Youth Participation at the DNC

I have three awesome videos of about youth participation at the convention from Howard Dean, Alexandra Acker of YDA, and another women whose name I missed talking about the delegate count. Unfortunatey, my Flip camera USB connection seems to be busted and I can't upload them. So no pretty movies, just text.

Acker, the Executive Director of the Young Democrats, has been to three conventions. She's been everything from a volunteer to a super delegate back before anyone even cared about super delegates. She noted that youth participation in general is way up this year. As I've noted before, young people are 16% of all convention participants and there are 631 actual youth delegates.

Acker noted, however, that there are places where youth participation continues to lag. Young delegates are still not equal to young voter's share of the Democratic electorate (technically all demographics are supposed to be represented in proportion to their share of the electorate). And thus far, there have been no young speakers on the podium during the convention. Many of us expected to see a passing of the torch as Chelsea Clinton introduced her mother, and Acker expressed disappointment that Chelsea's role was reduced to narrating a video about her mother's life.

At the final DNC Youth Council meeting today - which was probably the highest attendance I've yet seen at a Youth Council Event, Howard Dean told all the young participants that they need to vote early, get their friends to vote, and get their parents to vote, but voting is not enough. Young people need move beyond voting and start running for office. This echoed a speech Dean delivered at Netroots Nation earlier in the summer.

In terms of non-delegate youth faces within the hall, the DNC Youth Council handed out a number of passes (not sure how many yet) to Invesco Field, and College Democrats were also able to get may of their members credentials to see Obama's acceptance speech. This seems to be the exception of the week, however, not the rule. Credentials to the Pepsi Center for young people were few and far between, and word is that the College Democrats weren't able to offer any credentials at all on Mon - Wed. This seems like a big oversight on the part of the DNCC.

In short: more young people than ever are participating as delegates this year, but young faces in the rest of the hall are fewer and far between for any young Democratic activists lacking insider connections. And for a political party that is riding a new wave of support among young voters, the lack of young faces addressing the convention is very disappointing.