City Council

• Starting off with some health news... One study recently found that many young people with Type 2 diabetes have impaired cardiovascular function due to stiffened arteries.
• Kurt Metzger's "Talk to Young People about Sex" album will be released on Comedy Central on June 28th
• We need to see more of this: An Iowa City city council candidate is running to give young adults a voice.
• Call it the scone rush? For struggling young people, one cafe in the Chicago area intentionally creates opportunities for recently imprisoned youth to get back on their feet.
• Obama again reaching out to youth through youth roundtables.
• New York's state financial aid agency offers college students advice on how to strengthen their financial fitness following college.
• The San Francisco Chronicle offers its own advice.
• But before you graduate from college, you need to succeed there. Here are some tips for first year students in your first year.
• Entrepreneurship 101: A guide for new college grads looking to fly solo
• Grants that help youth be their own bosses? Interesting.
• The trials and tribulations of the intern and other tales of unpaid labor
• The for-profit price of student loans (and it's not stormtroopers on a collection mission. At least in this story).

Some quick hits for you as we head into the weekend (or, perhaps, just the end).

• A Washington Post piece asks if college is worth it
• Ezra Klein flags a graphic showing the percentage of recent college grads with jobs, by major.
  

  

• Speaking of college, here are ten reasons to get pumped for life following graduation.
• Nebraska's 4H organization and the YMCA team up to offer youth entrepreneur classes. An interesting partnership and initiative.
• CBS writes up the story we covered yesterday regarding Rockefeller's belief that young people are morally hollow. (Apparently 13 more people like him on Facebook between yesterday and today.)
• New Hampshire is aging.
• The Pope knows what's up--at least regarding the wisdom of listening to young people.
• Two young candidates in the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania area won primaries this week.
• Young Canadian city council candidate links young people to the local community.
• UK developing youth "underclass"
• The government: Just say no to sexting.
• Young people afraid to call themselves feminists.
• When will the GOP realize they are on the wrong side of history?

You've read about this movement before here.

And now, it's taken another step forward.

After a failed student campaign a year ago, William and Mary students put together an organization called Students for a Better Williamsburg (SBW), an organization engaging local government in order to provide the best outcomes for students. This effort led to the amendment of a housing ordinance, making it more student friendly and eliminating an issue that divided the town and gown factions in the community for years.

This past spring, a student ran for a Williamsburg city council seat once more. Last Tuesday night, Scott Foster, a graduating senior, dominated the contest.

Foster was elected to the Williamsburg City Council on Tuesday night, becoming the first William & Mary student ever to do so. The 22-year-old said his win was a victory for town and gown relationships.

"Today, the people of Williamsburg demonstrated that our city is truly unified," Foster said Tuesday night. "When I decided to run for City Council, I hoped to receive the student vote. Now, I have been additionally honored and humbled to have received such strong support from across our City."

Foster received 1559 votes in the election, 741 more votes than the next finisher, Planning Commission Chairman Doug Pons, who also earned a seat on the council Tuesday night. Five candidates, including one incumbent, ran for the two open positions. According to Foster's campaign, approximately 67 percent of his votes came from students and the remaining votes came from residents.

Over 1000 William and Mary students voted for their fellow student in the election, ensuring that college students will have a strong voice in the city's government. Between this victory and the aforementioned organization of Students for a Better Williamsburg, William and Mary students have provided students across the country with a model for organizing within the system to produce positive outcomes.

How did Foster do it? Well, in textbook Millennial fashion. Foster used online social networking to spread the news, and then benefited from a student-coordinated voter registration and GOTV effort on William and Mary's campus.

Foster benefited from a coordinated get-out-the-vote campaign by William & Mary students. Earlier this year, student organizations, including the Student Assembly, worked to encourage students to vote in the election through a series of registration efforts. Approximately 300 students registered this year as a result of the drive. More than 2,100 students are registered to vote in the City of Williamsburg and early estimates indicate that roughly 50 percent of registered students voted in Tuesday's election.

On election day, the Student Assembly provided transportation for students between the Sadler Center and the Stryker Building voting location. Sarah Rojas ‘10, outgoing president of the assembly, also sent an e-mail to the College's students, encouraging them to vote in the election.

[...]

Much of Foster's campaign was run by students who utilized a website and social media outlets such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube. Foster also spent a good deal of time meeting city residents.

After his upcoming graduation, Foster plans to continue his studies at William and Mary in 2011, attending the William and Mary Law School.

Clay Pope is the Executive Director of the Oklahoma Association of Conservation Districts, and has been severely impacted by the lack of organizing both online and off in his state. Great to have him guest post to motivate folks! --Sarah

Want to make a difference? What are you doing about it? Really, what are you doing?

