Philadelphians Against Santorum

Crossposted at Young Philly Politics

In this series of videos you can see Philly Against Santorum volunteers and myself setting up and working a table at an R5 Productions show at the Starlight Ballroom.

The first video shows me introducing the various materials that Philly Against Santorum used for our youth outreach to that night's volunteers. On this particular occasion we had to make do with a smaller set of materials, since the box of materials that we usually left at the Starlight was misplaced:

Next we have a very nice little video that shows all of the partisan project posters on a mirrored wall at the Starlight, while a band plays in the background:

Finally, here's a video of the PAS table in action:

Two University of the Arts Students, Alana Hoffman and Raeann Drew, took video of some of the youth outreach work that I did for Philadelphians Against Santorum during the 2006 election, for their documentary: "Generation Gap". They were nice enough to send me some of their footage, as well as the full documentary, and gave me permission to post it all to YouTube. I'll be posting this video in a few posts over the next week or so, but if you want to see the entire series check out the Future Majority YouTube page.

Here are two videos of Anna Hyclak and Kayla Hilliard, two Temple students who I met while doing outreach on campus with the Temple College Democrats, and who ended up becoming two of the best volunteers for the PAS youth program. They were also the ones who connected us with the filmmakers and they are featured in a majority of the clips.

Here are Anna and Kayla working the table at the First Unitarian Church on the night before the election:

More to come soon!

Crossposted at Young Philly Politics

Once I knew that I would be doing outreach at concerts and on campus i started to pull together the materials that I would use to help with outreach and persuasion. When I first talked to Ray and Jen I had an idea of what types of materials would work in the environments that I'd find myself and towards the youth demographic that I was targeting. The main thing that I wanted was to make a series of youth oriented issue cards, similar to Music for America's issue cards (see below for some examples). These cards would have been co-branded between Philadelphians Against Santorum (PAS) and a few of organizations that we were either partnering with or that we felt exemplified the Left's stance on one or another issue. The idea would have been to have a series of cards that provided talking points for our volunteers, educated the people who read them, and gave a sense of the broad coalition that makes up the Left.

But once I got the job (in mid-September) and started to take a cold hard look at the calender, I realized that there was simply no time to create a series of my own materials, that I would have had to come up with the text and, given PAS' limited budget, either design them myself or find a designer that would do the work both quickly and cheaply/for free. And so, with only a month left to register people in PA, I decided to improvise, and I began to scrounge together whatever materials that I could from friends and allies around the state and nation to supplement the field materials that PAS had developed.  This post is a look at the materials that I ended up using at Concerts and on Campus during the 2006 Senate Race in PA.

As I noted, we mainly turned, to organizations that we were allied with, or whom I knew personally, to come up with materials. That said, these are the things that I was looking for as I pulled together my field materials:

• Variety - As I noted above, I wanted the materials I used to give an idea of the broad spectrum of issues that liberals/progressives/Democrats stand for & I also wanted to make sure that we had a diverse enough set of issue based materials so that people whom we talked with could "self select" the issues that we talked to them about.
• Design - Very often I find that left leaning political people have little to no understanding of communications design (I definitely am), but it is not hard to see the effects that well produced literature has (makes it more attractive, makes it simpler, makes it more professional, etc). Music for America's materials are always well designed and attractive, but the Partisan Project posters (see below) were probably the simplest, and most effective communications tool that I had in my "field chest" in 2006, and they will be the #1 thing I will use in 2008!
• Content - As the cards served as both talking points and as communicative tools, we needed to be clearly written & talk about what progressives/liberals/Democrats stand for while keeping the information as compact and to the point as possible.
• Appeal - Young people like posters, buttons, and stickers, and as such I sought these out the most (these were, by far, the main items that we gave away at shows and on campus).  The more attractive the materials, the easier it is to attract people to us (instead of going up to people's doors, or even tapping them on their shoulder at a show), which generally makes people much more receptive to our spiel(s), which makes us much more effective. And when you give people something that they want for free, they are much more likely to be receptive to what you have to say.

In the end we only used materials from a few organizations besides our own. Here's a look at what we used:

Crossposted at Young Philly Politics

As I noted in my first post-mortem piece, my plan for getting "the kids" to the polls centered around work at concerts and on campus. In my second in a series of post-mortem pieces I'll look specifically at the concerts we worked, including an introduction to Sean Agnew and R5 Productions, who made this work possible, and helped ensure it was a success.

Sean Agnew & R5 Productions

As you know by now, much of my outreach centered around working at concerts thrown by Philly's #1 independent promotions company- Sean Agnew's R5 Productions. Now, for those who don't know, or at least know of, Sean, he is, to use the scientific term, "The Man".  Sean has single-handedly kept the Philadelphia independent music scene fresh and available to kids of all ages, while going up against the two horrendous monopolies that dominate American concerts and events: Clear Channel (whose concert division has recently been "spun off" into Live Nation) & Ticketmaster. If you want an idea about what Sean does, and who he has to go up against, check out this Harper's Magazine cover story that looks at Sean and his much larger competitors, or just head to the First Unitarian Church (22nd and Chestnut), the Starlight Ballroom (9th & Spring Garden), or Johnny Brenda's (Girard & Fairmount) and check out one of the extremely well attended and almost always entertaining shows that R5 throws! He also recently had a stalker blog dedicated to spotting him, which I'm just assuming means that he is hot shit, and he shares Ed Rendell's love for politics and the Eagles (though I don't think he share's Ed's love affair with fast/junk food or yelling at little league umpires- which is my earliest memory of the Gov). And while Sean is definitely not the type of guy who most people would think of as political, and definitely not someone who politicians might look to for help and or advice, he is very passionate about politics and is exactly the type of cultural community leader whom democrats should be looking to work with. Here's Sean's current myspace picture:

Sean & Ed Agree! The Eagles should be 8-1!!!

