Netroots Nation Day 1 - Thoughts on the Youth Caucus

Sorry it has taken so long to post a report from Netroots Nation - it's easy to get sucked in here talking to all the people that I only get to see once or twice per year. If you don't feel like we're shedding enough light on what's happening, you can go check out the live Ustreams from four or five of the ballrooms here at the convention center.

Kevin and Sarah have both been here longer than I, and they've got great write-ups of what's happened so far. In particular, you should all go and read Kevin's thorough recounting of the panel on the DNC and Obama for America's online tools.

I wanted to add some thoughts to what Kevin wrote about the Youth Caucus. First, apparently there was no pre-organizing involved in this event. In fact, I think the NN08 organizers just put it up on the schedule without consulting anyone about it. As a result, people milled around for awhile and then Nate from the Roosevelt Institution got everyone to sit together and began a conversation. Next year, there should be a lot more planning involved in this event. Other caucuses featured elected officials, or had pre-set agendas. Something a little more structured might be useful for all the young attendees next year.

The discussion - started by Rob Anderson from Campus Progress - revolved around one central question: What is this "youth movement?" Is it about an age demographic, or is it about a generational policy agenda (and which should it be)?

I was pretty burnt out yesterday from my early flight, so I didn't contribute much to the discussion. That was actually a good thing - it was nice to hear what younger folks are thinking five years into this "youth movement." A day late, I'd like to inject just one thing into the debate.

You can't really talk about this thing we all call the new progressive "youth movement" without context about how it arose. Five years ago, there were very few organizations working with and on behalf of young people in progressive politics - the PIRGS, USSA, College and Young Dems. For the vast majority of young people, recently politicized by 9/11 and the Iraq War, these organizations were viewed (sometimes rightly) as either ineffective or culturally out of touch. There was a vacuum - real and perceived - in youth politics. We lacked the structures to identify and mentor new leaders, and the institutions to engage a significant part of the youth electorate.

Out of that came a lot of entrepreneurial activism to create those structures, and when we talk about a youth movement in the last five years, that is what we are referring to - the movement to create those institutions and engage young voters in the process.

The question is itself significant in that we've finally arrived in a place where a lot of those structures are in place, young voters are being taken seriously, and now building infrastructure is no longer enough in and of itself. We have to ask the question "to what end?" A few years ago, that question wasn't even possible because none of us were gathered together in any coherent way with anyway to influence the debate. That's a great place to be in and it's light years ahead of where we were five years ago. Let's recognize that.

I also want to highlight a point that Matt Lockshin of California YDA brought up. Despite all these gains, there is still a huge population that is not being served by these institutions we've created. Young people in underserved communities, communities of color, and non-college youth are still not engaged in to what we are doing in any significant way, in large part because we focus on very different issues, we talk about these issues in vastly different ways, and most importantly, these issues affect our lives in very different ways. That's a huge gap that needs to be filled and it actually bridges both of the issues we discussed, the infrastructure and the issues.

One final note - as a number of people have pointed out, Netroots Nation seems significantly younger than in previous years. Are the netroots getting younger, or is the event just gaining a higher profile among younger activists? Don't know.