Young People For

Bumped. --Craig

Crossposted at Young People For

One month has passed since I've begun serving as a Health Fellow at Greenlining Institute, a multi-ethnic policy advocacy organization, courtesy of Young People For's Leadership Academy. Before commencing my fellowship with Greenlining's Bridges to Health Team, I had some prior knowledge about coalition building. I recognized that there are different entities involved in coalition building, and therefore, different opinions (even voices of dissent), whose alliance exists to achieve a common purpose. When I came to Greenlining, I was immediately drawn to the organization's leadership in and success with coalition building. How do you build a coalition? What are the factors that must be taken into account in determining coalition membership? As the coalition expands, does decision making become less time efficient?

The formalized Greenlining Coalition's history traces back to 1979, though as the description indicates, several of its members had been collaborating since 1971. The Greenlining Coalition describes its unified purpose as the following:

The basic ideology that unifies the coalition is the understanding that increasing the size of the pie for all communities makes more sense than fighting for crumbs. Beyond ethnic diversity, the coalition represents diverse constituents that include faith-based organizations, minority business associations, community development corporations, health advocates, traditional civil rights organizations, and minority media outlets.

As noted, the Greenlining Coalition is comprised of about 40 organizations, representing the rich ethnic and cultural diversity of California. Can you actually have the California Hispanic Chamber of Commerce on the same coalition as the First AME Church? Can business groups work with faith-based organizations? When both parties share a common purpose of empowering and creating more equitable outcomes for underrepresented communities, the answer is, sure you can. In fact, history shows that Martin Luther King, Jr.'s effort in organizing and promoting the economic advancement of union workers was aligned with his leadership role at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, GA.

While my work with Greenlining thus far has reaffirmed the strength in building a coalition that represents the communities it is intended to advocate for and serve, I am gradually learning about the processes involved in determining acceptance into the coalition. Just because your group's mission statement is aligned with the Coalition's, does not guarantee automatic membership. How well would your organization work with the existing coalition members? Is your mission statement just words, or is your organization and staff truly putting the intended mission into practice and addressing the needs of the target population? Does your organization have a track record of putting the community's needs above your own group's interests?

As I am learning about coalition building through Greenlining, I am, as expected, coming up with more questions than answers. As the Young People For Leadership Academy has taught me, and Greenlining has reaffirmed, community organizing and advocacy is a life-long learning process. I'm constantly adding more skills to my toolbox while the needs, even demographics, of the communities I serve, continue to change. At this point, I have no clear-cut responses to my inquiries, but will be sure to share updates on my understanding of coalition building.

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Bumped. -- Craig

Crossposted at Young People For

On occasion, my friends and I tune in to Fox News to hear the latest attacks from right-wing conservatives. One of my rather opinionated friends commented on how "frightening" and "awkward" these Fox commentators appeared. It was as though they were unknowingly disturbed by the inaccuracy of their reports. In contrast, as I reflected on my experience thus far with the progressive movement, most recently with Young People For, I thought that my friend's words were not all fitting for the fellow activists I've met through my social justice work; in fact, the face of the progressive movement is quite attractive.

As noted in my previous blog, I am currently participating in Young People For's (YP4) Leadership Academy with 20 other fellows. Prior to my involvement with YP4, I was already engaged in numerous student-led and youth development programs. As an undergraduate, I was fortunate enough to obtain seed money from Cal Corps at UC Berkeley to start South of Market (SoMa) Scholars Mentorship Program, a one-on-one mentorship program whose mission is to provide academic and social support for low-income adolescents of color in the Bay Area. However, my experience in student/social activism, as rewarding as it is, also has its share of shortcomings. While some funding has been provided for student-led programs, there has been little investment made in the leadership development, both the professional and personal aspects, of the young activists who are at the forefront of this organizations.

Here comes the Young People For Leadership Academy.

I knew I was set on integrating my passion for social justice and empowering disadvantaged communities with my interest in health and medicine. Nevertheless, I still had personal concerns. How would I balance my personal and professional life? Would I be able to fulfill my responsibilities as a wife and mother while continuing to actively advocate for the medically underserved? How?

Through my experience in the YP4 Leadership Academy thus far, I have been able to explore these questions, and then some. I have met other young progressive leaders who have the same concerns. I have been connected and placed with The Greenlining Institute, a multi-ethnic research and policy advocacy organization, through which I have developed relationships with older professionals who have successfully balanced their personal responsibilities with their social activism. Thus, in the process of nurturing and creating a healthier world, I have accepted that it's okay, even necessary, to take care of my own needs. No need to let myself go-- I can help keep the progressive movement sexy.

My name is April Joy Damian, a guest blogger from Young People For (YP4). I graduated from UC Berkeley in Ethnic Studies, completed a post-bac program at City College of San Francisco, and am currently participating as a YP4 Leadership Academy Fellow prior to beginning medical school.

