young progressives

Like Mike I've been flying some lately too. And just got home in time to check email and post.
There is this fantastic organization that we talk about on here sometimes called Head Count. I LOVE HeadCount. There are orgs that do outreach with musicians or young voter outreach but HeadCount really works with musicians and bands the way that Music for America use to back in the day.

Thursday they announced their summer tour program where you can "travel from concert to concert with major HeadCount-affiliated acts such as Dave Matthews Band and Jack Johnson."

"You will be joined by 1-3 other HeadCount representatives and attend every concert on a given tour, setting up a voter registration table at each venue and encouraging concertgoers to Register to Vote. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to spend your summer in an incredible environment, registering thousands of voters and being on the frontlines of the youth voter movement.

HeadCount and the participating artists provide a vehicle, gas, hotel, entry to the concerts, and everything you'll need to stage a successful voter registration drive. You will also receive $200 per week to cover other expenses." (thats a lot of soda....)

Dude... this is seriously a sweet ass opportunity for anyone who wants to get on the ground floor of working in the youth movement and working in the super cool section of the youth movement. Further its a great way to make a HUGE difference while having a whole bunch of fun.

This organizational model is something that Mike addresses in Youth to Power, which you should all buy, read, and commit to memory in order to perform Youth to Power interpretive dances...

But seriously folks, of the alternative youth music organizations that were formed HeadCount is one of few that is left standing and holds a street cred that spans the Mountains of Missoula to the shores of Jersey. Working with an org like this is worth the time and energy that you'll commit and it can spring board you into your hip political career or at the very least give some sick tales to tell your buds over a beer when you get back to class in the fall.

Check it out - get down with your bad self!

I found out about two new young candidates in Kansas stepping up to the plate to run for office. I'm learning more and more about young candidates across the country and always love to shill for them as I go.

In Wichita, Donald Betts seeks the Congressional seat in the 4th district.

Betts, 29, was elected the youngest person in history to the Kansas State Senate in 2004 after serving a previous term in the State House, a post he took in 2002 at the age of 24.

In an interview with me Betts commented

"I want young people who thought that something like this could never happen to at least have some hope that it is possible if only they try."

Betts is well equipt with leadership, experience, and passion - and well organized netroots efforts on facebook and a nice campaign site as well as the recently released MySpace and using the 20/20 program, a very grassroots fundraising tool coined by district neighbor Nancy Boyda in her 2006 race.

"The district is ready for a fresh start, a new perspective on politics." Betts said at his announcement.

Greg "half as old as Pat Roberts" Orman is the past CEO and President of KLT Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Great Plains Energy, Inc., an energy holding company headquartered in Kansas City.

The former draft campaign run through facebook has now been switched over to an official campaign and cites his statement when he filed for candadacy

"As I look at what's going on in Washington, and the course we're on as a nation, I am convinced we can and should be doing better," Orman said of his decision to run.

"Like so many Kansans, I'm disappointed and deeply troubled by the inaction, infighting, and ineffectiveness on display in Washington today. And I'm prepared to offer the people of Kansas a United States Senator with the right priorities who can help get America moving in a positive direction again."

Orman has yet to launch his website but I'll keep you posted as I'm sure the social networking sites will as well.

When asked about who some of the youngest candidates are this cycle the DCCC could not provide the data off hand. As I discover them I'm eager to give more info on great young candidates stepping up to lead.

Mike posted the quick link for this piece but I wanted to go through and talk about all of the points that Carol Costello raises.

But first let me say that I am so exhausted from this kind of crap. It is so ridiculous that today reporters won't use the valid information they can get from a simple google search. There is no excuse for this kind of reckless journalism. It makes me think that perhaps it isn't that they get it wrong its that they WANT to report a specific story about young people and they want to fit the research to that story.

I can see why Republicans would want to do this as much as possible because suppressing the youth vote means more success for them. Which is why you saw it for the city elections in Georgia.

What a lot of people don't understand is that when you get stats like this wrong - it impacts campaigns, consultants, and candidates. It makes them think that they should not be targeting young people.

When they don't target young people they don't get young people to go out and vote.. so it perpetuates the fallacy.

