non-college youth

Over the last year or so, there have been more and more groups claiming that they work with noncollege youth. This is sort of bitter sweet for me. While the need in this community is tremendous and there is more than enough work to go around, the truth is that not all groups are created equal.

Many of the groups claiming to serve noncollege youth have absolutely no business mobilizing poor communities. But because of their positional power, or because of their relationship to beltway insiders, they often times get resources to do this very tough and often times unrewarding work, when they should be deferring to other organizations.

So, in an effort to clear the air, and serve low income communities, I have a decided to drop this list of the "Top 5 Ways to Know You're Not Really Working With Noncollege Youth."

#1 You don't have a hood or barrio pass!

Let's keep it real, not every group has what it takes to canvass in low income communities. There is a real art and science to mobilizing voters in low income neighborhoods. Trust me, you can't just pop up in a neighborhood and get respect. You have to earn it. And word to John Mayer, hood passes aren't earned easily.

#2 You are more about promoting your organization than the community!

Lot's of groups spend way more of their resources on branding and visibility than mobilizing their constituents. That works for some constituencies, but to really get folks from noncollege communities to turn out, you have to really be about organizing. Low income communities only respond when they see a real commitment to organizing and local leadership development. You can't move folks with a bumper sticker or t-shirt.

#3 You skip town when the election is over!

It's okay, most organizations do it. Heck, LYVEF has even had to close up a shop or two when money has gotten tight. But that can't be your M.O. Noncollege communities need deep, long term investments. You can't get the respect you need to really mobilize people if you are only in town every other year. Community folks know when organizations aren't in it for the long haul.

#4 Your whole strategy focuses on online work!

Word to the New Organizing Institute, I LOVE online organizers. But there is no way that you can mobilize noncollege folks if you only use an online strategy. (Well, unless you are Worldstarhiphop.com.) Low income folks need to be able to look you in your eyes to see if you are legitimate. Online organizing is a great tactic, but it CANNOT be the end all be all of your strategy.

#5 You're feeling a little intimidated by this post.

It's ok. I'm here to help. As I said above, there is more than enough work to be done in this community. If you really want to serve low income communities, come holla at me. I am more than willing to connect you to a group in your city or region that is doing amazing work. Trust me, they exist.

BTW, here's a link to our Number's Don't Lie--Census 2010 mixtape. Check it out, and download it for free!!!

I'm still decompressing from my wedding/honeymoon and getting my house (figurative and literal) in order. It will probably take me a couple days to fully get back in to the swing of things after two weeks off the grid. In the meantime, here' a Quick Hits(ish) post. Expect a lot of these for the next couple of days as I get back on my feet.

• Here's an interesting chart delineating the proper uses of twitter in a variety of business/activist settings. Colin Delaney of ePolitics also has some interesting things to say about the proper uses of Twitter.

• Erica Williams deftly explains the power of good messaging in a policy fight.
• At Mother Jones, Michael Silberman offers yet another look at how online tools helped put Obama over the top.
• 5 elements of a successful Facebook fan page.
• Front Line Leaders Academy, a project of PFAW and the Young Elected Officials Network, is accepting applications for their 2009 class.
• Secretary Clinton has announced plans for a second Alliance of Youth Movements Summit. The goals of the summit are to help youth use online tools to fight oppression, and win over hearts and minds around the world.
• CIRCLE has released a slide show of data about non-college youth:

• Open Left and Daily Kos' microgrants program is up and running. Go read the rules and submit your idea.
• For those looking for summer opportunities in politics, check out the New Organizing Institute's Summer Boot Camp.

A few more quick thoughts about Roots Camp this year and some notes from the second youth panel I helped put together.

Roots Camp Overall: I missed Roots Camp 2007, but the 2006 gathering remains one of the best conferences I have ever attended. This year was OK, but it didn't match the energy or productivity of Roots Camp '06. In talking to people, two reasons were consistently offered as the basis for this:

1. The space was too diffuse compared to the NEA building. That means less bumping into people, fewer random conversations and less information exchange when moving between sessions. It took some of the dynamism out of the event.
2. The Obama campaign. I heard different variations on this. Some people suggested that the Obama folks overtook most sessions, creating less chance for conversations about anything other than the campaign. For myself, it seems like we are in a different contextual moment. Like 2006 we are coming off a win, but we were in the opposition in 2006. There was money to be had from donors and a wealth of possibility in terms of what still needed to be done. Our infrastructure was still in the process of building itself. Now, everyone is waiting on Obama. Very few of us have experience at being in power like this, and we're all sort of waiting on the Obama campaign and the inauguration.