I first heard about YP4 through an email from a partner organization. My initial reaction to the name of the organization was, "Young people for what?" Intrigued by its name, I decided to visit the YP4 website where I noticed that various issues pop up after the title "Young People For," including, but not limited to, public education, religious freedom, and environmental protection. Thus, while the YP4 home page provides the organization's mission, YP4 in my own words, encourages young people to come up with the process (how) and substance (what) while providing the tools to allow young leaders to achieve both. Rather than dictate what issues are important and the best mechanisms to address these, YP4 challenged me to take a stance on a social concern and to take ownership of how to best resolve it.

As mentioned earlier, I am currently participating in the 2008-2009 Young People For Leadership Academy. The college bubble, both at UC Berkeley as well as at City College of San Francisco, was a mixed blessing. It was in college that I discovered my unique role in the progressive movement and passion to serve as a leader in social justice. I was fortunate enough to meet other like-minded students with whom I was able to build a network of support. As graduation drew closer and medical school was just around the corner, I knew that the end of college did not necessarily mean the end of my "social justice phase." Rather, I wanted to my involvement in the progressive movement to be my way of life. The Leadership Academy was just the right antidote.

As noted in a previous YP4 blog on the Leadership Academy, my participation in the program has provided me with the post-college/pre-grad school support system I need to continue in my progressive work in medicine/public health. The program has weaved a beautiful balance between developing my capacity as a young professional through mentorship and coaching sessions with Cathy Wasserman, while nurturing my humanity and need to laugh, cry, and even simply rest. Through the Leadership Academy, I hope to grow in my leadership capacity both in the professional and personal realms. I hope to have my character, values, and opinions challenged, while also challenging my 20 fellow participants and program staff to think differently.

Kevin Bondelli has agreed to join the crew here at Future Majority. He'll be writing on Mondays (and I hope more frequently than that). If you like Kevin's writing, you can also check out his personal blog. I'll have a bio up for Kevin on the About page shortly. --Mike

Haven't you heard? A strange phenomenon has taken place in 2008: the youth vote has spontaneously materialized after years of non-existence. There must have been something in the water fountains on college campuses, or maybe Barack Obama has a magic flute, the pied piper of disinterested millenials. Nobody could have anticipated these levels of youth participation.

The previous paragraph pretty much sums up the general response of the media and political pundits to the record-shattering turnout of youth in this year's Democratic primaries and caucuses. They seem to be blind to the fact that youth turnout has been steadily increasing since 2002, largely due to the efforts of youth organizations like the Young Democrats of America, Young Voter PAC, the Hip Hop Caucus, and many others.

Over the years campaigns have ignored young voters because they were not likely to vote, and youth were not likely to vote because they were never contacted by campaigns. This self-fulfilling prophecy over the years had left many young people feeling ignored, unimportant, and helpless. Helpless because politicians were more likely to vote for things that were at the expense of young Americans over any other demographic due to the low risk of electoral consequences. The young activists that attempted to lobby against such actions were almost always unsuccessful, it being hard to recruit supporters when years of experience made such efforts seem futile, and with the elected officials convinced that the youth would once again fail to turn out in significant numbers.

Organizations like the Young Democrats of America knew that the American youth were not apathetic, only disengaged. Youth peer-to-peer programs were developed and it was confirmed by research that such programs were extremely effective at increasing youth turnout. The success of these programs led to increased funding of youth organizations, now seen as an important investment for the progressive movement. The increase in resources allowed youth organizations to implement their programs in more places and improve their methods from experience. More and more young people were getting engaged. The movement was building.

Organizations such as the Young Elected Officials Network and Young People For were recruiting and training young candidates to run for school boards, city councils, state legislatures, and even federal office. Young people who previously had no ties to politics were seeing their friends and peers running for office, and winning.

Campaigns had been unwilling to use its resources to contact young voters partially because of the relative cost and difficulty of successfully making contacts using traditional methods. Web 2.0 and social networking has dramatically lowered these barriers to contacting young voters. Peer-to-peer and word of mouth contact are facilitated by social networks such as Facebook and Myspace. The groups and events functions of these networks make it much easier for youth to organize themselves and recruit their friends. Youth organizations have been able to coordinate their offline and online efforts to reach a mass of young voters that would have not been possible without these advances in technology.

So finally we come to the question "Why is the increase of youth participation so dramatic in 2008?" First, as I illustrated in my previous paragraphs, the youth vote movement has been building up to this since 2002. Second, the failures of George W. Bush and the Republican Party combined with the quality of the Democratic candidates have motivated many young people into action. Third, the Presidential campaigns have learned from the successes of youth organizations. They hired youth outreach staff, addressed the issues that are most important to youth, created youth constituent groups within their campaigns, and have taken advantage of new media and social networking. Finally, the youth organizations that have been building this movement are stronger than ever.

