civic engagement

In my work with college students, one of the things I have observed is that anytime students hear the word "politics," they tend to exclusively link it with our national political discourse. With our national political dialogue and process failing to solve the large problems we face, we shouldn't be surprised that many students consequently develop a negative attitude toward politics and believe the political world is unproductive and difficult to access and navigate. Basically, trying to get through the large mess isn't worth the effort.

These observations have led me to question a few things.

First, isn't everything political? Politics isn't merely a game we play (the notion of someone "playing politics" is false and misleading); it's a reality that, if analyzed, reveals the power dynamics at work in our society that impact everything, from our national budget to whether a student or an administrator reads the morning announcements in a high school. If everything is political, we all bear responsibility as citizens to examine and critique not only the large-scale debates -- about job creation (for young people especially), education, climate change, voting rights, and social justice issues -- but also the smaller, seemingly insignificant and taken-for-granted aspects of our life. One does not need to be in, or thinking about, all things Washington, D.C. to be an activist or create positive change.

So, if we as young people adopt this view of politics -- that it's everywhere -- don't we produce more opportunities for engagement in politics, on a smaller, somewhat more manageable level? One challenge that young people and activists often face in working with local governments to create change is the community's adherence to tradition: "It's always been done this way, and who are you to drop in and suggest we change it?" Local elected officials have the least to gain personally from transforming the way they operate, as they believe they will be shouldering the blame for whatever might go wrong in the future. Yet, sadly -- and in a way, luckily -- the dire fiscal status of many local governments can serve as an opportunity to try new things. As the idea that moving forward in the same direction is no longer comforting to local officials, but actually a threat, innovation suddenly becomes more enticing.

In order to recognize and take advantage of these strategic opportunities, though, I propose that we need to begin with our local media, especially newspapers. Last week, a federal study reported that state and local reporting had severely weakened over the last few years, as news operations shifted their priorities elsewhere.

“In many communities, we now face a shortage of local, professional, accountability reporting,” said the study, which was ordered by the Federal Communications Commission and written by Steven Waldman, a former journalist for Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report. “The independent watchdog function that the Founding Fathers envisioned for journalism — going so far as to call it crucial to a healthy democracy — is in some cases at risk at the local level.”

On Thursday, Mr. Waldman is to issue a number of recommendations, none binding. Those include making actual in-the-field reporting a part of the curriculum at journalism schools, steering more government advertising money toward local instead of national media and changing the tax code to encourage donations to nonprofit media organizations.

Unfortunately, as the article goes on to note, many of today's local media outlets simply relay a politician's press release word for word, strengthening the government's power in its relationship with citizens, whether this official is a member of Congress, or a city council member. The lack of youth reporting in local media outfits is also troubling, and I believe this blame lays at the feet of young people, as well as these media operations. We need to wise up and understand that reporting on local news is just as civically critical as teaching in a challenging classroom environment or working in a low-income setting; simultaneously, local media also need to look for ways to shift funding to allow for a younger, fresher reporting staff, more familiar and comfortable with technology. Further, I would argue the copy-and-paste fest also leads to heightened use of Associated Press content rather than local reporting.

The problem with these tendencies is that citizens do not play on a level playing field with their representatives. Community members, lacking the "expertise" about local public affairs, self-select out of the political process because they receive little information about community issues, and the information they do receive is not properly vetted by the media.

If we as young people want to take advantage of these difficult economic times to create positive change, we must embrace our responsibility to critique, infiltrate, and strengthen our local media. We must be willing to voice our displeasure with its current product, pointing out where and how coverage could improve. We must accept strong, quality journalism as a critical component of active citizenship, incentivizing young people who choose to give back to their community through reporting on local current events. And we must beef up local journalism, exploring better ways to deliver local, scrutinized information to citizens to encourage their engagement (even if these local outlets are operated by larger conglomerates).

