A Manifesto (of sorts) and a Blueprint for the Future

Prompted by Joshua Gorman, one of our best commenters here at Future Majority, I've written an off-the-cuff manifesto of sorts about how this site got started, why everything here looks "half-built," and what I would like this site to eventually become. This is totally a work in progress, and everyone should feel free to throw in their two cents.

In 2003 and 2004, there was an explosion of organizations created by and/or for "young people." Music for America (which those of us here created), The League of Young Voters, Young People For, Oregon Bus Project, Drinking Liberally, Punk Voter, the National Hip Hop Political Convention . . . and others. Some of these groups survived, others have downsized or are on the way out. A few are scaling upwards. In the following years, other organizations were created - Campus Progress, New Era Colorado, Forward Montana, etc. Basically all the groups on the sidebar except for the "old hands" like College Democrats and Young Democrats.

During this coming election cycle, I think we'll see a few new groups similar to Forward Montana or New Era Colorado spring up. Maybe people will replicate the Oregon Bus Project in other states. Otherwise, most existing groups are networking and trying to scale upwards. New ways of organizing via social networking are also springing up - possible becoming the 2007/2008 equivalent of the ".org youth boom" we saw in 2003.

A network is growing that is building a place at the table for young people in politics; and it's not being served up to us condescendingly by adults. In most cases it is being created by Millennials or by people just outside the Millennial Generation (very early 30s). This week someone referred to these slightly older folks as the "aunts and uncles" of the new progressive youth movement.

Collectively, this is what I identify as the new progressive youth movement.

The purpose of this site is to create an online space that covers the activities of these organizations, supplements them with our own creative ideas. I hope to connect these groups to younger folks on the ground who are interested in politics and use the internet/netroots as their primary information source, and also to create a narrative about these groups and young voters in the broader netroots community. This is why I frequently cross-post on MyDD and DailyKos and then ask you to recommend my diaries. I'm trying to draw Millennials back to this site, and also raise awareness about our issues, our place in electoral politics, and our actions among those two very important - but generally older - netroots communities.

Ideally - with the help of all of you, and the leaders of all the organizations I've mentioned above - I would like to make Future Majority the Millennial Generation's version of MyDD.com. A rigorous (though not always serious - humor and a touch of culture are very important) place to go online, talk strategy and politics, and eventually, when we have more users, effect some sort of change. This change could take the form of actions like those sponsored by BlogPac, or even focus on influencing how particular youth groups operate.

The reason this site is unfinished is that I have a full-time job that has nothing to do with the youth vote. I work for a social justice organization as their web strategy guy. I'm also writing a book about all of the above - doing research, conducting interviews and writing at 10 page clips is time consuming and exhausting when you have to do it on top of a 40-hour work week AND keep up this blog. Not that I'm complaining. I love this blog. I love writing here, and I love it even more when all of you comment and we get into discussions here on the site. This blog has created a lot of opportunities for me, and for that I'm grateful.

I also have co-bloggers.

Alex, who posted a lot around here in the early days, has less time to post recently because he is working as a campaign manager for a Philadelphia City Council election. When the primary is over, I hope he'll come online and write all about his experiences.

Josh Koenig, my other co-blogger, is trying to jump start his own tech company. He's also a really busy guy. So that's why improvements to the site are few and far between. We don't have money to pay folks - this is a labor of love - so we have to rely on our own resources, volunteer work from our friends, and what spare time we can scrounge between our daily lives and the need to keep blogging and providing new content here.

That said, we are working to improve the site, and we've got some plans in the works. Some of you may notice that we switched designs a few weeks ago and that the site load much faster in recent weeks. That's because Josh upgraded the site software, and his company has agreed to host Future Majorty - gratis. We are looking to redesign the site to bring in new features and make everything work a lot more seemlessly and look nice to-boot. We have a person who is working on a new logo for us. He's also working on an overall design for both the FM site and the DIY Wiki. When that's done, Josh will do the CSS work to implement it. So we're hoping to have some nice logos, a tag line, video feeds coming in from YouTube, and a few more features. Hopefully in the next month if we can all find the time. If you've got ideas, please drop them in the comments.

As we work towards this goal - making Future Majority the Millennial equivalent of MyDD (with some more creative uses of the bells and whistles of "Web 2.0"), I hope that we'll also start to get more traffic. I hope we'll have more great guest posters (like the folks who run all the organizations mentioned above). Just recently, Ryan Jackson of Chug Bleach joined our team. I love his writing style. He's funny as hell, smart about the inside baseball of politics, and I hope he'll bring a fresh perspective and a bigger audience here. There are a number of you out there who have guest-blogging privileges. Please use them more frequently. Eventually I would like to institute a Diary function, so that all of you who come here and comment can write your own blogs, vote on them, recommend them, etc. By November 2008, I envision this as a true community site. I would love all of your thoughts on the best ways to go about accomplishing this.

So I hope that provides the clarity that Joshua thought was lacking. I hope everyone has a better understanding of where we've been, where we are now, and where I think we're going. I wish I could devote all of my time to this. Maybe some day, that will be possible. Until then, we'll keep bootstrapping this site as best we can. I hope all of you can help, and thank everyone who has already - with their ideas, their comments, their blogs, their work on the wiki, their links, or even just their eyeballs. Like I said, this is a labor of love, and I know I intend to keep working at it.