engagement

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?

Like a lot of people who work somewhere in the general orbit of politics, I often find myself playing the role of low-budget pundit with friends and acquaintances.

"How's the election looking?" they ask. "Who's going to be the running mate?" "What big October surprises do we have in store?"

Honestly I kind of suck at punditry. Answering damn near every question with "who the hell knows" probably won't get you invited back as a talking head on CNN, and a careful analysis of the possibilities doesn't really seem to thrill a party crowd gathered around the punch bowl.

I'm ok with that. Anyone who claims to have all the answers is probably as full of it as the TV pundits anyway.

But there is one question that I get asked that really ticks me off -- not because it's a bad question, but because I don't have a good answer.

That question: "What else can I do?"

I know tons of people, of all ages, who really care about the outcome of this election, and who want to "help." But they don't really know how.

For young people who can afford to do it, there are definitely some jump-in-with-both-feet options, like volunteering or working full time for a campaign, or hooking up with the League of Young Voters (where I work), or taking a trip with Swing Semester, or getting involved with one of the great "young progressive" organizations on the right column of this website.

But when it comes to young people who need to work full time, or people in my parents and grandparents generation, or even my peers in their 30's or 40's, the options thin out a little bit.

Everyone knows they can donate money. That's a good thing to do, and it's important. But it's only sorta satisfying, and reduces a person's potential talent and energy to all the creativity and skill of having a credit card.

Sure, I could tell people to volunteer at a local campaign office. That's definitely important. Sometimes that can even be fun or satisfying. And sometimes it stinks.

I could tell them to get out there and make phone calls or knock on doors. That can be enjoyable sometimes, when you're not feeling apologetic being the guy on the other end of those phone calls and front porch visits we all "love" so much. After trying it once, plenty of people have no interest in a return engagement.

Donating, stuffing envelopes, phone banking, or knocking doors. Are those really the best ways we can offer people to engage?

The truth is, the way most election work is done these days is shockingly inefficient. The amount of time and money that campaigns end up spending in ineffective ways is staggering. We have to play the game because it's the best option we've got right now. But if you step back and summon a little perspective about the way voters are identified and turned out, you quickly figure out that we're still just emerging from the prehistoric age here.

There has to be a better way. I've been thinking about it and I've got some ideas about how we might be able to step back a bit, think outside the box, and figure out how to use the massive well of talent and energy that's out there from people of all ages.

I hope other people are hard at work at the same task. There's a lot of powerful passion, energy, and skill out there to be tapped, and we're only just at the beginning of learning how to do it. Holler if you're down to help, and let's get to it.

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Sam Dorman is the Managing Director of the League of Young Voters