundbreakers documents how the Obama campaign has inspired a new way of running field campaigns, with lessons for national and international political and civic movements.

" ... the story of the all-volunteer force, from the draft protests and policy proposals of the 1960s through the Iraq War"--Jacket.

They left Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Michigan, and Stanford to drive ambulances on the French front, and on the killing fields of World War I they learned that war was no place for gentlemen. The tale of the American volunteer ambulance drivers of the First World War is one of gallantry amid gore; manners amid madness. Arlen J. Hansen’s Gentlemen Volunteers brings to life the entire story of the men—and women—who formed the first ambulance corps, and who went on to redefine American culture. Some were to become legends—Ernest Hemingway, e. e. cummings, Malcolm Cowley, and Walt Disney—but all were part of a generation seeking something greater and grander than what they could find at home. The war in France beckoned them, promising glory, romance, and escape. Between 1914 and 1917 (when the United States officially entered the war), they volunteered by the thousands, abandoning college campuses and prep schools across the nation and leaving behind an America determined not to be drawn into a “European war.” What the volunteers found in France was carnage on an unprecedented scale. Here is a spellbinding account of a remarkable time; the legacy of the ambulance drivers of WWI endures to this day.

The first book to explore the idea and effect of moral injury on veterans, their families, and their communities Although veterans make up only 7 percent of the U.S. population, they account for an alarming 20 percent of all suicides. And though treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder has undoubtedly alleviated suffering and allowed many service members returning from combat to transition to civilian life, the suicide rate for veterans under thirty has been increasing. Research by Veterans Administration health professionals and veterans’ own experiences now suggest an ancient but unaddressed wound of war may be a factor: moral injury. This deep-seated sense of transgression includes feelings of shame, grief, meaninglessness, and remorse from having violated core moral beliefs. Rita Nakashima Brock and Gabriella Lettini, who both grew up in families deeply affected by war, have been working closely with vets on what moral injury looks like, how vets cope with it, and what can be done to heal the damage inflicted on soldiers’ consciences. In Soul Repair, the authors tell the stories of four veterans of wars from Vietnam to our current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan—Camillo “Mac” Bica, Herman Keizer Jr., Pamela Lightsey, and Camilo Mejía—who reveal their experiences of moral injury from war and how they have learned to live with it. Brock and Lettini also explore its effect on families and communities, and the community processes that have gradually helped soldiers with their moral injuries. Soul Repair will help veterans, their families, members of their communities, and clergy understand the impact of war on the consciences of healthy people, support the recovery of moral conscience in society, and restore veterans to civilian life. When a society sends people off to war, it must accept responsibility for returning them home to peace.

An informal introduction to volunteering in the United States with a concentration on arts volunteerism. Includes the history of volunteerism and the rationale behind and the current demographics of today's volunteer. Written by two volunteers in a user friendly manner, its purpose is to applaud and lend support to today's volunteer and the contributions they make to better our country. Contents: America's Hidden ResourceóUs!; Historical and Current Information on the Arts; Profiles of Volunteers for the Arts; Successful Volunteers and Endeavors; The Basics of Organizing a Volunteer Project; and Future Trends and Emerging Roles.

This book chronicles the live of a Peace Corps volunteer in Libya in the late 1960s, including the first American account of living through the revolution that brought Gaddafi to power. The author moves from campus protests at the University of Washington in the spring of 1968, to Peace Corps training in Utah and the Navajo Nation in New Mexico, to living and teaching in an isolated village in Libya, to a European summer vacation, to the revolution that led to charges that Peace Corps volunteers were CIA agents, to returning to the U.S. in October, 1969, to witness the anti-war moratorium on the Capital Mall in Washington, D.C. The heart of the story is the author’s own evolving journey as a teacher, during which time he began to question both the official curriculum of English instruction and the broader purposes of teaching for liberation. This is also a story about the author’s education and re-education in Libya as he struggles to learn the rules of everyday life (including the rules of gender and sexuality) as a stranger in the village, and as he begins to see and appreciate the world through somewhat different eyes. Part of his education involved a reconstruction of the history of the village in terms of wave after wave off European colonizers----from the time of the Romans, to the Italian fascist colonizers, to the liberation of the village by the British chasing Rommel’s troops across the desert, to its decline, renaming, and reappropriation as an Arab village. The author brings all this up to the late 1960s by describing the role of U.S. foreign policy in the “development” of Libya in league with global oil, and with the support of the largest air base outside the continental U.S. near Tripoli. This is, finally a coming of age story--about a young man who was desperately looking for something to believe in and live for, and more pragmatically looking for a way out of the draft and Vietnam, and out of an America that seemed to be slipping into collective madness. It is a story (like all coming of age stories) about setting off on a great youthful journey of self-discovery, and a rekindling of the human spirit. Audiences for this book include: college students (undergraduate and graduate) in education, cultural studies, and Arabic studies; former Peace Corps volunteers and those interested in the Peace Corps and its history; readers interested in recent developments in Libya looking for some historical perspective on how Gaddafi came to power and why the revolution turned anti-American; and all those interested in a first-hand account of what America was like at the end of a decade ushered in with Kennedy idealism and the Peace Corps. A powerful story of exile and a search for home, Volunteers of America is the Odyssey of a generation. Awakening to a world in flames, inspired by visions of liberation erupting everywhere, Dennis Carlson heard the chords of freedom echoing all around him and faced the question: Which side are you on? Here is Carlson’s poignant and still timely answer to that question. - Bill Ayers, author of Fugitive Days and many other books on education, Distinguished Professor of Education, University of Illinois, Chicago.

In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, a turbulent period fraught with violence, struggle, and uncertainty, a forgotten few African Americans banded together as men to assert their rights as citizens. Following emancipation, the nation’s newest citizens established churches, entered the political arena, created educational and business opportunities, and even formed labor organizations, but it was through state militia service, with the prestige and heightened status conveyed by their affiliation, that they displayed their loyalty, discipline, and more importantly, their manliness within the public sphere. In African American State Volunteers in the New South, John Patrick Blair offers a comparative examination of the experiences and activities of African American men as members in the state volunteer military organizations of Georgia, Texas, and Virginia, including the complicated relationships between state government and military officials—many of them former Confederate officers—and the leaders of the Black militia volunteers. This important new study expands understanding of racial accommodation, however minor, toward the African American military, confirmed not only in the actions of state government and military officials to arm, equip, and train these Black troops, but also in the acceptance of clearly visible and authorized military activities by these very same volunteers. In doing so, it adds significant layers to our knowledge of racial politics as they developed during Reconstruction, and prompts us to consider a broader understanding of the history of the South into the twentieth century.

Illustrated with 6 portraits Even before the official entry of the United States of America into the First World War in April 1917, many of its citizens had already crossed over “The Pond” and already had lent their efforts to the Allied cause. The author Edwin Morse set himself a terribly difficult task to record even a handful of these gallant soldiers, doctors, surgeons and aviators; he selected as a sampling of 34 different stories which he set out to tell in brief. Those he selected contributed to the Allied cause in different and diverse ways - some joined the Foreign Legion, some the British Army, others supported the medical services or drove ambulances; still further more joined the French Army aviators and formed the famous Lafayette Escadrille.