A more robust local media would enhance our efforts to beat back the tradition-minded crowd by allowing for the articulation of challenging questions and the examination of new ideas in our local politics. Politics is not an episodic game in which we can choose to participate or not participate. We are all engaging in politics whether we admit it or not. Improving the quality of our local media will make it easier to embrace the role we all have in our democracy and ever-present political world.

Update 2: Campus Progress has been working on this issue over the past day, creating an opportunity for us to directly e-mail Hamerlinck and demand an apology for his demeaning and condescending remarks toward young people.

You can visit the site here. Let him hear it!

Update: The Iowa State Daily has more on this incident:

...After the student representatives were finished, Hammerlinck [sic] gave a response. Hammerlinck told students to "go home" and that they were being used as props in the Democratic propaganda effort to increase state spending.

"We were shocked that he would say that," Knight said. "I was insulted, disappointed and upset that a public leader like himself doesn't like it when students [and] constituents, as well as taxpayers in the state, come and talk to their elected officials about what their votes would do to them. I don't understand why he would feel that way and much why he would say that."

[...]

Sen. Herman Quirmbach (D-Ames) was also present at the hearing.

"They talked very seriously about the quality of the programs, class sizes and [students] not leaving school in so much debt and [with] limitations on their career choices," Quirmbach said. "All the students did a bang-up job in articulating their views."

Quirmbach was shocked when he heard Hammerlink's remarks.

"It was unprofessional," Quirmbach said. "I hope to never see another display like that again."

Quirmbach believes that it was the students' duty to be there and speak as elected officials representing the students.

"It's not just disrespecting the students there, but all the students that they represented," Quirmbach said. "They were elected on behalf of the students to speak for all students."

Despite Hammerlinck's comments, the GSB will not discourage the student body from lobbying.

"Our plans aren't going to change just because one senator tells us to go home," Knight said. "If anything, it's going to strengthen our resolve to continue lobbying in Des Moines and continuing letting our representatives know both here and from our students' constituency districts what a seven percent cut to the regent institutions will do."

----------------------------------------------------------------------

You would think someone who held the title of "Youth Field Specialist" in the Iowa State University Scott County Extension office, who developed and oversaw programs such as 4-H, and who currently serves as a college professor, would want students to be engaged in their communities.

You'd be wrong.

On Tuesday, Republican Iowa State Sen. Shawn Hamerlinck told five student government leaders from Iowa universities to "go home" and to not worry about the work the senate is doing in the state house. Think that's exaggerated?

Sadly, it's not:

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee reported on this in their blog, explaining that Hamerlinck's hissy fit wasn't the only condescension students faced that day from Republicans.

North Carolina GOP state Rep. Mike Stone called it “unconscionable” and said “anger completely shot through me” when he learned that elementary school students – including his own daughter – had written letters to state legislators as part of a school writing assignment. And who could forget New Hampshire GOP House Speaker Bill O’Brien’s stunning admission that his party’s discriminatory voter ID bill was intended specifically to disenfranchise students, because “they are kids voting liberal, voting their feelings, with no life experience”?

Yet, we find out from the Iowa Senate Democrats that these students who appeared--all student government officers from across the state--did so as part of an already organized set of open hearings on the budget.

The students were invited to the Capitol as part of “Open Budget Hearings.” The goal of the hearings was to hear feedback from Iowans impacted by the proposed budget cuts, including the effects of what some have described as the Republican’s “two-year starvation diet for Iowa schools.”

The students testifying before the committee included President of Northern Iowa Student Government Spencer Walrath, Iowa State University Student Body Vice President Jared Knight, University of Iowa Student Government President Elliot Higgins, Former President of Council of Graduate and Professional Students Lyndsay Harshamn, and current Vice President of the Executive Council of Graduate and Professional Students Michael Appel.

The students testified that the Republicans’ proposed budget cuts making higher education unaffordable for many students and their families, increase class sizes, and reduce course offerings.

