Culture

To quick things you should know about. Anyone out there who attempts to use culture - particularly music communities - to engage voters should read this new report on best practices released by Air Traffic Control, a group that helps artists become involved in politics and social justice activism:

Better Practices: Engaging Concertgoers in Social Action (doc)

As great as these experiences were, I came to question how we can engage concertgoers better and whether it is worth it at all. Gathering staff, materials and volunteers to table can be a huge drain on an organization. So, what do these activities create? How do they turn new audiences into activists? And, while we’re at it, where did the idea of organizations and causes being at concerts come from in the first place?

The advice, practices and “inspired thought” we gathered from almost a dozen of the best and brightest doing this work doesn’t answer all of these questions, but it shows us how we can begin to do it better. It also reminds us of the potential: what we might gain access to if we learn to engage concertgoers better.

The following report breaks down ATC’s learning from interviews that were conducted with experienced professionals from the field of concert engagement. Clear themes emerged that we will explore in-depth. Each focus area can still be studied in greater detail and this will give more insight into how to live up to the potential of engaged concertgoers. We leave that for academics and students looking to study topics of practical and immediate use.
Themes

• Artist & Organizations
• Volunteers & Staffing
• Nature of Engaging People
• Artists’ Shout-outs
• Engagement sequences and follow-up
• Recommendations
• Tools

Good stuff worth checking out if you are in the field of cultural organizing.

Also of interest today in the field of cultural organizing is the launch of the Ultimate College Bowl competition:

Ultimate College Bowl

This is the third or fourth such program attempting to register young people this year that turns the celebrity engagement model on its head to incentivize voter registration.

Following the successes and failures of these projects will be, I think, one of the more interesting case studies coming out of this election. If they are successful, then I think we'll have cracked the nut on a whole new way to more successfully engage celebrities in the political process.

In keeping with my post earlier this week about the need for more investment in communications work within youth organizing, I want to point you all to a 1170 word profile of Television producer/major donor Norman Lear and his youth vote organization Declare Yourself.

Here are the main messages coming out of the piece:

Declare Yourself, which Mr. Lear founded in 2003 to spur 18- to 29-year-olds to vote, strives to register more than two million people by Election Day. A nonprofit organization, it registered about a million voters in the months leading up to the 2004 election, most of them that October, said Aviva Rosenthal, the organization’s director of partnerships.

...

Four years ago Declare Yourself was simply one of many voter-registration efforts, admirable but probably without huge impact.

Message: 1 million voters is "not a significant impact" and by implication, youth in general did not have a huge impact in 2004.

Young people could be more crucial in the presidential race this time around — they played a bigger role than normal in many primary contests, and the campaign of Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has the trappings of a youth crusade. Thus organizations like Declare Yourself are taking on extra weight.

Message: Youth organizations weren't important until Barack Obama showed up. We didn't make him, he made us.

Rival registration efforts abound, but Declare Yourself is perhaps alone in using big media (anything controlled by the five largest media conglomerates) as its primary sales tool. Rock the Vote, which rose to prominence in the 1992 election by teaming up with MTV, comes close with its emphasis on musicians, but it has started relying more heavily on Internet outreach than on television.

This is bizarrely wrong. I would say that Rock the Vote and Declare Yourself are equally partnering with major media corporations. Both organization's biggest program this year involves online voter registration. If anything, Rock the Vote is the more innovative of the two organizations with new ways to using it's corporate and celebrity partnerships to increase registration. In reading the piece, however, the implication is that Declare Yourself's strategy is in some way superior.

Message: Corporate partnerships and Media are more important than internet outreach.

Mr. Lear toils to line up celebrities who have cachet among young adults. Through his wide-ranging contacts, he has corralled a roster of stars popular with young people to plug the cause, including America Ferrera (“Ugly Betty”), Hayden Panettiere (“Heroes”) and Tyra Banks (“America’s Next Top Model”). He said that he was trying to sign up the Jonas Brothers.

One of Declare Yourself’s biggest coups involved the MTV reality series “The Hills.” Mr. Lear and Ms. Rosenthal arranged for a star of that show to mention the registration effort during filming. As it turned out, producers liked the story line so much that they devoted the bulk of an episode to registering to vote.
...
Citing internal research, Marc Morgenstern, executive director of Declare Yourself, said 83 percent of the people the organization registered in 2004 voted. “Yes, young people are assaulted with messages,” Mr. Morgenstern said. “That is why we have an overlapping approach. The cumulative impact gets them to the tipping point.”