We as young activists have to be careful not to fall into the trap of implying that the increases in voter turnout this year is only the result of a single campaign, or that 2008 is an anomaly. By not acknowledging the history of this movement, by allowing the youth vote to appear to be merely the characteristic of a single campaign, or by forgetting the youth turnout increases since 2002, we run the risk of inadvertently perpetuating the idea that the youth vote is an ephemeral phenomenon. 2008 is not a fluke, it is a culmination of years of effort and effective strategy, and the youth movement will continue to strengthen and build, from the primaries, to the general election, and onward.

I'm catching up on my reading this week and just caught this post by Matt Stoller of Open Left in which he praises the emerging progressive leadership pipeline.

Good Progressive Movement Happenings:

Today, I learned that Ezra Temko was just elected to the Newark City Council in Delaware. Temko's slogan was 'Economic Progress, Environmental Sustainability, Responsive Representation'. He ran a grassroots campaign and knocked on every door in Newark. He also graduated from college in 2006, and comes out of the Young People for the American Way training program. He is now entering the Young Elected Officials Network, another People for the American Way program.

It takes a long time to develop and nurture talent, to learn how to run campaigns and to build support networks to make sure that progressive policies follow the election of progressives. You can just look at the collapse of congestion pricing in New York City to see how electing Democrats, even progressive ones, and keeping them unconnected to larger networks will prevent us from reaching our goals. Conversely, looking at FISA or net neutrality shows us that the networks we are building become much stronger than their individual parts.

Young People for the American Way and the Young Elected Officials Network deserve a congratulations today. They set their sites four years ago on building the next generation of leaders, and they are here, running organizations, and getting elected. And three other fellows from Young People for America have announced their candidacies for local elections, including a native American in South Dakota.

Building diverse leadership is going to take decades, but the payoff is going to be a kinder, saner, and gentler world. It's what we've all been working towards. If you date the founding of our movement in 1998, with the creation of Moveon, and you look at the creation of organizations like YP4 and YEO just four years ago, you can see that it's really happening. People like Ezra Temko, Daniel Biss, and Darcy Burner are already showing remarkable levels of leadership, and showing all of us that our work, our effort, our energy, our invested money, is showing signs of real impact.

Matt is right that sometimes it is hard to see the consequences of our actions. What we're doing is building power and talent gradually, year by year. But as hard as it is to see at times, it is happening thanks to YP4, YEO, and many many more organizations. We should take the time to highlight these successes as much as possible.

The Young Elected Officials Network has over a hundred candidates in its network. YP4 has hundreds of fellows that are currently enrolled or graduates of its program. GOTV focused groups have turned out young voters in ever increasing numbers for two straight elections. The League and it's partner group Opportunity Maine passed major legislation boosting college affordability and student debt relief for young people in their state.

What other success stories are out there that haven't received their due attention?

Our friend Tsedey Betru of DMI Scholars has two podcasts up on the DMI Blog.

In the first, she talks to Iara Peng, founder of Young People For. The two discuss how YPF got started and the future of the progressive youth movement. Listen here.

In the second, she talks to David Halperin of Campus Progress about the entrepreneurial spirit in today’s progressive youth movement, and how Campus Progress fits into the mix. Listen here.

Both are about 10 minutes long and worth a listen if you are curious about the work of these groups.

Adam Conner, (of Mark Warner's Forward Together PAC, Young People For Fellow, and The Roosevelt Institution) whom I met briefly at RootsCampDC, is blogging about the importance of infrastructure from the 2007 Young People For Conference.

Go read it, go recommend it.

Then remember that not everyone gets to attend great conferences like those by YPF. So if you are one of the lucky few, go share your knowledge at the DIY Organizing Wiki.

I have some quibbles with this article (I'm not sure Rock the Vote should count as a progressive youth organization, and many new organizations are not included in her figures), but Iara Peng of Young People For speaks truth about the state of progressive youth funding (emphasis mine):

Last year alone, the Right invested $48 million in 11 youth-focused organizations aimed at increasing the number of ideologically friendly campus papers, fostering networks of students on campuses, shifting the way that students self-identify in terms of political ideology, providing skills and strategies training, and promoting right-wing values.

...

Collectively, we're (youth groups) doing great work, but we're not doing enough. Right-wing groups spend more than ten times as much on long-term political leadership development than we do, and financial trends over the past four years show that progressive leadership development organizations are actually, on average, experiencing a decline in revenue. Unlike their conservative counterparts, youth-focused progressive organizations are often funded with a "buying," not "building," mentality, meaning that donors want their contribution to have immediate payoffs, such as election-year voter registration, but are not focusing on investing in the strategic, long-term sustainability of those organizations.

The folks at Emerging Democratic Majority agree with Peng's assessment, and are encouraging progressives to donate more to youth training and mentorship.

Most interesting to me is the $48 million figure for conservative youth funding. That's roughly equivalent to all the money distributed last year by the Democracy Alliance.

That's not just short-sighted or disconcerting, its shameful.