So this is why Republicans are failing so horribly at attracting political support from this generation of young people. And this is also why it's only a matter of time until we turn the tables on sad, fearful politicians like Hamerlinck and tell them to go home.

In the meantime, you should remind Hamerlinck that because of his party, students have more than enough life experiences to understand the real-world implications of budgets.

Call him: (563) 843-3922

E-mail him: shawn.hamerlinck@legis.state.ia.us

CIRCLE has a post today exploring the difference in reasons college youth and non-college youth give for not voting.

Peter Levine notes that data about voting is notoriously suspect given its ambiguity and the potential for people to withhold their actual behavior.

However, we do see that college-attending non-voters attribute their lack of participation to not being home on Election Day, while their non-college-attending, non-voting peers cite a distrust that their vote will carry any impact.

Of course, the question I am left with is how do we get students to believe in the power of their vote, to commit to voting somewhere whether that's at home or at college, and to actually do the deed. In a post on Monday articulating a ten point plan for renewal, Levine puts forth a vision for how we might start this work.

4. Prepare a new generation of active and responsible citizens. People form attitudes and habits related to civil society when they are young and keep them for the rest of their lives. But civic education has been cut in most school systems, and there are too few opportunities for young people to learn through service and extracurricular activities. Congress should revive the small Learn & Serve America program that provides competitive grants for service-learning, eliminated in 2011 after 21 years of work. Congress should also restore funding for civic education in schools (eliminated in 2011), but direct the funds to organizations that test or expand innovative educational methods and rigorously evaluate their impact. Meanwhile, the Office of Civic Education within the U.S. Department of Education should be elevated from its current low status (within the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools) and given a leadership role in coordinating the civic education functions of all federal agencies, including the National Parks Service, the national endowment for the humanities and the arts, the Defense Department, and Homeland Security.

Restoring Learn & Serve America moves us in the right direction, while increasing the power and visibility of the Office of Civic Education sends a message that civic education isn't a joke. We need these steps, combined with many others, to build a foundation for our education system that cultivates civic responsibility among students. The problems in our society are large enough that we need as many people as possible--especially young people-- to be on board and willing to make tough decisions and worthy contributions toward our future.

Matt Bai wrote an interesting piece in the Times last week, noting how far we've come in our various debates since the 1960s, while acknowledging that, in some ways, we have not come far at all. Bai used the controversies surrounding Rand Paul and Richard Blumenthal to make his case.

Why then, to quote the ubiquitous Bono, is our political debate so stuck in a moment it cannot get out of? In part, it is probably because so many of the Americans most engaged in politics — as well as those who run campaigns and comment endlessly on them — are old enough to remember Altamont. It is your classic self-fulfilling prophecy: the more the ’60s generation dominates the political discourse, the less that discourse engages younger voters, and the longer the boomers hold sway over our politics.

On a deeper level, though, this all probably has as much to do with our basic human tendency toward moral clarity. As much as conservatives may view the decade as the crucible of moral relativism and the beginning of a breakdown in established social order, there remains something powerfully attractive about the binary, simplistic nature of it all, the idea that one could easily distinguish whether he was for war or against, in favor of equality or opposed.

By contrast, war today seems more a question of degrees and limits, while equality seems less about the laws of the land than about disparities in economic and educational opportunities that are subtler and harder to address. The choices of our moment are not nearly so neat or so satisfying as they were a generation ago, which makes them less useful as a basis for one’s political identity, and harder to encapsulate in some 30-second spot or prime-time rant.

Emphasis is mine. I find myself agreeing with Bai's explanation, especially given my work with college students. Our students today are getting their bachelor's degree and I would wager that, the way we construct our educational system in this country, a significant number get out of it without having to think critically about issues. If I'm a student and I have followed external formulas guiding my behavior, never having this behavior challenged, I am not even aware that there is anything other than my cozy dualistic system from which I can choose (Harvard developmental psychologist Robert Kegan would say I am subject in my meaning-making capabilities). Of course a simplistic, yet disingenuous politics is going to thrive.

