advocacy

Michael's post on voter registration modernization made me think about Millennials, the Democratic Party, and the relationship between the two regarding issue advocacy and legislative priorities.

I see three distinct dynamics based on the legislative priorities of young progressives and the Democratic Party.

1) Youth asked to support Democratic legislation that is not a youth priority

This is the dynamic that has been dominant in the past for young Democrats and progressives. An example would be legislation on social security or medicare. While these issues are important, they are not a legislative priority for youth nor do they immediately impact most young voters. Young activists and youth organizations tend to jump on to the Party's action campaign to basically just add numbers.

2) Action on shared legislative priorities

This dynamic occurs when the Democratic Party's legislative priority is also a youth priority. An example would be higher education policy or the current stimulus package. However, I see two variations of this dynamic. In the first, young activists sign on to an existing action similar to Dynamic 1. In the second, youth activists create their own campaigns and coalitions, often for a broader agenda. An example of this would be the Energy Action Coalition and their approach to global warming and environmental issues.

3) Youth press for issue that is not a current legislative priority for the DNC

This dynamic brings me back to Michael's post mentioned earlier. Voter registration modernization is a very high legislative priority for youth activists, but is often pushed aside for the DNC's priorities. Advocacy campaigns for such issues have to be created on their own and must be directed at the DNC as well to try to convince them of adopting the issue/legislation as a priority.

What does this mean?

The power of the youth vote in 2008 has moved us a lot closer to getting a seat at the table and puts us in our strongest advocacy position ever. In the past we were most often relegated to jumping on board all of the DNC's legislative priorities while our own were ignored unless they were shared.

It is also important to note that youth-led campaigns such as the Energy Action Coalition build the strength of the youth movement more than bandwagon advocacy.

The question remains whether our legislative priorities will finally see the light of day in the wake of 2008 or whether it is going to be business as usual. We need to continue to really push for our issues in order to sustain our strength and make sure that the DNC respects our priorities the same as other constituency groups.

The Congressional Management Foundation just released a report that anyone involved in advocacy should read: Communicating with Congress: Recommendations for Improving the Democratic Dialogue. The report looks at the recent history of constituent relations and congressional advocacy since the rise of the internet, and makes recommendations on how citizens, advocacy organizations, and congressional members can more effectively engage in good faith communications with one another.

The document - a hefty 84 pages - does a good job outlining the challenges that each stakeholder faces in communicating with congress/constituents, and makes recommendations on how each group can improve their part of the dialogue.

Recommendations for Advocacy Organizations

1. Send every communication with the knowledge, consent, and action of the citizen.
2. Encourage citizens to personalize their messages in some way.
3. Communications should only come from constituents.
4. Never transmit incorrect or false data to congressional offices.
5. Notify citizens to whom their communications are being sent.
6. Identify the organization behind a grassroots campaign.
7. Grassroots organizations should develop a better understanding of Congress.
   • Timing in the legislative cycle.
   • The chamber in which a bill was introduced.
   • The member’s position on the legislation.
8. The purpose of a campaign should be to influence public policy, not overwhelm an office.
9. Do not send or create duplicate messages from the same constituent.
10. Do not target a specific staffer.
11. Form e-mail messages are more effective than form faxes.
12. adequately prepare constituents when facilitating telephone calls.

Not every congressional leader can be as knowledgeable about the interwebs as (ex)Sen. Stevens, and the report also does a good job at outlining both the challenges that congress faces due to technological changes, and what they can do to modernize and be more responsive:

Challenges for Congress:

1. The sheer volume of citizen communications has become difficult for congressional offices to manage.
2. House and senate offices have limited staff, money, and space for adapting to their increased workloads.
3. Congressional staff mistrust identical form communications.
4. Incorrect, generic, and corrupt electronic data create unnecessary work for congressional offices.
5. Some congressional offices do not respond to e-mail via e-mail.

Recommendations for Congress:

1. Adapt to the new communications environment.
2. Collaborate with advocacy/interest groups to identify solutions and solve problems.
3. Fully utilize e-mail for responding to constituents.
4. Provide separate online web forms for constituent service requests.
5. Develop and post your correspondence policies online.
6. Provide constituents answers to their legislative inquiries online.
7. Diligently maintain the health of your constituent database.
8. Maximize the use of your web form

The report overall is somewhat dry, and seems like it is missing the boat in its lack of discussion about the outdated Franking Rules that prevent so many members of Congress from using new tools like YouTube. But it seems unique in that it attempts to educate both sides about the challenges they face in effectively communicating with each other. For organizations looking to tweak/optimize their online campaigns, or even make a first attempt at an online campaign targeting Congress, it's a good primer to get you up to speed on what to reasonably expect and best practices to follow in order to be effective.

At the moment, the youth movement is at a crossroads. After four years of electoral organizing, we must now switch gears and begin to focus our energy on moving policy. After 8 years in which we've all come of age under a Republican President, and mostly a GOP led Congress, we must now give up oppositional organizing and learn to work with the administration. After decades in the political wilderness, we are now a respected voting block and everyone is asking - how do we keep this up? What's next for the youth movement?