Message: Celebrities and media campaigns are the best way to reach young voters.

At the moment, though, he is most focused on Declare Yourself. Whether registration efforts reap votes is a question that the organization cannot answer with precision. And as excited as registration groups, campaigns and others get about supposedly surging interest among younger voters every four years, the gains rarely prove to be substantial. The turnout rate in the last presidential election among voters 18 to 25 was 47 percent, according to the Pew Research Center, compared with 64 percent for the overall population.

Message: Young people don't vote and we have no idea how to make them vote in bigger numbers.

This piece is a disaster. It flies in the face of everything we know:

• Young Voters have turned out in larger and larger numbers for the past 3 election cycles, and we were the only age demographic to vote in favor of John Kerry.
• Peer to peer outreach is the gold standard for moving young voters to the polls and it's effectiveness has been proven.
• Celebrity campaigns in and of themselves do not increase youth turnout.
• The internet is a huge and important tool for reaching out and engaging young voters.
• Youth organizations engaged in peer to peer outreach pioneered the tactics and laid the groundwork for Obama's successful youth operation.

This New York Times profile may serve the purpose of raising the profile of Declare Yourself and Norman Lear, but it does very little to advance the goals of the growing progressive youth movement. In fact, it is actively working at cross-purposes to that movement and teaching journalists and anyone who reads it precisely the wrong lessons about youth vote outreach.

Update: The McCain campaign finally posted a version sans Wayne's World clip.
----------------------------

I wasn't going to post about this, but Mike Myers took it to a new level of awesome, so here goes.

Earlier this week, McCain (as I'm sure you all saw), released a web video attacking Obama for his "celebrity status." It was a decent parody of old school album commercials that insulted the intelligence of young voters, and was basically a ploy to grab some media attention:

In that, it was fairly successful. The video made its way around the web this week, hitting pop culture and politics sites alike. I didn't want to encourage that, so I didn't post about it at the time. We all know that McCain's campaign has gone completely negative and needs to depress youth turnout if he's to have any shot at winning. Why help?

I'm writing about it now, days after the fact, because Mike Myers, who's Wayne's World sketch is used in the web ad, demanded that the McCain campaign remove the video from YouTube or face legal action for copyright infringement. McCain pulled the video, though as you can see others have already reposted it. My bad, the McCain campaign doesn't seem to care. It's still up on their YouTube page, and it's also still featured on their website.

Again, I think this continues to play right into McCain's hands, as the message on his blog is clearly gleeful about the reaction from Myers. It plays right into their messaging. Still, I did want to point out that this is not the first time something like this has happened to McCain. John Hall and John Mellencamp (not exactly paragons of contemporary cool, but pop culture stars nonetheless) both requested that McCain stop using their songs at his rallies, to say nothing of the recent Paris Hilton video. Despite the fact that McCain is one of the most pop-culture friendly presidential candidates in history (just look at McCain's resume on IMDB), the culture revolts against John McCain.

At what point does all this become counterproductive and McCain become reduced to the crazy grandpa in the media and in the eyes of everyone under 40? Or are we already there and is all this aimed at a different audience?

It's great seeing groups like Music for Democracy picking up the mantle of the work that Music for America and Concerts for Kerry did last cycle. Culture attracts -- often more than straight-up politics -- so we have to learn how to use culture to serve as a vehicle for progressive community.

In that spirit, we've been doing more reviews and cultural commentary at Living Liberally. Music for Democracy may dig the bands that are Rocking Liberally as posted by Seth Pearce. And we're seeing more happening on the big screen too -- two reviews posted in the past two days will give you hints for your 4th of July cinema-going.

The first is Gonzo, a documentary on Hunter S. Thompson that will be released in select theaters starting tomorrow. As Brooke Olaussen reports at Screening Liberally:

Everything you could want in a documentary film is in this one. By bringing you the mood and life-force of Gonzo, the film enchants, both visually and philosophically. The multiplicity of voices/interviews, footage, photographs, and songs transports you into the scene, as if like Alice you stepped through the looking glass. The soundtrack, Johnny Depp’s narration of Thompson’s writing,and interviews with friends and family guide you through Thompson’s wonderland.