In order for us to challenge this lack of preparation we are offering our students, we must challenge the hegemonic structure dictating that campaigns or discussions on public affairs must run this way. Simultaneously, we must purge ourselves of the assumption that we must go to college to have a chance to learn this. These are big tasks; these notions unobtrusively penetrate our lives everyday, seducing us to believe that, because its the way things work, we must follow it. You go to college, get a four degree, and then work somewhere because you are deemed to be bright enough to do so and be a citizen. There's a code for it: it's "tradition." It's romanticized. The degree is money, we're taught. Yes, our realities are much more contextual than they used to be; our technology, while improving our lives and making them more efficient, gives us a tangential responsibility of learning supplemental skills to be able to cope with the effects of the improvements.

Yet, how many of these college degree-holding, former students come home from work and sit in front of their TVs, allowing the sonorous voices of Bill O'Reilly, Wolf Blitzer, and/(but most likely) or Keith Olbermann to fill their living rooms? Many, I'd be willing to bet. And it's because "we're tired." We've been thinking all day. We need someone to explain things to us, not help us understand anything better. And so when Blitzer's voice gets pitchy with excitement, indelicately discussing stories as complex as the history of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the opportunity to parse what he is saying, to explore it, to uncover it, comes and goes. "Why is this garbage on TV?," someone might ask. But given the way we tackle education in this country, we are all too often incapable of answering our own questions.

So when I read Matt Bai's piece last week, I couldn't help but get excited. A writer for one of the main cogs in this hegemonic structure takes notice of the primary problem -- it's a welcome event. Yet, until we have younger people willing to challenge the status quo of journalism and education in this country (and older ones courageous enough to assist), our external formulas will triumph.

Crossposted at Politics for the Common Good.

Rarely do I intentionally blend my graduate school lessons learned with the material discussed in this blog. I'm starting to realize that's a mistake.

As a graduate student in a Student Affairs in Higher Education program, I endeavor to eventually work on a college campus, encouraging students to mind their civic habits and responsibilities, while simultaneously teaching them about life throughout that journey. In order to fulfill graduation requirements for my masters program, I must work in an office on campus for twelve hours a week; such an experience usually involves creating some form of original work. In working with a leadership institute on campus, I have managed to perform my own bricolage, mixing two seemingly disparate elements together: politics and education. I have organized a series of discussions in which students having no knowledge of politics can contribute to a conversation, along with the political elite on campus, on what politics means to them. I guess one could metaphorically associate this effort with the training wheels needed for what is hopefully a life-long career marrying civic responsibility with education.

My motivation for pursuing what can be an all-too-frustrating task was initially selfish. I was a political science major. I didn't have the guts to denigrate characters in political attack ads or the logical skills needed to practice the law. I liked living and working on a college campus as an undergraduate. Voila. Student affairs allows me to straddle the line between politics and education.

But, as many a graduate student has come to know, this line I speak of is fictional. That's the lesson I have learned this year, perhaps nowhere better than these dialogues. Navigating a curriculum rooted in social constructivism, understanding that there is never a "right" answer, but merely socially-constructed knowledge, has sharpened my realization that politics is in everything we do. Yes, it's in presidential elections every four years. It is in the partisan bickering and strategizing that goes on in Washington. But it is also in fraternity and sorority elections. It is in where you get your coffee in the morning. It is in the choice of news you wish to consume. Politics is everywhere.

My experience with undergraduates at my former place of employment and my current institution reveals to me that I was not alone in seeing the line. Politics can be compartmentalized into a convenient box. Students associate politics with Washington DC, voting, Congress, and the like. In one of our political dialogues this month, one of the students expressed boredom with politics. "Whenever I see politics on TV I change the channel," they explained. "It's just not fun. I don't really want to get involved." Yet, the act of channelsurfing itself is political. They did get involved in their decision to forego public affairs programming.