Of course, this isn't really a single question; it's two questions because right now we have two "youth movements," for lack of a better term. On the one hand, you have all the independent organizations (see the sidebar of this blog) working in a variety of sectors - electoral, policy, leadership development. On the other you have Obama for America's email list and all the Millennials on it who support Obama but have nothing to do with the former groups.

The Obama side of this Millennial Movement is a bit of a black box. Obama can't take that list with him into the White House, but it looks like something will emerge that is at least semi-permanent and will be used to support Obama's policy agenda. I was at a conference this weekend and one of the attendees, in the course of his day job, had occasion to meet with an Obama representative who called the campaign's massive email list "the coin of the kingdom." In other words, it's their big stick for winning battles. Will the Obama Administration or whatever organizatin springs out of the campaign structure have a Millennial Liason who will work with independent organizations and the Millennial Generation? Or will it be used not necessarily speak on behalf of a new generation of voters and citizens, but to persuade those voters to prop up Obama's policies, whatever they turn out to be?

My hope is that it will be the former, and that the Administration, the restructured campaign operation, and independent Millennial groups will all be able to work together. But since we can't know - or even guess - much more than that, my focus at the moment will be on the other side of the Millennial coin - independent organizations that have worked to engage and build an infrastructure to support young people in politics over the last 5 years. In a recent blog post, Erin Potts at Be + Cause Strategies had a good summation of the place in which these groups now find themselves:

Beyond the Obama Phenomenon there was a huge amount of progressive infrastructure being built. In 2004, the Democratic retreat and navel gazing inspired more focus on a state level. Organizers in places such as New Mexico and Michigan (and by the time of the 2008 election in a dozen states) began to focus on building power at a state level. The progressives got together to agree to utilize a single database for voter activation. And more than in previous years and election cycles, a renewed focus on how independent nonprofits and advocacy organizations could play a role in electoral politics, as well as leadership development. The results can be seen in places like New Mexico where a clean sweep has transformed the state from red to solidly blue. [...]

The second thought is that the progressive movement needs to immediately come together around an issue that will activate and reinforce and connect the Obama + state infrastructure. The ideal for this kind of a campaign would be an issue that has national scope, but is legislated at a state-level; that is connective, meaning that it incorporates multiple issues rather than silos them; and that is not distinctly progressive in nature, but can reach across the divide of partisan politics to, as the Obama field operation was fond of saying “Respect. Empower. Include.” the 46% of the country that voted for McCain. [...]

I tend to think that all of the leadership development we’ve been doing across the country could lead to efficiencies that organizers are not often known for. We need to be able to do more with fewer resources. Again, innovation, collaboration, making connections between organizations and issues, and focusing on proven engagement strategies that will reach people outside of the Moveon.orgs and other established and successful organizations. The best way to find innovation, to inspire collaborations and to make connections is by bringing people, particularly organizers, together.

Most of you reading this blog probably saw Tim Fernholz's blog on this very topic published at Tapped. Millennial organizers are thinking about these questions now and hopefully we will be able to gather in the near future and address them as a group.

I myself don't have all the answers, but I do have questions that I think are worth considering in this conversation:

1. Should we focus on the big picture or smarter tactics? That is, should we be talking about statements of principle or figuring out how to work together and inject ourselves into the nitty gritty policy battles that will soon arise?
2. Are those two mutually exclusive?
3. How do we work with the Administration?
4. How do we transition from oppositional organizing into advocates FOR a specific policy.
5. Are we planning for the first 100 days or the next 4 years?
6. What do we want our "movement" to look like in 4 years? In 8 years?
7. Is it necessary to have a unified Youth Agenda? If so, why?
8. If a unified youth agenda/statement of principles is necessary, should we start from scratch or build off existing attempts at creating such a document.
9. Should we be branding ourselves as Millennials, or as youth?
10. Does the term youth inherently "ghettoize" our movement?
11. Does the term Millennial ignore the fact that long-term youth-focused infrastructure are important and must be continued beyond the Millennial Generation?
12. Do we need to present the Administration/Congress/Media with a unified front, or do we, as Erin suggests, just need to find more avenues of collaboration and innovation?
13. Is it more important to open up back channels to Congress and the Administration, or to create a show of strength by testifying before Congress?
14. Are those two ideas mutually exclusive? If not, which one is more important and must come first?

I'm still not sure where I sit on a lot of these issues, but I have a few opinions. For instance, I don't particularly see it as necessary to spend too much time on a youth/Millennial agenda. Gen Vote has already put one together that is pretty decent and has the backing of a significant number of youth organizations. Of course, it's incredibly vague and not entirely actionable, and we can quibble on small points (perhaps Energy should be the #1 issue, not #4). But the real devil is in the details. Pretty much every youth group can endorse these principles without too much thought, and we can probably get some good press out of presenting such an agenda to Congressional leaders.

The problems will arise when actual legislation begins to work its way through the administration or through committee. At that point it will become more important for us to have open channels of communication within Congress and the Administration. It will become more important for us to have structures for deciding how we can work together to influence a committee vote, or talk out a dispute over two competing amendments when Millennial activists are on both sides of the issue.

That's my .02 at the moment, but like I said, I can still be swayed on this. My views aren't set in stone. What are your thoughts?