The second sure success this weekend is more mainstream fare: Wall-E about a lovable scamp of a robot who has an environmental message tucked into his gizmo-goofball gaffes. As Mazhira Black writes:

For those of you who think that WALL-E is a kid's film you may find yourself eating your words. It is great to see Disney using it's power for good rather than evil. Some of you may remember some of the social faux pas in the Disney closet: the racist movie we don't talk about, Song of the South, the subtle anti-Arab lyrics in the song "Arabian Nights" of Aladdin, and of course the good old belief that a woman should lie down and wait for her prince to come and rescue her from her dragon guarded castle in order to achieve happiness.

The jury is still out on whether Disney has gotten the PC bug or the Disney-Pixar marriage has given the Disney folk a younger more open outlook on the world. One thing is for sure, if their movies keep moving in a WALL-E direction then I will have no qualms with raising kids in the arms of the mouse.

Let us know what you're watching, reading and listening to -- if you like it, chances are somebody else will too. And if you share tastes, you may share politics as well.

• At 9pm Eastern tonight I'll be blogging at Daily Kos as part of the weekly Kossacks Under 35 series. I'll be blogging about the three new books reporting on the youth vote this year.
• The CT legislature passed a law allowing 17 year olds the right to vote in a primary if they will turn 18 by the general election. - Rock the Vote
• Nancy Scola explores the brief history of Facebook's role as a social change agent, both the good and the bad. -AlterNet
• Micah Sifry doubts allegations that the Clinton campaign raise $10 million in 24 hours this week. - TechPresident
• Republicans in Arizona are looking to ban ethnic student groups and associations. - DailyKos
• Ben Adler reports that Obama lost young white voters to Sen. Clinton in Pennsylvania. - Campus Politico
• The Chronicle of Higher Education takes a brief look at the Harvard IOP survey results. - Chronicle of Higher Education
• The Arcade Fire and Superchunk are playing at ealry get out the vote rallies in support of Sen. Obama in North Carolina. - Merge Records
• Voto Latino discovers that Jenna Bush may not vote for John McCain, but then again, she doesn't really pay attention to politics anyway. Awesome. Way to be a role model Jenna. - Voto Latino

I thought this was pretty cool. Green Owl Records has gotten together with over a dozen artists to make a compilation CD on behalf of the Energy Action Coalition.

These kinds of things can be great fundraisers for cash strapped organizations if you have the artist connections and can swing it. When MFA did the Future Soundtrack for America in partnership with Barsuk Records, MoveOn and McSweeney's, we raised over a quarter million dollars for our 2005 budget. I know that Punk Voter also sold over half a million copies of its Rock Against Bush compilations, though I'm not sure how much money that raised directly for the organization.

Here are the participating artists:

The Appletrees -"Look up to the Sky"
Feist - "Honey Honey" (BBC Session)
Harper Simon - "Henrieta"
Young Love - "Underground"
Muse - "Knights of Cydonia" (live)
The Exit - "Hey Man"
Of Montreal - "Feminine Effects"
Pete Yorn - "Old Boy"
The London Souls - "Someday"
The Citizens Band - "Fortune Teller"
Violens "Trance Like Turn"
Bloc Party "The Prayer" (Hadouken remix)
School of Seven Bells "Trance Figure"
Deerhoof "Plus 81" (BBC Session)
Juliana Hatfield "Back To Freedom"
Satori "Intimate Revolution"

Via Reuters:

NEW YORK (Billboard) - Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young and Peal Jam have contributed tunes to the anti-war soundtrack for a documentary about a U.S. soldier paralyzed in Iraq.

The 30-song, two-disc album "Body of War: Songs That Inspired an Iraq War Veteran" will be released March 18 via Warner Music's Sire Records label. All proceeds from the sale of the album will benefit Iraq Veterans Against the War.

"Body of War" focuses on Tomas Young, an Army soldier paralyzed upon arriving in Iraq. It will open on March 13 in Austin, Texas, and expand nationally in subsequent months. Talk show veteran Phil Donahue directed the film with Elaine Spiro.

The album was put together by Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder, who composed the first single, "No War," specifically for the film. Pearl Jam's live version of Bob Dylan's "Masters of War" also graces the soundtrack.

Springsteen contributed "Devils & Dust," and Neil Young "The Restless Consumer." Other tracks include "Yo George" from Tori Amos, "Son of a Bush" from Public Enemy, and "Bushonomics" from Talib Kweli & Cornel West.

A few thoughts - it's awesome that this is raising money for an organization. That is a much more powerful, and lasting statement by all of these artists. In 2004, Punk Voter sold over 600,000 of it's anti-Bush CDs, and Music for America, with the help of MoveOn and McSweeney's, raised over a quarter of a million dollars via the Future Soundtrack for America. These sales were crucial in helping the organizations survive 2005, when a lot of donor money began to dry up in the youth organizing sphere. These kinds of dual donor/pr/engagement projects not only bring political awareness into the cultural realm, but they help make progressive change more sustainable by supporting institution building.

