Funding the Next Generation of Progressives

In their July/August issue, Utne explores the differences between how Conservatives and Progressives build their bench. It's an OK primer on how the Republicans fund/foster leadership programs for their young prospects, and how Progressives are playing catch-up (the real article to read here is My Right Wing Degree), but I'm not wild about some of the examples they used to depict young progressives. Particularly their focus on GreenCorps. Whether that says more about the depth of reporting or the state of young progressive leadership programs and those who attend them is debatable. And it probably should be debated.

But in writing this, I wanted to highlight one particularly troubling fact (emphasis mine):

"We do have more people [than the right] to draw from as raw material on college campuses," says David Halperin. But the Leadership Institute has a $9.4 million budget, and its Campus Leadership Program is expanding rapidly. Between September 2004 and May 2006 the number of conservative student groups it helped start grew from 216 to 731. This fall Blackwell will dispatch 60 field staff members across the country and expects to push that total to 1,000 groups by the end of the year. By contrast, Green Corps and Campus Progress each have fewer than 20 staffers and budgets of about $1.5 million.

To put it bluntly, this is bullshit. In 2004, over $200 million was poured into building progressive infrastructure for the election. Many of those groups, like America Coming Together, were mothballed after the election. Some are reemerging now that the election cycle is heating up, others disapeared for good. The amount of that money directed to "young voter programs" during that same period was probably somewhere around the vicinity of $6-8 million.

Despite the fact that many of these groups (Music for America, PunkVoter, Indyvoter, Young Voter Alliance, MoveOn Student Action) were started from scratch in late 2003 and early 2004, and most of the staff were political newbies, we were still able to increase turnout to record levels and young people were the only voting block in the country to swing for Kerry. That $6-8 million was clearly the best investment progressive funders made in the 2004 election cycle. So why are our "youth" groups struggling to find funding in these off years, and why aren't progressive funders working to correct the imbalance between the Right and the Left in building our respective benches? More after the jump.

Young voters are the keys to a future Democratic majority. Let's look at the facts:

• We are the largest voting block in the country aside from the Boomers, with over 60-70 million members
• We were the only group to break for Kerry in '04. (pdf)
• We've shown that we're ready to show up in off year elections with young voters helping achieve progressive victories in 2005 and 2006.
• We are the most diverse group in the country and are most of us are unreceptive to conservative "wedge issues."

Yet, as I've heard from friends who are heavily involved in youth organizing, many of the groups designed to reach this vital segment of the electorate are struggling to obtain funds. And as the Utne article makes clear, the Right has a clear money advantage in reaching millenials. This is bad for two reasons: 1) The right could potentially erase some of the gains Progressives made among young voters. If you read the NPI study linked above, many older millenials don't fall for "wedge" issues," but on matters of security and some social issues, the younger 13-18 year old segment is still a toss-up in terms of voter-ID. 2) Conservatives are investing heavily in the development of the next generation of their leadership, while our current generation of leaders is sucking up money and resources and inhibiting the development of our future leaders.

While some people are starting to get it, it seems that most of the money men who help build movements still don't realize that the biggest bang for their buck, and the smartest move for the progressive movement overall, is investing in programs to capture, organize, and train young voters and young progressive leaders.

Take a look at the quote from Utne again - in 2004, approximately $6-8 million was spent on ALL progressive young voter organizing, compared to $9.4 million that the Leadership Institute - a single organization - receives annually. That's a crisis in the making. Let's keep it from happening.