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Challenges Facing Progressive Youth Politics

We need a political infrastructure for young people that will both cultivate future progressive leaders and drive new and diverse youth towards higher levels of progressive political participation. Below is a working list of the broad challenges associated with current progressive youth politics:

  • Progressive Political Programs Focus Exclusively on Youth Activists: Political programs and leadership training’s engage a small number of politically savvy young people and fail to mobilize new youth to participate in progressive politics

  • Progressive Youth Activists Are Not Diverse: Progressive youth activists lack significant economic, ethnic, and regional diversity, as the same student activists are recycled between a few progressive groups

  • Missing Strategic Management or System to Disseminate Information: Progressive political organizations often lack defined objectives and benchmarks to measure success; and they do not effectively share research and best practices to benefit the broader progressive community

  • Absence of a Progressive Identity and Infrastructure to Connect Young People: Unaffiliated, small, and self-funded progressive groups or individuals are not easily connected to a larger progressive political community

  • Progressive Activism and Democratic Politics Remain Miles Apart: Party leaders, activists, elected officials, and young people do not connect their support for progressive issues and values with support for the Democratic Party

What should be added or removed from the list? Many of the Dem/Progressive organizations that focus on youth and are financially secure have lacked vision and strategic capacity to address these critical problems. These challenges require action from our generation and the progressive community.

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April 24th, 2007 12:01am
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Progressive vs. Social Justice

Submitted by Michael Connery on Tue, 2007-04-24 04:28.

I’m about to jump in a cab to the airport, but wanted to say two things.

First, I think that your first point is right on and it is both one of the biggest problems and most eminently fixable. Lots of groups sprung up as part of the 2003/04 youth org explosion that did a really good job of culturally engaging non-activists in the electoral process. The tactics are out there and tested. Some groups do a good job of it (mostly those new groups that have managed to survive post ‘04). Many of the older groups and structures still fail to do this well.

One of the biggest hurdles here is that it’s not necessarily a structural or strategic problem. All these groups could theoretically engage in this kind of outreach, but they don’t. It’s a human resource problem in that the types of people running these programs came into progressive youth politics through an activisty, semi-professional mindset. That’s what they know and love about it. It’s cool, but its only part of the equation because as you point out, it only nets your a certain subset of young voter supporters.

Convincing folks that they need to supplement their tactics with more culturally relevant programs is something I hope we can do here at FM.

I think that your second, fourth and fifth points are all part of a single equation that I spoke about early as the Progressive Politics and Social Justice Divide. Your point is larger, but these three things really comprise that divide and are a big factor I think in accounting for lack of diversity.

My cab is here, got to go. More later.

human resources

Submitted by Jfink on Tue, 2007-04-24 06:09.

Thanks. I agree that the first point is the easiest to fix. Did you read Ryan Friedrichs evaluation of youth orgs during the 2004 Elections? I need to read your post on the divide and will reply. I think you mentioned a crucial item that is often overlooked…..human resources. For starters age (Baby Boomer or Gen X); political vs. non-profit vs. business experiences; and the professional status of key decision-makers. I am running out the door (will come back to the human resources later today) but wanted to add that I would also include the absence of accountability and missing answer to the question why? This is a problem that goes all the way to the top.

Different Categories of Infrastructre

Submitted by Michael Connery on Fri, 2007-04-27 10:55.

One other thing to remember when we’re talking about this is that building infrastructure is great, but there are lots of different types of infrastructure. Concurrent with the conversation you suggest, also need to be talking about the different types of infrastructure that fill these and other holes in the movement:

  • leadership training
  • GOTV
  • longterm engagement
  • partisan vs. “nonpartisan” ( issue-based)

Categories

Submitted by Jfink on Mon, 2007-04-30 10:39.

I like the list. Here is my take building off your list. Some of these items are subsets of larger items… I included everything because many items overlap.

-Leadership Training -Grassroots Organizing -Online Advocacy: website, database driven evaluation and engagement, utilizing social networking sites, managing email campaigns/list, list development, creating and placement of blog and internet ads, driving traffic to website, etc.. - Communications Skills: Blogging, Journalism, video productions, using - Campaign Management (registration, IDing, GOTV, communication etc…) -Long-Term Engagement -Mentoring program - State Infrastructure (building, so young people don’t all move to DC - opportunities to practice politics or fight for issues in home state) - Research - testing messages, strategies, evaluating, focus groups, surveys, -Partisan -Non partisan - (how to lobby or influence law makers at any level) -Campaigns and State Coordinated Campaigns

I am starting to ramble….so I am going to stop.