Reading this also sparked a more tangential thought regarding Neil Young's skepticism about the role of culture - particularly music - in achieving political change, which I find to be quite off base.

Maybe the reason that Young sees diminishing returns on his investment in political music has to do with his audience. While I know that many young people are always discovering Young's music, I'm going to guess that the average age of showgoers and consumers of his music - and those most likely to read his political statements - are older. Political beliefs tend to harden when people start to approach their thirties. As such, most of Young's audience has already made their political statements and declared allegiances on most issues. As such, Young may raise awareness about some issues, but his efforts seem unlikely to change people's minds or convert new, enthusiastic followers who could help drive an issue politically. I would even say ditto for Pearl Jam and Springstein.

Someone like Talib Kweli, on the other hand, has a much younger audience with less firm political beliefs (and a greater likelihood of not even being registered to vote as of yet), and greater contemporary cultural relevance. So when Talib makes a political statement, it's impact on the culture and on real tangible gains - ie voter registration or increased political activation/engagement - is much greater than that of Young.

In a nutshell, I'm positing that there is a direct correlation between the age of a musician's audience and their potential political impact.

Thoughts?

Seriously, this is the guy who's going to have "the most participatory website ever?" He hates social networking and thinks music is keeping kids away from civic action . . . I'm sure it's got nothing to do with the efficacy of those petitioning organizations or the fact that many of them are more interested in harvesting your address and cell phone so they can list build and fundraise off you . . . but I guess it's too much to ask Ralph to reassess the activist models he himself pioneered.

If you want to know why Nader will pretty much be irrelevant this year, this kinda hits the nail on the head. (Hat tip to Micah at Tech President).

Apropos of my piece about Neil Young, I thought I should announce that I've accepted a volunteer position on the advisory board of HeadCount.

Out of all the new non profits that formed in 2004 to activate live music scenes, HeadCount, which began in the jam-band scene, is the only one left standing. Just a few months ago, MFA was defunded and merged their membership with the League of Young Voters. In early 2007, Punk Voter mothballed into a news organization. Fat Mike is limiting his involvement in politics this year, and Scott Goodstein who ran the day to day operation now runs Barack Obama's text messaging program.

So HeadCount, which in 2004 was the most underfunded of the three, is now the only game in town. This year, they're expanding their work outside the jam-band scene, hiring their first full-time staffers, courting donors, and scaling the entire operation upwards.

It makes me glad to see that live music outreach is going to continue in 2008.

HeadCount has set a goal of registering at least 100,000 voters at 1,000 live music events in 2008. That's a far cry from the 2,400 shows MFA attended in 2004, but HeadCount is a far more efficient organization than MFA ever was. In 2004 and 2006 combined, HeadCount registered a total of 57,000 new voters on a budget of $120,000 - or $2.11/registration. That's at the low-end of the scale in terms of cost/registration, which usually averages around $8/registration.

How they did it was through a mix of artist involvement and a strict organizational culture that stressed accountability and hard work above anything else. About a year ago I interviewed Andy Bernstein, the co-chair of Headcount about this, and the resulting blog post elaborates on how HeadCount acheived such efficiencies while creating a deep bond with their target community. There's also a great discussion from some of the old MFA crew in the comments about what did/did not work at MFA, and I advise you to check it out.

About a week and a half ago I attended the screening of a new documentary about the organization - you can get a sneak peak at it, along with a taste for what live-music organizing is all about, here:

I'll be posting a lot more about HeadCount as they ramp up their 2008 activities.

This is a little rough still, but I need to head out for most of the day and wanted to get something posted. I think I'm getting my point across well enough, though it could be more eloquent and a little more developed. Consider it food for thought.

Neil Young . . . I love the man's music, and have much respect what he did back in the day, but he does not at all understand the current state of politics or culture. And that blindness has twice in the past 2 years caused him to grossly misrepresent the current state of youth activism and the roll that music in particular can play in driving change in our contemporary political environment. It's a shame.

Earlier this week, at the Berlin Film Festival, Neil Young was quoted as saying:

"I know that the time when music could change the world is past. I really doubt that a single song can make a difference. It is a reality," Young told reporters.

"I don't think the tour had any impact on voters."

