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In the News . . .

  • I’m quoted at length in this Concord Monitor piece about technology and the 2008 election. I’ve become an “expert.” Cool.
  • Justin Olberman reports that Hillary Clinton is launching a Text Message program. Like Justin, I cringe at the thought. I’m so not sold on text messaging as a campaign tool yet … I hate spam and cold-calls on my phone, and I really don’t see us figuring out best practices or even getting a critical mass of participants in mobile activism until today’s tweens are in their early twenties.
  • Both Rock the Vote and YDA point to this piece on the power of the youth vote in today’s Boston Globe. It’s based on old(ish) data - the Harvard IOP Poll we covered here and here. I think they over-play the Darfur card (again), but its a well done piece none the less and worth a read. I echo Lindsay’s sentiments that it’s nice to see the narrative continue to swing in our favor.
  • Finally, looks like the military is cutting off soldier’s access to Web 2.0. Combined with the crackdown on mil-bloggers, what will that mean for the transparency of this war?
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May 14th, 2007 9:33am
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texting

Submitted by Sarah Burris on Mon, 2007-05-14 14:29.

I’m totally with you on the texting thing. I think its a new market so people are all getting off on it but the reality is that most people have to pay for incoming text messages and going outside your support base and recruiting based on texting is not cool. I don’t think it’ll catch on as a serious organizing technique unless texting becomes something other than just passing quick notes back and forth.

Texting Uses

Submitted by Michael Connery on Mon, 2007-05-14 14:48.

Great point with the call rates.

I think that it has some great organizing uses already - spontaneous activist coordination at things like the RNC and Seattle. But since you can’t actually register to vote via Text (at least not the whole process), and getting spam is just annoying. There are some good fundraising ideas out there, but I’ve heard that the process isn’t quite there yet.

Maybe in a few years, but it’s much too green a technology right now for my taste.

Building youth voting power

Submitted by Bloggernista (not verified) on Tue, 2007-05-15 02:18.

The two stories covering an increased interest in voting among young people and the use of new/social media as campaign tools continue a narrative that we need to really push. That is that young people are increasingly interested in politics, activism and voting and that any campaign that is serious about winning has to be serious about campaigning for the youth vote.

Whether the issue is the Iraq war, global climate change or 9/11, we should focus on amplifying the story of continuing increases in youth voting to get candidates to invest more resources in registering, courting and turning out young voters so that the narrative becomes reality and so that young people get a better sense of the political power that they can wield.

Its not, or should not be, all up to campaigns to do this. Its going to key that advocacy groups and organizers working with youth play a strong role in building leadership among young people and creating more opportunities both online and in the real world for youth to engage in political discussion, leadership development and organizing. And, no, this can’t be done in the old school way of telling young people what to do. It has to be about building community and helping develop the skills that young need to be effective.

Spreading the Narrative

Submitted by Michael Connery on Tue, 2007-05-15 04:57.

The narrative around young voters has indeed been changing in the last two years. We’re now a far cry from the botched coverage of the 2004 election, when the media mistakenly reported that youth turnout did not increase.

In large part that has been due to the work of the New Voters Project and Young Voter Strategies, who have regularly analyzed turnout and pushed hard numbers to the media as evidence of a surge in youth participation, as well as increased coverage in the non-political media thanks to new, culturally savvy orgs. In the campaign world, Young Voter Strategies has also been pushing campaigns (on both sides of the aisle) to increase the amount of resources that go to youth outreach. Next month they will release a report on the 2006 election detailing the fruits of that labor (ie - case studies like the Tester and Webb victories in the Senate and Joe Courtney (D-CT) in the House).

Increased leadership training on the part of new (and not so new) organizations is also on the rise, but what types of leaders those programs produce, and how they work within the entire spectrum of the progressive movement - from electoral, Democratic politics down to social justice work and community organizing - remains to be seen.

We’ve come a long way, but you are right that we are still not there. All of this work needs to continue to scale, we need to monitor quality and see just what our new programs are producing. I take your point that advocacy groups need stronger youth programs, but I have reservations about that. More and more, it seems that people are turned off by single issue advocacy and the old silos established by Boomer politics. We want more young people involved in advocacy work on issues of choice, the environment, etc - but is more youth outreach on the part of a group like NARAL the best way to go about it? I don’t know. Maybe the incorporation of “new blood” will help change those organizations to better fit into a 21st Century politics, but the fear is that they will incorporate that young blood into the current, 20th Century model, perpetuating it longer than is useful …

It’s a conundrum that needs working out.