Helping the fire victims: Obama's big rolodex and bigger heart

By GottaLaff

After the election was over, President-elect Obama still had an enormous stash of names and addresses. Remember what he did after Gustav?

At the end of August, as Hurricane Gustav threatened the coast of Texas, the Obama campaign called the Red Cross to say it would be routing donations to it via the Red Cross home page. Get your servers ready-our guys can be pretty nuts, Team Obama said. Sure, sure, whatever, the Red Cross responded. We’ve been through 9/11, Katrina, we can handle it. The surge of Obama dollars crashed the Red Cross Web site in less than 15 minutes.

The campaign still has an endless list of supporters, with up to 10 million email addresses and phone numbers. And he knows how to use them:

Today, Obama demonstrated one way in which the list will continue to be put to use: disaster relief.

BarackObama.com emailed supporters soliciting donations for wildfire victims in Southern California:

Over the past few days, wildfires in Southern California have destroyed nearly 900 homes and burned over 37,000 acres of land, forcing many more families to evacuate their communities.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to those who have been affected by the fires.

The Red Cross and Salvation Army are coordinating relief for the victims, and volunteers on the ground are being organized to help with long-term recovery efforts in the days and months to come. If you live in or near Southern California you can volunteer now, and no matter where you live you can help by donating to the relief efforts.

Throughout the campaign, we saw time and again that when ordinary people act together, they can make a huge difference.

Visit CaliforniaVolunteers.org for more information on how you can help.

Pre-presidency agrees with Barack Obama. Pro-active, pro-people, pro-gressive, pro-digious.... pro.