Notes from Youth FTW II: In response to some of the criticism about the general, non-specific nature of the first panel, Sebastian Freed and I arranged for a follow up during the final session on Sunday. I think it went fairly well. We asked people to come prepared to talk about 1 thing that we weren't doing that we should be, and 1 thing we could all do to help each other do better.

I've pasted the notes from that session below, but wanted to take time to point out a new thing I learned about: Reverse Canvassing. The concept came from James Hannaway, who worked as a student organizer from the Obama campaign. This is not surprising. James is somebody to look out for and his session on using Facebook to construct a voter file on campus was one of the highlights of my 2006 Roots Camp experience.

Young people are fairly transient and thus the voter file tends to have inaccurate information about where we live and whether we are properly registered. Reverse canvassing is a tactic to help campaigns address that problem. Here are the steps as James explained them:

• Define your population. This can be done by printing out the top 500 youth dense precincts from the VAN, or by running a FOIA request to obtain student directories on local campuses.
• Match these "bad" lists to the Voter File.
• Send volunteers out to canvass those neighborhoods specifically to correct the bad data.
• View this as a registration opportunity as well. Not only are you confirming a person's address and their level of support, but you can reregister them at their correct address on the spot. People respond better to someone with an official list coming to their door and verifying their information.

Notes:

Things We Should Be Doing:

• Get more people long term into organizations and leadership development.
• Community colleges - better organizing on those campuses. Reaching a whole new demographic
• Grassroots organizing on campuses in place through Obama in upcoming election.
• First 100 days pass energy policy and Automatic Registration
• Engage non-college youth, get young people elected
• Non-political engagement. Service learning and other
  non-election engagement.
• CIRCLE: Doing a study on non-college youth. Get it informed by orgs working in this area.
• How can technology help develop offline action.

Best Practices/Ways to Help Each Other:

Structuring a non-college program:

In Pres campaign, hard to structure something outside of what is going on. Can't have separate programs that go into other people's turf. Has to be integrated. Obama campaign gets guff for not doing an 18 - 29 program, but it was successful when the general field campaign also looked at 18 - 29 year olds. Make sure youth appropriate tactics are being used - clubs, bars, etc.

Independent orgs can provide the "extra touch" that gets young people to turn out. But program specific non-colelge stuff in a campaign is hard.

Reach out to youth centers that work with young people - Boys and Girls clubs, YMCA, etc. It's a younger population but you are "priming the pump."

YDA focuses on non-college youth. Campaigns already had the campus youth covered.

Make sure that under 30's are in the Voter File. Going to clubs. Festivals, concerts, book stores, churches, barber shops. "Where you spend your weekend."

Reverse Canvassing - go to neighborhood with transient population. VAN will give top 500 youth precincts. Print out the "bad" list. Specifically go to correct the VAN. Acquire student directories via FOIA. Then match to voter file. Then go door to door and tell people where they are registered. Student directory availability varies state by state. Some don't allow it.

Set expectations for organizers that reflect the difficulties in organizing at community colleges and non-colleges.

Students are older - different population at these colleges and don't self-identify as a student. Typically employed as well. the populations are very different from traditional undergrad.

Finding a professor on campus can help with continuity on the campus.

Should also take into account background of students. Many community college students are less familiar and comfortable with the political process.

Nonpartisan/partisan divide keeps a lot of information from flowing and decreases people's knowledge of their activity options.

Idealist.org, Volunteer Match - Maybe need to create a "Craig's List" for volunteer opportunities appealing to young people . . .

Policy

Make it as much like organizing as possible - concrete tasks that show visible results to those participating.

Partnerships - how will organizations play together? Some people will have policy questions that need to be answered (women in the "green jobs" programs).

Canvassing - day of lobbying coordinated by EAC and Power Shift. How can we shift to doing the same thing. How can it be concrete, effective and coordinated.

