Swing Semester

Note: The following entry is part of an on-going series of content that I am producing as part of the Millennials Changing America tour. The tour, which is taking place between October and December of 2008, is traveling to over 30 cities throughout the US and attempting to collect as many on-the-ground stories about millennials-in-action as possible.

White Wine, White Supremacy, and late night cell phone connections.

My conversation with Anima LaVoy, founder and executive director of Swing Semester, has been somewhat long in the making. After missing an opportunity to meet with her in Washington, DC and Cincinnati, Ohio, and after an eventual realization that our paths will again just miss crossing in Seattle, and then again later back in the East Coast, Anima and I finally connected late last evening. For her, working in Cincinnati, it was just about 11 and she had been leaving a series of planning meetings. "I just had a couple of glasses of white wine," she explained. "This is a really honest opportunity for an interview."

On my end, passing through North Dakota, I was just returning to the motel from a truck stop diner where an old man told me about his son receiving two life sentences back in the 80s for being at a meeting that sounded like it was somehow related to a militia movement and a domestic terror plot ("ideas that were popular at the time"); how, despite serving in the military, he tells young people not to join as it is soiled with corruption (along with the church - an opinion he hesitantly held, as he is a God-fearing man); and how the Aryan Nation has some pretty good ideas, though people just have a hard time hearing "the truth." It was nearing midnight, I was ready to pass out, but, in addition to near-misses country-wide, Anima and I had finally connected after nearly 20 rounds of phone tag.

"Quakers, Universalist Unitarians and Jews are on the cutting edge."

Despite growing up in Washington, DC, where her mother worked in politics, Anima, now 27, would find that she didn't much care for the subject until 2003. "I had realized that I was dissatisfied with the Bush Administration and I wanted to do something." She grew passionate, angry, and driven, but she hadn't really paid much attention to the political landscape until that moment. She was soon exposed to the concept of the swing state: "It was from that vantage point that I would see myself in Indiana and realize that as a liberal white Christian, my vote didn't really mean much. I was really seething about Bush at that point, but I wasn't quite sure what to do."

After some research into the mechanics of the modern swing state phenomenon, Anima rallied hard, gathered her friends, folks from her school, and in related networks (she notes how lucky she was to be connected with Quaker school networks, as, half tongue-in-cheek, she claims that "Quakers, Universalist Unitarians, and Jews are on the cutting edge [of progressive political organizing]"), and she fired up as many people as she could to move to Ohio and work for progressive political advocacy groups and organizations. She worked to find statewide host families for the newly change-oriented, and she hooked them up with jobs at organizations like the NAACP, ACT, and other organizations peripherally interested in a Kerry win. In working as a collective force with these organizations, this politically progressive born-again organized efforts which led to the knocking on 140,000 doors.

Sort of like Mary Poppins, only politically-driven and less creepy.

Looking back on the makeshift, yet effective 2004 experience, Anima worked hard to grow the organization for the 2008 Presidential race. She had been quite excited by the progress made in her initial organizational attempts, where Swing Semester had maintained 100% canvasser retention-rate — a nearly unheard of number, and she hoped to enhance Swing Semester's impact on participants and, of course, the election.

This year, Swing Semester is operating in Cincinnati and Denver, and this time around, participation in the program is tuition-based (though there are scholarships and subsidized tuition available). Further, participants can leverage participation in the program for substantial college credit. The program provides a syllabus that confronts a lot of the questions that incoming workers have about political philosophy, a passion of Anima's. "Our syllabus brings together some of the works of George Lakoff, Ken Wilbur, Eric Liu, Nick Hanaur, and others and it gets people discussing, and reaching to understand the context of their work." The one issue that they center their attentions on as a collective, Anima explains, is food. "We realized that if you really get how political food is, and how related it is to social justice, the economy, healthcare, etc., you see that you become political three times a day."

"In 2004," she explains, "Swing Semester was kind of scrappy, but it was totally mobilizing. This year it's a full time experience. Students can get academic credit and we've got 40 members this year, aged 19-26," which is nearly a 200% increase from the last time. "It's totally exciting."

