What, you thought that was the last election ever?

On Tuesday, May 22, the man who I hope will be the next president is coming to town, my former professor Barack Obama, and I hope we can all take the momentum and energy from yesterday into a hell of a fun rally for him at the Electric Factory.

I've blogged about this Community Kick-Off Rally before, but want to refresh everyone on the details.

Tickets are $25 for students, $50 for the general public, and $100 for the "VIP" area to be upstairs in the lounge and off the packed floor. That's all it takes. (If you want to give more, you can, obvs. But this is as cheap as presidential fundraising events ever get.)

David Sirota has forcefully explained why this kind of grassroots organizing is essential:

[T]here is another model that very few people talk about - the one where lots of working people give lots of small dollar contributions. People like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) have been doing this for years. Howard Dean did it in his presidential primary run. It’s a much harder path, of course, because it’s much harder to organize lots of people than it is to organize a few wealthy fat cats. But in the absence of public financing of elections, campaigns that try to rely on lots of little contributions are the next closest thing to a small-d democratic election system....

Groups like Moveon.org are flipping [the] smoky backroom model on its head, gathering a very large group of contributors who each give just a little bit. Such a model doesn’t require regular folks to cough up hundreds of dollars. On the contrary, if millions of people kicked in $5 or $10 we might have a whole different country. Getting more people to contribute small sums of money to political causes will require a change in mindset. As political fundraiser Chris Gruwell says, we need to look at political giving in the same way we look at the basket that comes around at our place of worship. We chip in what we can, no matter how modest, because we believe in the charity work that our money funds. That is the way we need to think about supporting good people running for office, because government can have as big if not bigger effects on society than almost any other institution.

No major candidate relies more on small-dollar donors than Barack Obama, whether as a total sum or as a percentage of his total raised.

So that's what we're doing next Tuesday afternoon in NoLibs. Join us for Obama Goes Electric, standing room only for you and 2,499 (or so) of your soon-to-be-closest friends. Send the link to everyone you know in the area, or anyone who's a potential supporter of the campaign -- because even if you can't come, you can still show your support for Barack Obama's holding events like this with whatever contribution you feel comfortable making. Make a commitment and join us in a campaign to change America.

DJ King Britt will be spinning, and a very special guest will sing the national anthem. (Hint: Eagle fan.)

Join us. Spread the word. Rock on with yr bad selves.