Unfortunately that involvement was unseen, and small in magnitude. I am recognizing that while student affairs practitioners and scholars spend quite a bit of time on social justice education, we tend to spend less time on civic education, developing the set of tools needed to engage in one's community. While service-learning and voter registration drives have been trendy on college campuses over the last two presidential elections, engagement in local and state politics continues to suffer. It's no wonder students associate politics with dysfunctional Washington.

If we were to take a problem-solving approach in our student affairs practice, we might make some headway.

Embracing a problem-solving approach to learning would be appropriate if we seek to rid higher education of the “mind/body split” that compartmentalizes intellectual discussion from one’s public actions (hooks, 1994, p. 16). A problem-solving approach would require the construction of deep and sustainable relationships between student affairs educators and the rest of the faculty, staff, and administration; a problem-solving-based model would necessitate an emphasis on the common good, meaning that students would see departments and offices role model this approach by collectivizing agendas as much as possible and placing the institution’s mission (which would ideally emphasize problem-solving) above their own. In addition to the construction of strong relationships, a problem-solving approach would encourage student affairs educators to create Freirian relationships with students; with an emphasis on community problem-solving, student/teacher and teacher/student “learn from and teach each other” – “doing ‘with’ rather than ‘for’” (as cited in Manning 1994, p. 95).

In this model, collaboration is the name of the game. The common good is at the heart of this effort, with problems uniting academic disciplines, student affairs staff, and students as opposed to egos, departments that are siloed off from each other, and disengaged students. To get here, we do need to re-examine our social justice efforts.

In order to face society’s problems today, our students must first begin the process of understanding and exploring their identity, their values, and how they view difference. In addition, the educational nature of problem-solving demands from students the ability to see an issue from another’s perspective. Following these tough lessons, students also need to learn about power and privilege, the source of many of the problems our students will be trying to solve.

Politics does not have to be perceived as a bad thing. The derivation of the word -- “polis” is the Greek word for a city or state, thus “politikos,” or politics, means affairs/issues of the city/state -- is hardly negative. However, college students unfortunately associate the broken system currently in Washington with politics; consequently, "politics" gets a bad name and other, more positive opportunities for political engagement become invisible. With just a bit more effort, student affairs practitioners can reveal the other side of politics -- civil conversations, learning from others, changing their realities to help themselves and others -- and align programs with our institutions' "citizenship"-laden mission statements.

37 local NPR and PBS affiliates will be receiving over $10 million in total funding in order to better cover local and regional news stories. The funding is intended to make up for a fledgling newspaper industry.

On Thursday, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced the creation of local journalism centers in five regions. NPR and PBS stations in each region will collaborate on covering key issues, including immigration, agribusiness, the economy and health care. They will jointly hire about 50 multimedia journalists.

[...]

The funding initially targets the Southwest, the Plains states, the upper Midwest, upstate New York and central Florida. Proposals also are being accepted from stations in the South and Northwest, and Harrison hopes to expand the effort.

It will involve 37 local stations, though at least 100 applied. To date, 13 radio stations, 13 joint ventures operating both radio and TV outlets, and one stand-alone TV station have signed on. Stations were selected on the basis of a business plan that included an outline for becoming self-sustaining within two years.

"The idea of pulling together radio and television for content that is broadcast and online this is going to be our template going forward," Harrison said.

The Corporation - already the single largest source of funding for NPR and PBS - will provide $7.5 million of the investment for the project, while the stations involved contribute $3 million.

Preparing public broadcasting to fill in for failing private media is a great move on behalf of American citizens. Though just part of a larger effort, providing Americans with substantive coverage of issues (as opposed to personality) is an important step in increasing civic engagement.