I asked Anima if she is at all interested in figuring out how to sustain the momentum that she was building, and to look beyond thriving on the every-four-year engagement model:

"Do you know how Mary Poppins just came in out of nowhere and would then leave? And she didn't really screw anyone in that process... She just helped and left? That's how what we're doing feels right now."

"Sometimes you just gotta say, 'What the f**k, make your move.'" -Joel Goodsen

Anima went into the 2004 election knowing relatively nothing about the electoral process, and she came out a substantial organizer. She was able to do so, in part, because her energy inspires awe, and, her enthusiasm is infectious. Her impact was also made possible because, as she explains, she stopped finding excuses to not get involved. "I just had to do it," she explains. "And I had to explain to other people who were working at jobs they were otherwise dissatisfied with that they did too. I had to sell the idea of doing the right thing over doing what feels necessary, like taking a job that doesn't feel right, or whatever." And it was from that jumping point (and the series of convince-others-to-jump-too points that followed thereafter) that Swing Semester was born, reared, and sustained.

• If you are in DC today, Swing Semester is holding a happy hour/fundraiser to support their efforts to import Millennial activists into swing states. The event is from 6 pm - 8:30 pm at the Science Club, 2nd Floor, 1136 19th St NW (between L & M). Suggested donation is $20, RSVP here. This is a good organization and a good cause. Help them out if you can.
• Millennial Alex Steed is traveling the country, interviewing young activists. Here's his first report from the road posted at YPulse. I'm hoping we can snag Alex for a few guest posts here as well.
• New York Magazine runs a must-read profile of 30-year-old Nate Silver, the stats guru behind the indispensable FiveThirtyEight blog.
• The ballots are in, and if 8 - 13 year-olds decided this election, Barack Obama would win by a whopping 57 - 39%, or so says the Scholastic poll of schoolchildren. Since its inception, the poll has correctly predicted all but 2 presidential elections.
• Twice this week, myself and Future Majority made it into the New York Times. Pretty cool: Once, twice.
• Finally, HCAN, the progressive Health Care coaltion, has an interesting new video they are about to put on the air. Apparently, McCain's health care plan is so radical, that most people refuse to believe it when the plan is explained to them:

I'd like to give a little shout out to an organization that I think could do a lot of good work this cycle: Swing Semester.

Swing Semester operates under one simple idea: what if you could do a semester abroad here at home? Instead of jetting off to Dublin or Rome and partying your brains out for three months while enrolled in light-weight pass/fail classes, what if you could travel to a battle ground state, receive a crash course in progressive politics (for credit), and make a difference in this Presidential election? Swing Semester exists to help young people do just that.

How does it work?

In short, 250 participants will be sent to cities in one of five battleground states where they will spend 10 weeks living with a host family. Based on their interests, participants will be placed in paid jobs on progressive campaigns or non profits where, for the remainder of the cycle, they will work their asses off for progressive change. They will knock on doors and make phone calls. Canvass concerts and bars and stand on street corners. They will attend trainings and lectures and form a community with their fellow participants, all while studying a for-credit curriculum designed to teach them the contours of the contemporary progressive movement.

Where is the action happening?

Swing Semester is currently operating in the following cities:

• Cincinnati, Ohio
• Denver, Colorado

And they are accepting applications for 6 more:

• Columbus, Ohio
• Virginia Beach, Virginia
• Albuquerque, New Mexico
• Richmond, Virginia
• Manchester, New Hampshire
• Cleveland, Ohio

If you are between 18 and 26 years of age, and a comprehensive immersion program sounds like it might be your bag, Swing Semester is accepting applications on a rolling basis through the end of the month.

If you are interested in a position as a "Captain" in one of the host cities, Swing Semester is currently accepting job applications for those positions.