Further it makes candidates have to get more republicans to vote for them which influences their policy. So basically, they have to be more conservative in their votes and the bills they push because they think that is representative of their district... when in reality... it might not be.

These things impact us at levels that go beyond turnout and elections it goes to the very laws that we are passing and the votes cast in Congress.

So here we go:

Carol Costello: "It seems like Americas Youth has a loud voice when it comes to Presidential Politics

We do. See Rock the Vote, MTVs Choose or Lose, Forward Montana, New Era Colorado, The Young Democrats of America, Traction in North Carolina, the League of Young Voters, the Oregon Bus Project, the Washington Bus, the Roosevelt Institute, the Democracy Institute of America, or the zillions of other organizations that work to get young people involved.

Carol Costello: "Republican outsider Ron Paul has a lot of young fans. And many have been so creatively effective online they've parlayed passion into cold hard cash for Paul's campaign and helped raise his profile. That's Power!"

She says this like its new. Hello... see Howard Dean... see Al Gore's Live Earth Concert.

Carol Costello: "But Ron Paul aside, the Democrats boast they have they have youth on their side...." then they run b-roll of Howard Dean quoting youth statistics.

Our candidates do tend to be younger than the 800 year old white men who are running on the Republican ticket. But dangling modifier aside.... something tells me that wasn't what she meant.

Read more.... then EMAIL CNN!

When I've been in Oklahoma City to visit family and friends for the past several weeks I always stop by and put in a few hours with Andrew Rice's campaign. Sometimes simply because he's another heartland democrat who needs help and has the volunteer mechanism in place to utilize me - and sometimes simply because he's a young democrat who is running for office.

So this week I heard about a rally with the OU YD's that was in part a response to a comment made by Markos (of the dailykos) about Rice's Senate race. I knew then, that I needed to hop in the car and make the schlep to Norman, Oklahoma to support both Andrew and young people. And what I found was astounding.

Neither rain nor sleet nor cold will stop the Oklahoma Young Democrats. Many braved the unexpected weather to hear State Senator Andrew Rice talk about why he is running for US Senate and compound the myth that young people in Oklahoma are less interested.

In the last few weeks young people have seen some serious hatin' going on with Thomas Friedman we saw a serious slam. And this week'sOklahoma Gazette did a huge profile on Rice where Markos Moulitsas, founder of the Daily Kos blog, was asked to comment on the race.

“Inhofe is a national joke. He is very much a top-tier villain, somebody who could be easy to run against from a national perspective,” Moulitsas said. “(But) I wouldn’t even say it’s a second tier race for us. It’s a third-tier race.”

To climb the ladder, Rice will have to prove he can pull in $25 checks from rural Oklahomans and motivate college students to knock on doors for him.

“If he can do that, this race merits attention. If he can’t do that, then this isn’t going to be much of a race,” Moulitsas said.

Well get ready because the OU Dems have something to prove.

This was by far the best headline I've read this cycle. One that perfectly captures the ideology, the make up, and the candidates representing the Republican Party.

Seemingly Young-Republican Sean Scallon of the American Chronicle, is one of the major members of the media lately to notice that the GOP is losing major ground.

"I was at the Iowa Straw Poll in Ames this past summer. While out in the vast parking lots of the Hilton Coliseum that morning, holding a Ron Paul sign, I noticed all the campaign workers from the Romney and Tancredo camps riding golf carts to and from their respective tents to the parking lots.

What were these people doing I wondered? They certainly weren’t making the parking attendants happy as they were cutting through traffic.

It wasn’t until the middle of the day that I figured it out. They were transporting their elderly supporters from the parking lots to the Coliseum.

It was the proper thing to do. After all it was 96 degrees that day and very humid. No one would want grandma or grandpa to die of heat exhaustion trying to make their way across all that hot asphalt.

But it laid in stark reality the biggest problem the Republican Party is facing in 2008 and beyond.

It’s not Larry Craig. It’s not Iraq. It’s not corruption. It’s not Katrina, or religious conservatives or even immigration.

It’s age.

The GOP is literally getting older by the minute.

And that means it’s a slowly dying party."

Never mind that this is about the funnies thing I've ever read about the GOP ... but its a good real world example of what we've been seeing in polling for the last several months.

