DNC Youth Council Panel: Nuts and Bolts of Youth Organizing

Another day filled with more events than anyone could possibly attend. Here’s a rundown of what happened on my end during the first part of the day.

After some abortive attempts at blogging and another trek to the no-man’s land where they hide the credentials, the first event of the day was the DNC Youth Council’s panel on youth organizing.

I think the event went fairly well, though it could have been better. We smartly skipped over presentations and went straight to Q&A. There was more than the normal share of crazy questioners who go to the mic more to rant than to ask a question, though to be fair, a young Hillary delegate did stand up and make a great call for unity - among young Democrats and the delegates in general. Other questions ranged from how best to learn the ropes of the inside rules and protocols that makes local party politics function, to best practices for getting young Latinos to the polls.

Thomas Bates of Democrats Work had a brilliant retort to the question about inside politics, that essentially boils down to: start your own organization, rally your friends, and change the way the inside politics works in your neighborhood. Considering the successes of Democrats Work these past few years, and my own experiences in politics, which essentially consists of telling people they were wrong until people paid attention and changed the way they operated, I think he’s got a pretty solid leg to stand on.

With regard to the format, though, it seems like the DNC Youth Council should be able to get more time for events and smaller panels that are more focused. There were ten of us on the panel and it was hard to get a word in edgewise. Any combination of 4 of us probably could have fielded all the questions that came our way. Pretty much the only thing I managed to say was a brief call for people to check out MoveOn's Vote Poke tool and a call to make Election Day registration a future project for youth orgs after November. I think more focused, smaller panels might be a more productive route in the future, though I understand that it gets harder to marshal press to multiple events during what is already a busy week.

I was a little disappointed to see that more College Democrats didn’t attend the panel. To be sure, it looked like CDA composed a decent portion of the audience (press and young delegates made up the rest), but considering that CDA’s national convention is happening concurrent to the DNCC, I would have hoped for a larger audience from the college crowd who are a big part of the future of youth organizing. I’m not sure what the story is there.

Kevin and I were discussing and it seemed like the second panel of the day, featuring young candidates and elected officials like Tim Ryan, Scott Kleeb and Congressman Greg Meeks seemed much more focused, and offered a good accounting of what it takes to run for office. The questions were also much more focused, and I have no doubt that helped as well.

Later in the day there was a panel on Hip Hop Politics, which I wanted to attend - especially in light of my recent post, which is getting some positive and negative reactions offline - but blogging duty called and I had to spend a few hours hunkered down at the Big Tent.

That turned out to be a pretty good move, as I got interviewed by the Chicago Sun Times about blogging. That was a little weird. I’m used to talking to media about young voters, not blogging. It was an adjustment and my talking points weren’t quite as polished. Hopefully it came out OK. By happenstance, I was interviewed at the same time as Georgia10 from Daily Kos, who stepped in with great answers when I got stumped. I also got shot for B-roll by ABC News. I guess they wanted to see “blogging” in action. Maybe you’ll see my mug or the Future Majority logo on the TeeVee. Let me know if you do. And if anyone attended the Hip Hop panel and wants to blog about it, shoot me an email.