In Youth Politics, the Old Is New Again

In 2004, Democratic politics witnessed a boom in youth organizing. Young people created dozens of new institutions that pioneered non-traditional methods for engaging their peers on and offline. Drinking clubs that maintained political interest and moved people slowly into political activism, road trips to swing states, peer to peer voter registration and candidate fundraising at small live music events. The list goes on and on.

These were not always the best and most efficient organizations on the block, but they identified and filled a vacuum in progressive youth politics that was not filled by the traditional organizations like the PIRGs and the College Democrats. They pioneered new tactics, changed the way that many political activists thought about organizing, and they engaged many young voters that would not otherwise become involved in politics, helping to drive 4.3 million new young voters to the polls in 2004.

As often happens in progressive politics, the amount of money available to these organizations declined drastically after the election. Some organizations struggled and managed to survive. Others limped along until they could no longer be sustained. People moved on to other jobs. Sometimes in politics, sometimes not.

Four years out, history is repeating itself. The country is on the wrong track, young people are engaged, and they looking for a way to make a difference in the election. For some, the Obama campaign is the vehicle for that activism. For others, organizations from the 2004 youth org boom that are still going strong, like the League of Young Voters and the Young Democrats, help young people engage the process. Others are not so lucky, and for that subset of young voters, they are once again encountering the vacuum that initially spawned the 2004 youth organizing boom. In response, a newer (and smaller) boom is occurring in the youth organizing sphere as these people work to recreate or reimagine the organizations that did not survive into the '07/'08 presidential cycle.

In 2004, four major organizations built a model that employed live music events to register and organize young voters and support candidates. Music for America, Punk Voter each engaged in partisan activism at live music events, registering voters and distributing issue-messaging while Concerts for Change focused their efforts on raising money for candidates. The fourth organization, HeadCount, was a non-partisan organization focused solely on voter registration at jamband concerts. Of these four, only HeadCount survived into this election cycle, drastically decreasing the number of politically activated live music events, and leaving a complete vacuum in that space on the partisan side.

Shipping people into swing states - via roadtrip or other method - was also a popular in 2004, and Driving Votes, Swing the State, and Swing Semester were the three organizations helping young voters in solid red and blue states find their way into battleground where they could have the greatest impact in the Presidential election. Despite Driving Votes' merger with Democracy for America, none of these youth organizations remained active after the election or reappeared to play a significant role in moving young voters and activists during the midterm elections.

Today, both of these organizing models are witnessing a revival - or a second boom, if you will. In New York, a group of young people are hustling to build-up a newly launched organization, Music for Democracy, which will pick up where Music for America and Concerts for Change left off. In DC, Swing Semester has revived itself, and will work to move students from safe states into swing states, hook them up with voter contact efforts, and provide a crash course in field organizing and the contours of the current progressive movement. As far as the organizers know, they are the only organization whose sole mission in 2008 is to move young people from solid red and blue states into battleground states.

The old has become new again, and both Music for Democracy and Swing Semester are rebuilding on the ashes of 2004. This is a good thing. These models of organizing clearly speak to a segment of the population not reached or activated by existing institutions. It's a shame that just four years out so much infrastructure needs to be rebuilt from scratch, but these organizations have a leg-up on those of us who started this movement in 2004. We have best practices to share and lessons-learned about mistakes that should not be repeated. The social capital behind the organizing in 2004 is still there, waiting to be tapped. That's also a good thing, because we are rapidly running out of time. A protracted primary process and a reluctance to give on the part of donors has meant that many of these organizations are getting started much later in the cycle than they did in 2004. This year we have the opportunity to build these institutions better, strong, faster, more efficient. Not just for this election, but far into the future.