concerts

So, I'm finally settled back in. Here's the rest of those Quick Hits I didn't get to while at the Austin airport, as well as a few more that have accumulated since.

• The Austin Statesman picked up our little youth caucus, but seemed to miss the point. The caucus was an informal meeting, not a strategy session to construct a master youth plan. And the focus of the discussion - to what extent our youth movement needed to be about GOTV and infrastructure for organizing our peers, or building an ideological consensus - was barely touched on in his piece.
• In this piece by The Washington Post, 29 year old Republican tech strategist David All confirms the complete disconnect between the GOP and Millennials. My favorite line:
  

  David All points to a page on McCain's Web site as more old-fogy branding:

• PEW reports that young voters in this election are at least - if not more - knowledgeable about the candidates' position on Iraq.
• Anderson Cooper's ac360 blog profiles HeadCount and their latest work at the Camp Bisco festival.
• The Virginia Pilot reports that young Viginians (under 25) are registering at twice the rate of their elders. Registration has increased 10% in the last year.
• Rumors abound that Barack Obama is going to show up as a surprise guest at this year's Lollapalooza, which takes place in his hometown of Chicago.
• Young People For just announced the new class of their Front Line Leaders Academy.
• Nine Latino organizations are teaming up to spend $5 million on a nonpartisan voter registration effort targeting 2 million Latinos.
• Finally, Rock the Vote is teaming up with Comcast in its effort to register 2 million new voters this election cycle. I'm not a fan of this partnership. Last year, Comcast was caught blocking internet traffic from peer to peer networks. They are on the wrong side of the Net Neutrality debate.

Got an update on the Al Gore Live Aid/8 concert clone I blogged about earlier this week. It’s called Live Earth, and it will be a Live 8 clone because its being produced by the same guy.

You can get a listing of the artists involved after the jump. First, a couple thoughts.

1. It is very cool that each concert they hold will be designed to be as (environmentally) sustainable as possible, and will showcase technology and best practices for living sustainablly.
2. A giant concert series is, in and of itself, not at all a sustainable (political) model.
3. The concert series is part of the Save Our Selves coalition, which claims that it will provide corporations, governments, and people with solutions to prevent further climate change. That could be good, but is too vague to reliably judge.
4. All proceeds from the concerts will go to establish a fund to fight climate change. That is very cool and could actually provide the seed money for something that is politically sustainable.

I’m still on the fence, but one leg just got thrown over to Gore’s side. I really hope he can pull this off and make a lasting impact.