This week Chris Bowers over at Open Left predicts that the voters upon which Barack Obama depended in 2008, a large bloc being young voters, will fail to turn out this November. Bowers grounds his argument in what he calls "long-term civic trends" that show "drop-off voters" participating in presidential elections and failing to go to the polls just two years later. Bowers contends that the importance of young voters to Obama's coalition will exacerbate this situation come Election Day, as youth consistently form a smaller share of the vote in midterm elections compared to presidential elections (for information on "share" versus "turnout," please read the first bullet point here). Thus, Bowers calls for a strategy of persuasion as opposed to mobilization.

I disagree with Bowers. In covering youth political participation, one quickly identifies the chicken-egg nature of the topic. Politicians and parties believe youth cannot and will not be politically engaged, so many of the ads, phone calls, and messages are tailored to older voters, alienating the youth demographic. When youth do not turn out after politicians largely ignore them, the media, pundits, parties, and candidates express disappointment in young voters for failing to engage. Thus, youth naturally view electoral politics with cynicism.

In unquestionably consuming the line that youth won't turn out without unearthing why this might be, we perpetuate the cycle. In a tough political environment thus far, with 435 House races this November and over 30 Senate campaigns, it's going to be easy this cycle for timid and weak Democratic incumbents and their consultants to stick their fingers in their mouths, hold them out in front of them, and avoid making tough decisions. And with the GOP disgusting young voters, Republicans have little incentive to target youth. Accepting this as inevitability is what gets us to this situation in the first place, because it doesn't shine the light on the ineffectiveness of this stale strategy. The result is an electorate that's older, more moralistic, and polarized. Boomer-like ideological strength is at the heart of midterms, not Millennial problem solving. Thus, I heartily disagree with Bowers' resigned argument because it reflects the hegemony that silences youth and leads to more of the same in our political dialogue, which we can no longer afford.

Perhaps if candidates were to truly engage youth in medium (use up-to-date technological communication) and message (a strong, progressive discussion of the economy, higher education, climate crisis, and national service framed in a problem-solving approach) and possess a strong record of consistent conviction, they might respond. Furthermore, youth suffer from a lack of access, not apathy. When young people are registered to vote, they turn out. For example, according to the US Census, 81.6% of all registered young voters actually cast a ballot in 2004. That is on par with other portions of electorate.

It's not going to be easy. It's harder to register/inspire a younger group of people to vote when they are collectively facing over 500 decisions without a headlining candidate/campaign at the top. But it won't be as hard if we're willing to challenge our candidates' conventional campaign strategies.

Bowers is right on one thing -- young voters do form the heart of Obama's base. Unlike Bowers, though, I argue that 2010 is so important, our issues are so pressing, and our demographic is so critical to Democratic success that there's no choice but to view this as a mobilization struggle. Political interest is at an all-time high among youth; to capitalize, we must recalibrate our campaigns to attract the support of young people.

Peter Levine asks this question in tracing the evaporation of the active citizenship theme from the campaign to the White House.

Service and transparency are not nearly "edgy" enough; there is no fight in them. People are angry - from the Tea Partiers to MoveOn. When citizens try to solve serious social problems, they identify enemies. They do not just hold hands and serve together; they strike back at those whom they perceive as threats. "Active citizenship" reduced to non-controversial "service" or downloading government data completely loses touch with the legitimate anger of the American people.

The White House chose to make health care its major focus and included no aspects of civic engagement in the deliberations about the bill, in its advocacy for the legislation, or in the design of the statute. There could have been real public discussions, instead of sham "Town Meetings" that were really speeches by politicians with time for Q&A. Progressive volunteers could have been encouraged to conduct face-to-face dialogues in their communities and to form relationships with one another (instead of merely finding themselves on the receiving end of an email list). The legislation could have included health co-ops as an experiment in engaging citizens in policy.