The tour to which he was referring was his 2006 anti-Bush tour. A documentary of the tour debuted at the Film Festival this week.

As I said, this is the second such comment from Young in the last 2 years. The first came in 2006 when he said:

I was waiting for someone to come along, some young singer eighteen-to-twenty-two years old, to write these songs and stand up… I waited a long time. Then I decided that maybe the generation that has to do this is still the '60s generation."

There was a strong response from the Music/activist community in response to this first statement. Singer-songwriter Stephan Smith published a letter in the San Francisco Chronicle outlining the ways in which the corporate media severely limits the reach and career prospects of activist musicians. He followed that up with an excellent article in WireTap describing the work of organizations like Punk Voter and Music for America in organizing the live music community in 2004 and 2006.

Mark Ristaino of Music for America also posted his own response that hits a few important nails on the head:

Though "Living with War" may have been a potent protest album, the truth is that Neil's most recent release comes way too late, and the reasoning behind it is way off the mark. It’s time for older progressives everywhere to wake up and realize the truth. The Youth Movement is here. We’ve been here. And we don’t listen to our parents' protest music.

Many people like to wax poetic about the cultural movement that surrounded the music of the 60s, but the truth is that today’s young musicians are speaking out just as loudly and powerfully as the musicians of 30 years ago, despite attempts by big media to silence their voices. Musicians today understand that it takes more than singing a song to create real change. "Let's impeach the President" is a catchy chorus, but it's no stained blue dress, if you get my drift.

What Neil Young missed two years ago, and what he's missing still today, is that the media landscape and the culture itself have both radically changed since Crosby Stills Nash and Young first voiced their protest through music.

As Mark and Stephan Smith both pointed out, the media (radio, record companies, music television, etc) all actively discourage political viewpoints in music - particularly topical ones. As I've outlined in my article, Who Will Rock the vote in 2008?, back in 2003, when Music for America was just getting started, musicians wanted nothing to do with politics. They watched the Dixie Chicks get tarred and feathered and wanted no part in speaking out. They saw their own tarnished record of civic participation and recoiled from any chance at being labelled "hypocrite."

But somewhere along the way that changed, and in 2004 hundreds of artists - not just P. Diddy and Russel Simmons - took part in a civic and cultural movement to initiate change. They did this not through protest, as Neil Young would have it, but by encouraging participation in the political system. By registering young concert goers and activating their live music scenes at over 3,500 shows in 2004 alone.

But somehow, Neil Young missed that. I guess he didn't go to any of those shows. I guess that sort of engagement wasn't happening at his shows.

There's a reason for that, and it's simple but fundamental. Neil Young came of age, protested, and got famous in a broadcast media era, and that's how he thinks. Imagine one song ringing through the culture, igniting change where ever its melody could be heard. It's a nice image. And maybe Lennon or Buffalo Springfield, or some of those other folks from back in the Vietnam era did achieve such change through the power of a single song that reverberated through a unified, common youth culture.

It seems like a simplistic understanding to me. After all, 1968 wasn't just about protests. The kids that went "Clean for Gene" McCarthy actually organized and registered their peers and went to the polls. Ditto for McGovern's kids in the 1972 primary. Even back in "the 60s" changed happened both within and outside of the system.

Regardless, even granting Young that much, we're in a different cultural space now. Youth culture is not nearly as monolithic now as it was then. There are dozens of niches, and no one cultural artifact - a song, a movie, an internet video clip - will reach all those people. This is not a bad thing. It's a good thing. The end of the broadcast era means the death of the activism models of the past, but it's given rise to new ones as well. Young people are not just consumers of culture and news anymore, they are also producers, putting out their own music and art online, engaging in politics through social networking and the blogosphere - a whole new culture of (peer) production has emerged that is infinitely more rich and diverse than the broadcast culture that preceded it.

We need to find ways to get all of those cultures activated as Music for America and Punk Voter did in 2004, and as HeadCount does today. We need to find ways to make sure that these niche scenes produce dozens of songs calling for change, and that they register their fans to vote. We need to break out of the old mentality that thinks raising your voice in protest is enough. It's not enough, and it's not effective. If you want change, you have to work for it. You have to organize inside and outside of the system. Anything less is doomed to failure.

Along the way, music and culture continue to have a vital role to play. One song may not be able to change the world anymore, but hundreds and thousands of songs by as many artists, supported by fans that are smart and organized can. Neil Young should stop singing laments for activism of the past, and channel his anger and frustrations into aiding these new artists and activism models that are in part following in his footsteps.