• Marc Ambinder notes that for the first time, MTV will accept paid political advertisements. Gawker has the appropriately snarky response.
• Kevin Bondelli notes that SMS is one of the best tools for organizing rural youth.
• McCain has a Facebook App! Called "Pork Invaders," the game lets you sling vetos at unnecessary spending projects symbolized by big flying pigs. I can already envision the Democratic response - a Facebook App that lets you play wack-a-mole with McCain's lobbyist buddies.
• Speaking of campaign-related video games, does anyone else remember the Bush Game from back in 2004? Good times.
• Because I'm a geek and I already miss Battlestar Galactica, I'll post this essay on Why I'd Vote for Baltar. It's the new "I voted for Kodos."
• Facebook has finally surpassed MySpace in unique viewers per month.
• Michael Hais and Morley Winograd note that political coalitions are changing, but the pundits can't shake their old models.
• Student PIRGs report that lower interest rates beginning in July on Stafford Loans will save students thousands of dollars.
• The Seattle Times wonders if Obama will be able to help down-ballot candidates.
• At WireTap, Kristina Rizga has a few ideas about closing the participation gap between college and non-college youth.
• For those who couldn't attend, this was one of the highpoints of the PDF conference - Tracy Russo (former Edwards blogger) smacking down McCain internet advisor Mark SooHoo about McCain's understanding of the potential of the internet to transform governance:

• Finally, I'm wondering what y'all think of this Blogging Heads video about the political implications of Hip Hop:

Updated to more specifically define "non-college" youth.

After a six-week lull, voting in the Democratic Primary picks up again tomorrow, this time in Pennsylvania, where the Obama campaign is looking for a win (or something close to a tie) in order to slam the door on the candidacy of Sen. Clinton, the success of which is looking more and more unlikely with each passing contest and Super Delegate endorsement.

As in all previous states, youth turnout tomorrow will surely rise well above levels from 2000 or 2004. With such high stakes on the line, it may even double or triple. I would love to be able to say that such increased turnout among young voters will be the key to an Obama win, but the deck seems stacked against such a possibility.

On paper, the math would seem to be good. According to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) (pdf), young voters (18 - 29) make up 21% of the eligible electorate in Pennsylvania, or just under 2 million voters. That's about average. Pennsylvania is a big college state, though, and 23% of those young voters are college students, a group which votes in high numbers for Sen. Obama. According to a CBS Newswire poll, PA students support Sen. Obama over Sen. Clinton 71 - 29%.

In the demographically similar state of Ohio, Obama lost to Clinton 54 - 44%. In that contest, young people made up 16% of the Democratic Electorate. Obama will need young voters to make up a much greater share of the electorate tomorrow if he is to overcome Clinton, who has typically held the lead in polling results.

But here's the rub. This campaign was supposed to be over on Super Tuesday. No one thought the two Democratic candidates would still be duking it out in March, let alone April. This has consequences.

As Ben Adler reported in the Politico, the Obama campaign didn't begin voter registration efforts on campuses until late February, and once they did, those efforts ran smack into one of the hazards of student organizing: spring break. During the final weeks of voter registration, most students were away on a beach or at home with their family. Mix in the fact that many students, thinking the contest would never get this far, decided to vote absentee in their home states, and you have a recipe for lower than average student turnout in a state with a higher than average student population.

There is one factor that could change this equation, and that is an increase in turnout from "non-college" youth, or young people with no college experience. As reported by CIRCLE earlier this year, non-college youth, despite comprising a slightly higher percentage of the eligible youth vote, are turning out in far lower numbers than their college-attending and college-educated peers. On Super Tuesday, non-college youth comprised a rather dismal 21% of all young voters (pdf). This, despite the fact that non-college youth make up slightly more than half of the youth population nationwide.

Both the Clinton and Obama campaigns recognize this, and are reaching out to non-college youth, but the work is much harder than engaging students. Non-college youth are not clumped together geographically around a campus, and are thus harder to target. Because many of these "other" young voters are working jobs, in the military, or struggling to start families, they also tend to have very different policy concerns than their college-educated peers, making it a challenge for the campaigns to speak to and engage them.

If Obama can narrow the gap slightly among other constituencies (like white working class men), then a big bump in turnout among these non-college youth could turn the youth vote into a decisive factor in tomorrow's election. This is a long shot, but not outside the realm of possibility as non-college youth have received special attention in Pennsylvania not only from the campaigns but from outside organizations as well.

In the last year - and in particular the last six weeks - Russell Simmon's nonprofit, the Hip Hop Summit Action Network - has been on the ground targeting under-served communities and communities of color, to educate, register, and get young people out to vote. Working in partnership with PowerPAC and the NAACP, the group claims to have registered 120,000 young Pennsylvanians since January.