As Levine notes to close out his piece, the climate legislation, currently "stuck in the Senate," makes for a good starter kit for this new, authentic political dialogue, in which the grassroots is mobilized and the American people are asked to participate. It's audacious in that it could shift the debate away from special interests (or at least make their involvement more transparent), and it could restore more faith in our government. An addendum might be asking C-SPAN to cover these dialogues across America and any administrative meetings in Washington. Obama has already admitted he messed up by not involving C-SPAN in health care discussions.

This morning I got an email from myImpact.org announcing that they'd received support from the Peterson Foundation and Mobilize.org for a social media project they intend to do. This was announced at the Mobilize.org event "Exploring the Millennial Generation’s Return on Investment" a conference announced earlier this year when Mobilize announced their $1million grant from the Peterson Foundation.

William Greider wrote in The Nation earlier this year about the Looting of Social Security, describing very specifically the plan among Wall Street and Banking elites who are pushing the idea of fiscal responsibility as part of policy. Fiscal responsibility is a well tested phrase that everyone can get behind - because everyone agrees that our country should be responsible with its money. . . but Greider says that this is a backdoor swindle on anyone who has paid into Social Security

"These players are promoting a tricky way to whack Social Security benefits, but to do it behind closed doors so the public cannot see what's happening or figure out which politicians to blame. The essential transaction would amount to misappropriating the trillions in Social Security taxes that workers have paid to finance their retirement benefits. This swindle is portrayed as "fiscal reform." In fact, it's the political equivalent of bait-and-switch fraud."

His piece is extensive, and outlines the ways in which the rich want to use funding for Social Security to cut taxes to corporations and upper-income wage earners and a huge tax increase imposed on working people that he says is similar to the 1983 tax

"the payroll tax rate supporting Social Security--the weekly FICA deduction--was raised substantially, supposedly to create a nest egg for when the baby boom generation reached retirement age."

There is a kindred spirit in young people with this message, because since the 1980's the Millennial Generation has heard a consistent message about Social Security being too small to support the Baby Boomer Generation. Most young people don't think it will be there for them (Disclaimer: It will be), so this is a great group of people to begin organizing around "entitlement reform" to unmake Social Security and bait the young against the old to screw us all.

The article received a response from the Peterson Foundation itself directly targeting the idea of "entitlements" and "fiscal responsibility." But, Greider responded to the letter saying

"if you read his letter closely, he more or less confirms what I wrote about the establishment's assault on Social Security and other entitlement programs.

"I said they want to loot Social Security. He says it's already been looted. I said they are trying to evade the regular processes of representative democracy. He says Congress is "broken" and so cannot be trusted to make sound decisions in a timely manner."

Mobilize prides itself in being an "all partisan" organization, rather than a non-partisan organization which is what many youth groups are. When they promote progressive values I personally celebrate it, when they promote right-wing ideas, I will not. I had no idea that myImpact.org was also aligned with this kind of ideology, and I was so disappointed to receive the email from them this morning celebrating the Peterson Foundation's involvement, and accepting donations from them.

But this is the second problem, there's no funding for the youth movement. If you've read Mike Connery's book Youth to Power then you've read about the major donors that invested 5-10 years ago, respectively, in progressive youth outreach, young voters, and organizations that promote the civic participation and dedication of the Millennial Generation.

I'm sad to say that those donors have almost entirely dried up. Many are funding different projects, some have gone more partisan, some have gone less partisan only funding organizations that do voter registration and civic engagement but not issues, and others have simply stopped giving either because of the economic recession or a lack of interest.

The result is a ton of youth organizations doing groundbreaking work in states and across the country that can't get funded or whose budgets have been slashed so considerably that the outreach has suffered. The funders that are still active in the youth movement, those rare loyal leaders, are so few that we as a community are wrestling over any dime we can get.

So when there is a major foundation like Peterson willing to bankroll the entire organization with a $1million check, an organization must choose whether or not to sell their soul to keep the doors open.