I think it is great all that is going on in with young voters twittering, blogging and all; but at the end of the day, how can we continue to push that into offline actions?

It is easy to get caught up in the world of the web, cell phones and virtual interaction; too often we let ourselves get caught up in the conversation among our friends, talking in a virtual echo chamber where we really don’t have a true discussion, we simply get our preconceived notions reinforced by like-minded people with an occasional interruption by someone who holds a directly opposed opinion and only enters the conversation to upset those of us on the other side.

Bottom line, are you putting your beliefs in practice? If so how? Are you volunteering in your community? Are your friends? Are you engaging in conversations with people in your neighborhood, your community, your town and seeing what the views of the people in the non-virtual world are? Do you work in a Church, Temple, Mosque or Synagogue? Are you volunteering in a city campaign this Spring? Have you ever thought about running for office?

Have you talked to your member of congress? Yeah, I know you e-mailed about that issue last week, but have you actually gone and seen your member of congress when they are back home in their district? Have you visited your state capitol? Have you watched your city council or county commissioners do their work? Have you raised questions with these folks directly?

I know it is a lot more fun to get in a chat debate about the wisdom of the AIG bailout with someone in LA, but is that really going to influence the opinion of the person who will actually vote on this issue in your name? And, if you are focusing on issues like the debate on the national economy to the exclusion of all else, you are not paying attention to the sales tax increase in your local community to pay for the bridge being built by the Mayors son-in-law. Do you know what your state legislature is doing (or not doing) for the environment if you are only following the debate on global climate change in Washington D.C.? Who will you have more influence on, the state representative who will be personally knocking on your door next election year or the Congressman who will campaign through mail pieces and TV ads?

The electronic universe is great. We can talk to each other and reach out into a world wider than our parents and grandparents could have ever imagined, but as state legislatures are finalizing their work this Spring spend some time talking in a personal way to your elected official. As city elections approach don't forget to vote and take your friends to the polls.

We can quickly and easily make a huge difference on policies that have a faster and more direct impact on our lives. As they say – all politics is local.

Yesterday I sent out a tweet asking my followers to send topics that they wanted to see me write about here on Future Majority. Karlo's suggestions received a couple of retweets in support, so I will cover the first one today and the second later this week. Thanks to everyone who participated and keep checking FM to see if your idea gets covered.

Today's topic is local elections in or near municipalities with a high concentration of youth, especially universities.This is an area where I have had some experience. In 2005 I filed an exploratory committee for Tempe City Council after I was drafted to run through Facebook. I ended up withdrawing from the race because a friend of mine who was a much better candidate and also a Young Democrat entered. He now sits on the Tempe City Council.

University towns are great places for young candidates to run for local office. There is a lot of latent electoral power that can be engaged by a candidate to change the game of a local election.

District vs. At-Large Representation

City and town councils tend to elect their council members in one of two ways: district representation or at-large. In municipalities with at-large representation, young voters have the power to exert their influence to change the way the entire governing body addresses their issues. In district elections, the maps are often drawn to have the university confined to a single district, giving the youth community a single seat on the council. The other representatives tend to represent the older constituents and the youth district representative often ends up as a lone dissenting vote. In at-large elections, high youth turnout can change the entire composition of the council, so all of the representatives will have to take youth positions into account if they want to keep their seats.

Research

It is important to do research about the youth in the district or municipality. This ranges from the standard voter-file number-crunching (youth density in precincts, etc.) to finding out what the most popular hang-outs are for youth in the area. It is also very useful to have a copy of the school's academic and activity calendars.

Peer-to-Peer

The most effective method of engaging young voters is outreach from their own peers. Candidates should work with a school's College and/or Young Democrats chapters to run a peer-to-peer program on campus. Young candidates should be making stops to the places where students tend to live or hang out and get the support of those voters. Many of these young voters have never been talked to by a candidate, nor has anyone ever asked for their vote.

Online Outreach

Right now the most popular social networking tool among college students is Facebook. Luckily with advanced searching it is fairly easy to find young voters on the site that are at the college/university and would be likely to vote if asked.

The candidate or a young supporter can send a Facebook message to each of the people in the search results explaining why they are being contacted and providing information about the candidate/campaign, especially the link to the Facebook group.

It is also helpful to create Facebook events for campaign activities as well as publishing content that can easily shared by your supporters in their profiles. The News Feed has turned Facebook into a place where buzz is visible and users can sense if a campaign has online momentum.

Conclusions

The main thrust of this post is that there is a great opportunity for candidates to win their elections with the power of young voters in high youth-density areas. In order to take advantage of that opportunity candidates and campaigns must engage in peer-to-peer outreach to young voters in the places where they live an hang out.

What are your thoughts on municipal campaigns in youth-dense areas? Share in the comments.