• National Stonewall Democrats -- The "log cabin" of the left -- proudly publicized YDA's election of its first openly-gay leaders. David Hardt of Texas and Chris Anderson of Tennessee were elected YDA president and vice president respectively in nearly unanimous votes
• Young People For (YP4) is using facebook to advertise its Progressive Academy Online, an interactive online course, focusing specifically women's rights, disability rights, economic justice, environmental justice, and LGBT rights. The course -- starting July 23 -- is titled "The Progressive Movement: Social Sector Issues 101" and is meant to enlighten and instruct young progressives.
• Skeptics responded to Anastasia Goodstein's post on YDA "Election 2.0, MySpacing @ Work & 'Indulgences' Doing Good", wondering whether the accessibility of politics via myspace or facebook comes at the expense of substance. It's an interesting and thought-provoking debate.
• Meredith Clark, a Millennial from Tallahassee, explores the reasons why Florida's young voter turnout bucked the national trend and declined in 2006, as previously mentioned on Around the Tubes. She presents a long list of excuses, as well as some interesting, legitimate points.
• Yahoo's People of the Web profiles James Kotecki, a Georgetown student, who, through YouTube, has interviewed presidential candidates in his dorm room. He has recieved criticism from fellow-YouTube aficionados for his "yawn-inducing" posts, but the a number of candidates like Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul, John Edwards, and Mike Gravel have responded positively to his advice.
• ABC News publishes this ostensibly ground-breaking report on David Burnstein, an 18-year-old documentarian, who through his movie "18 in '08" encourages teens to vote in the presidential election. ABC fails to notice the rising national trend in voter turnout and avows that "we need to reverse the trend." Maybe they're just looking at Florida's trends...?
• A fascinating post on The Everyday Citizen describing "How Democrats got Religion" -- similar to the recent Time Magazine cover story. Democratic candidates seem to appeal to voters across the religious spectrum -- from evangelicals to less-fundamentalist believers -- through environmentalist and economic issues, unlike past Republicans who have relied on "family values" issues to attract religious voters. A video below parodying the "Mac/PC" ads represents a new trend of religious America:
  

All morning CNN has been running a story about Young Evangelicals with footage of a recent revival in Nashville that took place over several days filled with rock concerts, dancing, fasting, praying, and yes - politics.

According to the piece young Christians want to hold politicians accountable.

And while they once supported Republicans and the President - young evangelical Christians have dropped in their support from 87% to 47%. That's compared to overall republican support that shows a recent drop from 55% support to 35%.

While these folks are wresting with the world - CNN reports that some are also trying to understand why the government isn't working on issues that matter more than the big 3 (gay marriage, abortion, and prayer). Instead their new issues surround immigration and poverty.

But not all of these youngsters follow this new "revelation" a young woman the story follows - Sarah Morris - says, "our vote is not the economy or war our vote is pro-life."

Nearby the revival Alyssa Adams and other activists are registering voters and talking about how important it is for them to get out the vote for the Presidential election.

Keep your eyes pealed today for the piece and as soon as I see it posted on CNN I'll update. It gives a good picture of the things I've been talking about in relation to the evangelical youth movement.

As part of a larger examination into young people and their split from one sect of the political world to the other, I’ve been doing a lot of research into the youth evangelical movement.

I am – as a Kansan, always curious about this ultra-right group of people, what they are up to, how they are organizing, and how they are essentially doing what What’s the Matter with Kansas claims the poor sell themselves out for values votes. I would argue that evangelicals do the same thing. While we have a community of people who believe that it is their holy destiny to vote in the interest of their God – I see so many who sell out their own beliefs for a narrow agenda.

I mention that but, honestly my post has nothing to do with that – the larger piece I’m working on for Wiretap will. I don’t even want to address the irony that I’m watching the X-Files episode Signs and Wonders which is all about a Pentecostal minister that uses snake handling in his church but it turns out he’s actually Satan…

So, I started reading Righteous: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement by Lauren Sandler as part of this bigger project. I’m honestly not very far into it but what I’ve read thus far, just of Sandler’s interviews and questions, exploration, and the like of those who are intensely involved in this movement – has given me more of an understanding of the type and structure of organization and political organizing that is going on.

This seems particularly fitting given Mark's stellar interview with The Dude yesterday.