A friend of mine tells a story about how he became involved in progressive politics and it boils down to this: In 2000, Florida was decided by a razor thin margin. Less than 400 votes. If he had take time off from school to travel down there, he could have knocked on doors and wrangled that many new voters over the course of a month and made the difference. Swing Semester is giving 250 young progressives the opportunity to do just that.

In 2004, Democratic politics witnessed a boom in youth organizing. Young people created dozens of new institutions that pioneered non-traditional methods for engaging their peers on and offline. Drinking clubs that maintained political interest and moved people slowly into political activism, road trips to swing states, peer to peer voter registration and candidate fundraising at small live music events. The list goes on and on.

These were not always the best and most efficient organizations on the block, but they identified and filled a vacuum in progressive youth politics that was not filled by the traditional organizations like the PIRGs and the College Democrats. They pioneered new tactics, changed the way that many political activists thought about organizing, and they engaged many young voters that would not otherwise become involved in politics, helping to drive 4.3 million new young voters to the polls in 2004.

As often happens in progressive politics, the amount of money available to these organizations declined drastically after the election. Some organizations struggled and managed to survive. Others limped along until they could no longer be sustained. People moved on to other jobs. Sometimes in politics, sometimes not.

Four years out, history is repeating itself. The country is on the wrong track, young people are engaged, and they looking for a way to make a difference in the election. For some, the Obama campaign is the vehicle for that activism. For others, organizations from the 2004 youth org boom that are still going strong, like the League of Young Voters and the Young Democrats, help young people engage the process. Others are not so lucky, and for that subset of young voters, they are once again encountering the vacuum that initially spawned the 2004 youth organizing boom. In response, a newer (and smaller) boom is occurring in the youth organizing sphere as these people work to recreate or reimagine the organizations that did not survive into the '07/'08 presidential cycle.

In 2004, four major organizations built a model that employed live music events to register and organize young voters and support candidates. Music for America, Punk Voter each engaged in partisan activism at live music events, registering voters and distributing issue-messaging while Concerts for Change focused their efforts on raising money for candidates. The fourth organization, HeadCount, was a non-partisan organization focused solely on voter registration at jamband concerts. Of these four, only HeadCount survived into this election cycle, drastically decreasing the number of politically activated live music events, and leaving a complete vacuum in that space on the partisan side.

Shipping people into swing states - via roadtrip or other method - was also a popular in 2004, and Driving Votes, Swing the State, and Swing Semester were the three organizations helping young voters in solid red and blue states find their way into battleground where they could have the greatest impact in the Presidential election. Despite Driving Votes' merger with Democracy for America, none of these youth organizations remained active after the election or reappeared to play a significant role in moving young voters and activists during the midterm elections.

Today, both of these organizing models are witnessing a revival - or a second boom, if you will. In New York, a group of young people are hustling to build-up a newly launched organization, Music for Democracy, which will pick up where Music for America and Concerts for Change left off. In DC, Swing Semester has revived itself, and will work to move students from safe states into swing states, hook them up with voter contact efforts, and provide a crash course in field organizing and the contours of the current progressive movement. As far as the organizers know, they are the only organization whose sole mission in 2008 is to move young people from solid red and blue states into battleground states.

The old has become new again, and both Music for Democracy and Swing Semester are rebuilding on the ashes of 2004. This is a good thing. These models of organizing clearly speak to a segment of the population not reached or activated by existing institutions. It's a shame that just four years out so much infrastructure needs to be rebuilt from scratch, but these organizations have a leg-up on those of us who started this movement in 2004. We have best practices to share and lessons-learned about mistakes that should not be repeated. The social capital behind the organizing in 2004 is still there, waiting to be tapped. That's also a good thing, because we are rapidly running out of time. A protracted primary process and a reluctance to give on the part of donors has meant that many of these organizations are getting started much later in the cycle than they did in 2004. This year we have the opportunity to build these institutions better, strong, faster, more efficient. Not just for this election, but far into the future.