I met Sean during the Presidential campaign of 2004, which you can read about in my thesis section Culture in Need of a Home, an Idea is Born, if you are so inclined. And, as some of you may know, I have been working with Sean since 2005 to try and build a permanent space for R5 which can support sustainable political activism and provide a home/working space for political, cultural, and civic non-profits (maybe some for-profits as well). The project was called 8th Street, but that location, which as you might guess is on 8th Street, is no longer a possibility for us and so if/when we get started we'll have to choose a new name. But at anyrate, as the summer months slipped by, and as it became apparent that I was not going to be able to get everything together before the election, I decided that I would try and make the political side of the project happen, which, as I noted in my first piece, Ray & Jen helped make it into a reality.

What I didn't mention fully in my first piece is why culturally bound political activism is so important, especially when it comes to youth outreach and engagement. If you're interested you can read a letter that I helped to write that explains why it is so important to bring together politics and culture under a single roof here: Keys to a Future Majority: Building a Model for Sustainable Progressive Activism. My colleague Mike Connery has also written some great pieces on this connection, the best of which is his two part Living Liberally: Reforming Democratic "Youth" Programs (part 2 is here).

This is what the future majority looks like. A small part of the crowd at an R5 Productions Concert at the Starlight Ballroom.

Connecting culture and politics is important for a few reasons.

Crossposted at Young Philly Politics

A couple of months back I mentioned that I had proposed and accepted a job doing political outreach and organizing with Philadelphians Against Santorum (PAS). Since then I have been completely overwhelmed with the work at hand and a big move back to Philly (I lived in Brooklyn for the past 8 years with my wife), so I wasn't able to write as much as I would have liked to (and lord knows I love to self-promote!). But now that things have come to an end (and what a sweet, sweet ending it was!) I wanted to tell you a bit about the program I ran through PAS, and give you some of my thoughts and experiences from this election cycle. Since I am still working to get my life back to a sense of normality, I still don't have a ton of time, so I am going to keep this post short, and expand on it over the next few days.

How it all started...
This past summer I worked for the amazing documentary The War Tapes, doing outreach to the netroots, web support, and bit of event planning. As the theatrical release was coming to an end, sometime late in the summer, I looked around at the lack of political groups working in Philly and I started to get really nervous that the left was once again poised to snatch defeat from the arms of victory. I only knew of one group- Philadelphians Against Santorum- that was doing any sort of field work in the city, and as far as I could tell there weren't any groups at all doing youth outreach, which really shocked me given the fact that Kerry owed his victory in PA during the 2004 Presidential Elections to the 2-1 advantage he received from people under 25 (every age group over 25 voted for Bush by a small margin). At around the same time I noticed that PAS was hiring for field organizers, and I shot PAS founder/Director Ray Murphy an e-mail to tell him that I was interested in working with/for them.

A week later I met with Ray and PAS' Assistant Director Jen Murphy (not related to each other or to Congressional candidate Lois or Congressional-elect Patrick) and listened to what they were trying to accomplish and how they thought that they could do so. Basically, Ray's plan was to knock on the doors of new and infrequent voters, call them on the phone, and make sure that they got their asses to the polls on election day (I'll let Ray explain it better, or check out some of the great press pieces that PAS received). The plan sounded good, but I knew where I could have the most effect, both in terms of this election and for builaing the Future Majority that we will need to fix the multitude of problems our generation faces (or will face in the near future) and it wasn't on some stranger's doorstep. What I proposed to Ray was to implement the political side of a project that I have been working on for over a year now (and which I continue to try and make into a reality), which is an adaptation of the model that Music for America uses to bring young people (like yours truly) into the network enabled left-leaning movement. Basically, I proposed that I work at every concert thrown by Philly's independent show promotion king-- Sean Agnew and his company R5 Productions-- as well as on campus, to register as many millenials as possible and persuade them to vote and vote Democratic through face-to-face encounters in spaces where they feel comfortable and at home.

Youth Outreach & Building a Future Majority
I could write an entire Masters Thesis on why focusing on young voters is paramount to any movement that strives for long-term success, why face-to-face interactions with a peer are extremely important to accomplish this, and why the connections between culture and politics need to be pointed out to young people, but as I said, I'm a bit short of time at the moment. Okay, that's a bit of a bad joke (if it wasn't for bad jokes, I wouldn't be able to tell any at all). I wrote my Master's Thesis on this exact subject (titled Keys to a Future Majority), which you can find here on Future Majority. Here are a few of the relevant sections that led me to believe that youth outreach was the most important activity that progressives could engage in:

Crossposted at Young Philly Politics

Are you sick of talking politics and ready for action? Do you wake up in the night sweating and screaming after a nightmare in which the Democrats fail to take back either house of Congress next month? Do you want a "just-in-case" pass for November 8th, so you can tell all your friends "well, at least I know that Santorum wasn't reelected because I didn't do something?

Well, if you're in Philly, I have just what you need!

I work for Philadelphians Against Santorum and we are working around the clock to kick the Santorum out of Santorum and all cheesy intros aside we really do need your help. See, we are basically the only non-party group doing any ground work in Philly (hell the Casey campaign doesn't even have any operations in all of Philly!), and we do it all with the help of thousands of volunteers and small-donors (as a PAC we cannot take very big donations, even if we wanted to).

Here are some of the many ways that you can help ensure that we win back the Senate this year, or, at the very least, ensure that it isn't your fault if we don't:

Help with the last three days of voter registration!!!