Tomorrow will be the test of the effectiveness of those efforts. If non-college youth turnout in greater numbers than they have in previous contests, then Obama just might pull this off, or at least keep it close enough to deny Clinton the momentum she needs to continue. If not, we're headed to North Carolina, Indiana, and maybe all the way to the convention.

For a number of reasons, I'd like to revisit the data on college turnout vs. non-college turnout that I blurbed on Thursday. First, to note that I've spoken with some people and cleared up the confusion of the precise definition of "non-college" youth. The term non-college applies to anyone who has not attended or received a degree from an institution of higher education. It does not, as the NPR story seemed to suggest, apply to graduates not longer in school.

Looking at the data once again in that light, I have to agree with Karlo that the disparities are shocking. 79 percent of young voters this cycle are college youth and just 21 percent are classified as non-college. When you consider that In 2007, only 18 percent of 18-29 year olds had a B.A. or more, it does not seem outlandish to suggest that we're seeing some version of the Pareto Principle (80/20 rule) playing out in the youth vote surge.

CIRCLE notes that one cause for these disparities is inequality in high school education, particularly opportunities to learn about politics:

Instead of making things more equal, school systems exacerbate this political inequality by providing more opportunities to learn about politics to higher income students, white students, and academically successful students, according to a new CIRCLE study written by Joseph Kahne and Ellen Middaugh of the Civic Engagement Research Group (CERG) at Mills College. Students in higher-income school districts are up to twice as likely as those from average-income districts to learn how laws are made and how Congress works, for example. They are more than one-and-a-half times as likely to report having political debates and panel discussions.

Over at WireTap, Karlo Marcelo of CIRCLE has some good suggestions on how we can alleviate these disparities:

We need to address this gap now -- during this election -- and while the emphasis on the internet and online organizing is effective this year in delivering information about the voting process to college youth, it leaves out non-college youth, whose voices need the most amplification. Complicating outreach tactics even more, places that were once venues for mobilizing non-college youth, such as unions, and community organizations, are less effective today because of declining membership rates.

One way to engage non-college youth, in the long term, is to improve access to and affordability of college; but not everyone wants to attend. For those young people that do not want to attend college -- or can't afford or access it -- the focus needs to turn to high school civic education. A new CIRCLE working paper found that students in higher-income school districts are twice as likely as those from average-income districts to learn how laws are made and how Congress works. More than that, they are more than one-and-a-half times as likely to report having political debates and panel discussions.

The implication being that there is a direct correlation between this kind of early civics education and voting habits. I'm in full agreement with Karlo that all youth should receive the same quality of civics education in high school, but I would go further. We also need to create new institutions that can fill in the role previously played by those unions and community organizations.

As David Sirota wrote in his recent columen, The New Permanent Campaign, political involvement can't just spool up at the height of an election cycle and then disappear for the next four years. That doesn't build anything and offers little in the way of real, substantial involvement. Progressives need to put serious thought into creating institutions that involve progressives 24/7/365. Progressive donors should invest in nontraditional outreach like that provided by Drinking Liberally and Democrats Work, and the creation of healthy, state-based youth organizations with a focus on reaching non-college youth.

Typically these types of organizations are the least funded institutions in the progressive movement. Real investment in these types of organizations - combined with research into best practices for such groups - would also go a long way towards brining non-college youth to the voting booth and into the progressive movement.

A few quick hits this morning:

NPR takes a closer look at non-college young voters and posits that they are being "left behind" in the surge of participation we've seen this year. What was most interesting to me about this story was that they include college graduates/young professionals in the category of "non-college." I always assume that the term applies strictly to young people lacking a college degree and not currently attending university. It's weird because the graphic on the right seems to support my interpretation, but the article itself is quite unclear.

Peter Levine, the Director of CIRCLE, has an interesting post on his blog outlining the many levers of power in our democracy (non profits, voting, the arts, academia, etc.) and analyzing the pros and cons of using each to accomplish major change. I think he is slightly off when looking at the "cons" of blogging and the arts - there is ample evidence of blogs leading to offline action (see Donna Edwards' win just a few weeks ago), and the arts can be more influential than he thinks. But of course I'm biased. I wish the chart Levine constructed was an image - it would be a good thing to post around as a conversation starter, and it's certainly something all activists should at least look at and think about.

The Wall Street Journal gives props to young voters in a pretty good article in yesterday's paper.