First off, thanks to Mike Connery for allowing us to guest blog here at Future Majority. My name is Jeff Kramer and I'm part of the national staff at Swing Semester, guest-guest blogging for Anima LaVoy, our executive director.

Forgive me for a moment for asking you to spend three minutes of your life watching Fox News, but bear with me. Watch the following video (if you dare).

(if the embedded video doesn't load, click here)

What happened to patriotism? Where and when did this concept become so marginalized, so bastardized, so meaningless? How have we allowed this to happen? We have officially arrived at the lowest common denominator - blind, hysterical, raving jingoism. Is it truly the idea to say America is the "greatest, best country God has ever given Man on the face of the Earth" loud enough and often enough to make it true? Let's forget the fact that cultural imperialism does not equate a country with greatness and evaluate the message. Is America about "baseball, apple pie, and kicking your f***ing ass"? Do we ignore every fault, every misstep, every mistake?

As progressives, we must not. We must not let patriotism be defined by others who seek to use it as a weapon and as a wedge, to divide and not to unite. We must not let patriotism be reduced to propaganda as seen in the video above. It must be returned to something meaningful, something important and something true. Patriotism must be defined as Jane Addams once did, "Unless our conception of patriotism is progressive, it cannot hope to embody the real affection and the real interest of the nation."

At Swing Semester, we seek not only to reclaim and redefine patriotism but activism as well. Our mission is to create citizens and true patriots that care about their country in a tangible and real way. We offer the nation’s first political immersion program, providing a bridge from interest to action for college students, recent graduates, and other young people who care deeply about their country and want to be a part of American history. This September, over 250 passionate young people will venture out to eight cities in critical “swing” states for 10 weeks of intensive electoral work. For those taking off school, academic credit will be available. Participants will live with host families, work in field campaigns, and engage in critical thinking to better understand this country and themselves.

We are in this fight for the long term to achieve the literal definition of this website, a future majority of informed, true and progressive citizens. Join us at www.swingsemester.org (launching tomorrow!).

We'll leave you with a quote from Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer's book The True Patriot, one of the texts on our program syllabus and one of our partners:
"I confidently trust that the American people will prove themselves … too wise not to detect the false pride or the dangerous ambitions or the selfish schemes which so often hide themselves under that deceptive cry of mock patriotism: "Our country, right or wrong!" They will not fail to recognize that our dignity, our free institutions and the peace and welfare of this and coming generations of Americans will be secure only as we cling to the watchword of true patriotism: "Our country — when right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right."

I’m heading off the grid for the next week to take a much needed vacation. In my absence, I’ve arranged for a number of guest bloggers to join us from some really great progressive organizations including Living Liberally, the Bus Federation, the Young Elected Officials Network, Democrats Work, The League, Swing Semester, the Young Democrats and more. Along with Kevin and Alice, who will continue their regular blogging, these great guests willll take care of you through the holiday. Treat them well and leave lots of comments. I’ll be back July 7th.

Also, don’t forget that user diaries/blogs are now enabled. You could always throw your own .02 into the discussion and write a blog. Just login (or create an account) and click “Create Content” in the personal navigation menu at the top of the page. Some folks like the Sahar Massachi from the Roosevelt Institution and George Colli, who is running for CT state senate, have already done so and found themselves on the front page. Kevin and Alice will have their eyes out for good user-generated content to promote while I’m on break.

• Pinch me because I think I'm dreaming, but "this year the youth vote will matter," declares the mainstream media. -Washington Post
• Road trip for Democracy. An oldy but goody organization from 2004 is gearing up to get to work in 2008. -Swing Semester

• Next Generation is Reshaping Politics Through Social Networks. An interview with Morley Winograd of Millennial Makeover. -San Jose Mercury News
• ABC News notes that the age gap between the candidates is made larger as education levels rise. -ABC News
• Young, left-leaning religious voters are making social justice issues a part of their faith and politics. -St. Louis Today
• The New York Times Editorial page has an idea for helping cash-strapped students: reign in the out-of-control price of books and the monopoly that sets the prices. - New York Times