This will continue to be the standard until we as a progressive movement decide to invest in our future. Right wing groups specifically invest in their youth with leadership training, job placement, think takes, and candidate recruitment. Connery wrote on Talking Points Memo last year about the trend beginning in the 1970's when the

"Young America’s Foundation, the most well-funded conservative youth group, with an average annual budget of around $9 million, was revitalized, and new organizations like Morton Blackwell’s Leadership Institute, which has trained upwards of 50,000 conservative activists on an average annual budget of $7 million, were getting their start.

Within the Republican Party itself, the College Republicans also experienced a revitalization at this time. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, the number of College Republican chapters climbed from a nadir of 250 during the Johnson administration to over 1,100 by the time Reagan was in office.

By 2003, there were over a dozen leadership and training nonprofits in the conservative youth movement, and they receive upwards of $48 million a year in funding from 75 different conservative foundations. More importantly, their was not cyclical (ie election-based), but steady, providing a measure of stability on which to build and sustain their operations for years. Together, these organizations train hundreds if not thousands of conservatives a year, almost the entire cost of which is subsidized for the trainees."

I'll say it again, if we don't invest in our future today, there won't be a future to invest in, and more and more youth groups will be forced to accept compromising donations from conservative groups looking to creatively make inroads to the progressive movement. Social Security will be just the beginning of the end.

CIRCLE's new working paper, Spiral of Rebellion: Conflict Seeking of Democratic Adolescents in Republican Counties, "shows a
striking pattern of Democratic youth thriving in political expression and debate when exposed to Republican ideological climates."

The study compares Democratic adolescents to Republican adolescents, and further breaks down the comparison into those living in Democratic, balanced, and Red counties. They found that Democratic youth were more politically expressive than Republican youth, and that Democratic youth in Republican areas were more expressive than those living in blue or balanced areas.

A couple findings of note:

When asked what they perceived to be the greatest influence on their political beliefs, "the largest difference occurs with religion, particularly at post-election, when 24.8% of Republicans identified religion as the greatest influence compared with 1.5% for Democrats."

There are large differences between factors in partisan identity strength (PID) among Republican and Democratic youth:

At T2 (Post-Election), knowledge becomes the sole correlate of Republican ID strength. PID strength among Democrats correlates with more indicators of political involvement: talking with friends, initiating talk, and comprehension at T1 (Pre-Election), and testing out opinions, listening to opponents, classroom discussion, confronting parents, knowledge, and news attention at T2. Thus, we might say that a firm allegiance to the Republican Party is manifest in knowledge during adolescence, while Democratic ID is expressed more holistically, in political cognition but also interpersonal communication.

By knowledge, they are referring to perceived knowledge of the political parties.

An intriguing implication is that dynamics of formative partisan identity resonate with the philosophical tension between progressive and conservative visions of “the good citizen.” Progressive ideology celebrates the inter-subjectivity of civic and political engagement, in conceptions such as the public sphere, social capital, deliberative democracy, and communitarianism (Murphy, 2004). In conservative visions of the ideal citizen, civic virtue springs from the pursuit of self-interest and the guarding of individual autonomy (Murphy, 2003; Westheimer, 2004).

From the results of the study, the authors recommend the following:

In more pragmatic terms, results from this study suggest a need for peer-centered discussion about topical issues in U.S. social studies curricula. We have documented a significant gap in interpersonal political engagement between liberal and conservative youth. A strikingly consistent pattern of deliberative deficits appeared among Republican youth. However, recent research shows that schools can promote equality of civic and political development by allowing students to wrestle with contentious issues (Hess, 2004; Hess & Ganzler, 2007). Unfortunately, conflict-avoidant instincts of school boards, teachers, and parents preclude this kind of instruction in many communities (McDevitt & Caton-Rosser, 2009). Still, an argument put forth by Hibbing and Theiss-Morse in 1996 still resonates. Civics is not enough. If we can tolerate and even promote agonistic expression in classrooms, more youth would benefit from deliberative development.