Next Steps for the Youth Movement

Promoted by Kevin

(This is an article that I wrote for the Cal Berkeley Democrats magazine Smart Ass shortly before the Inauguration, and finally got around to posting online...)

Barack Obama’s historic victory on November 4, 2008, was a watershed moment for the youth progressive movement. Twenty-three million Americans under the age of 30 went to the polls this fall and voted for Obama by a 2-1 margin, the largest partisan margin in American history. In California, the results were even more impressive, as Obama carried 80% of the 18-24 year old vote in California compared to McCain’s 18%.

But even as we bask in the glory of our recent accomplishments, the question on everyone’s mind is: what’s next? Where do go from here? Will young people stay involved post-election? To answer these questions, we must begin by looking back on how we got here.

Many in the media have told a narrative that Barack Obama mobilized the youth vote, which had failed to turnout in 2004. That’s simply not true. As Michael Connery wrote in his seminal book Youth to Power, “After the 2000 election, civic participation among young people began to rise, and in 2004, young voter turnout at the polls jumped for the first time in over a decade. This rise in civic participation continued during the 2005 and 2006 elections, proving not to be a historical blip, but the start of a trend of increasing political involvement by American youth.”

It was during the lead up to the 2004 election that a whole host of new progressive youth organizations sprang up and harnessed the dissatisfaction young people were feeling about the direction of the country. The Roosevelt Institution became the nation’s first student run think tank. The League of Young voters was formed to reach beyond the low hanging fruit of college students and organize youth in low-income communities and communities of color. The Center for Progressive Leadership, Young People For, and many other groups began training the next generation of young progressive leaders.

The tremendous youth support that Obama received was as much a product of the youth movement as the movement was a product of him. This is important to understand because Obama was only one side of the coin, and as he leaves for Washington, the infrastructure that existed long before him will remain in place.

What will change however is the focus of the movement. For the last eight years, young progressives have been united by a desire to unseat conservatives from power. Now that we finally have our turn behind the wheel, our activism will shift from campaigning to policy and advocacy. The movement may splinter to some degree as different organizations focus on different issues, but the engagement will continue because we are far from solving the many challenges that face us as a nation.

In California, we have no shortage of big projects to work on. Regardless of the outcome of the California Supreme Court’s upcoming decision on Prop 8, the losing side will put this issue back on the ballot, and young people will need to ready for another fight for marriage equality. We will also have hotly contested races for Governor, Senate, Attorney General, and other statewide offices in 2010. Not to mention, the 2/3rds rule in the legislature that has caused gridlock on passing state budgets for decades.

While many in the mainstream media spent the weeks following the election pontificating about whether or not youth engagement would sustain, those of us doing youth organizing had no doubt that our peers would stay involved. Would a budding new composer suddenly end her musical career after her first successful masterpiece? Of course not. Success is an incredible motivator, and although the purpose of our activism may become less clearly defined for a time, the enthusiasm that was sparked in this election will continue.