organizing

Matt Bai's piece in the New York Times Magazine chronicles the emerging tensions between the White House and the Congress as they strategize for the 2010 mid-terms. Within the piece, Bai discusses the generational dynamic at play as the DNC (what is now the Obama-backed OFA) is pushing congressional candidates (against their wills) to make their pitches to voters normally perceived as unreliable.

...The lesson that Plouffe and his operation took away from the dismal 2009 elections is that Obama can act like a matchmaker of sorts, introducing the party’s candidates to new voters and vouching for their intentions, but it’s only going to matter if the candidates themselves embrace the so-called new politics. What that means, practically speaking, is that the White House is urging candidates to divert a fair amount of their time and money — traditionally used for buying TV ads and rallying core constituencies — to courting volunteers and voters who haven’t generally been reliable Democrats.

This is not what members of Congress or their campaign managers are trained to do, and it has created something of a cultural chasm between the White House and the party apparatus. There is a strong generational component here. With some exceptions, Obama’s passion for organizing finds more enthusiasm among candidates closer to the president’s age and newer to politics (candidates like Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado), while older Democrats have a harder time imagining that a bunch of volunteers and a dozen virtual town-hall meetings are going to matter more than labor endorsements and some killer 30-second spots...

[...]

By Democratic Party standards, this is a relatively muted internal disagreement. But it nonetheless points to the emergence of rival schools of thought within the party when it comes to Obama’s importance as a party leader. Some see him as having transformed both the electorate and the nature of campaigning in what could be a lasting and fundamental way, meaning that things are possible now — both in terms of liberal governance and winning elections — that did not seem possible before. Others view 2008 mostly as a cathartic election that had more to do with conditions in the country than with Obama’s peculiar magic, and they don’t think the party should assume that there are millions of new voters out there who can be tapped if you just knock on the right doors. These two worldviews coexist uneasily among the party’s elected officials and candidates, young and old, in every part of the country — sometimes just hours apart.

The congressional camp within the Democratic Party reflects the status quo that continues to claim that new voters -- including young voters -- don't vote and are apathetic. What they refuse to understand is that we are civically active; we do vote when we are genuinely engaged in a conversation about issues through a medium relevant to our lifestyles. These labor endorsements and "killer" television ads are almost as boring as network news these days. Instead, we should be investing in the peer-to-peer voting drives and organizing work that have already increased the youth vote for three straight elections. From Mike Connery's Journalist Cheat Sheet:

Tip #5: If you insist on reporting the same old story that young people vote at a lower rate than the rest of the electorate, then you have an obligation to also inform your readers/viewers/listeners that youth turnout has increased for 3 years straight, and is at its highest level in over a decade. You also have an obligation to note that in 2006 the youth vote swung a number of important federal races, including pushing Democratic candidates Jon Tester, Jim Webb, and Joe Courtney over the top.

Source: Historical voting patterns (pdf), Impact on Races (pdf), Midterm Turnout (pdf).

Tip #6: If you are going to report on low-turnout among young voters, you also have an obligation to note that young people face more barriers to voting than do older voters. We move more frequently, requiring us to re-register sometimes on a yearly basis, on campus we face a lack of voting machines and long lines, and many university towns actively discourage and try to prevent students from voting.

Source: League of Conservation Voters Education Fund

Tip #7: There are simple fixes to the problems outlined in #6 – election day and same-day registration and mail-in voting are two such fixes that can be applied at the state level. These have been proven to bump youth turnout by as much as 14%!!!!! It would be nice if you reported on them occasionally.

Source: CIRCLE

Tip #8: Young voters will participate if they are asked to, particularly by a peer. This is proven. But the system stopped asking long ago by removing resources and manpower away from young voter outreach. Only in recent years have organizations – and a few campaigns – begin to reengage young voters in any serious way. The result is three straight years in which youth turnout increased. In plain terms: young voters are not apathetic. Rather, the system fails to engage them in any meaningful way.

Source: Young Voter Strategies, Voter Mobilization Tactics

Tip #9: Stop reporting on “celebrity activism” as the Rosetta Stone for understanding the youth vote. This is a Boomer and Gen-X construction created for a broadcast TV culture of the 80s and 90s. Today’s young voters are interested in peer-to-peer communication and networked action. From Facebook to on the ground, peer to peer organizing at club, bars, barbershops and apartment canvassing, the most effective, and sustainable developments in youth organizing in the past five years have come from new, grassroots organizations doing peer to peer organizing on the ground or online. Stop reporting on celebrities and start doing the work of talking to and reporting on the activities of these organizations. Good places to start include:

Forward Montana, The Oregon Bus Project, New Era Colorado, Young Democrats of America, and The League of Young Voters.

There are many more, but let’s do this in baby steps. Start with these and we’ll work out way deeper into youth organizing together.

Young voters can be courted; it just takes some courage and genuine effort. The Speaker's office and legislators like Congressman George Miller (D-CA) have been great on youth policy issues, but in purely electoral terms, the Congressional campaign plan outlined above is disappointing. While OFA doesn't have a pristine record with young voters, they apparently get it more than many of the old guard congressmen and congresswomen.

UPDATE: An example of Congress not understanding youth priorities or youth culture today? Ike Skelton, a longtime Democratic congressman, provides one:

The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said Tuesday that he thought the military should keep its ban on openly gay service members in part because he did not want to open a national discussion about homosexuality. The chairman, Representative Ike Skelton, a conservative Missouri Democrat, said he thought the debate in Congress over the proposed repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy might force families to explain homosexuality to their children. “What do mommies and daddies say to their 7-year-old child?” Mr. Skelton asked reporters at a news media breakfast.

A New York Times piece published this morning sheds light on the generation gap present in views on immigration.

In the wake of the new Arizona law allowing the police to detain people they suspect of entering the country illegally, young people are largely displaying vehement opposition — leading protests on Monday at Senator John McCain’s offices in Tucson, and at the game here between the Florida Marlins and the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Meanwhile, baby boomers, despite a youth of “live and let live,” are siding with older Americans and supporting the Arizona law.

This emerging divide has appeared in a handful of surveys taken since the measure was signed into law, including a New York Times/CBS News poll this month that found that Americans 45 and older were more likely than the young to say the Arizona law was “about right” (as opposed to “going too far” or “not far enough”). Boomers were also more likely to say that “no newcomers” should be allowed to enter the country while more young people favored a “welcome all” approach.

This makes sense given what we know about the diversity in the Millennial generation. The New Politics Institute's 2007 Report, "The Progressive Politics of the Millennial Generation," cites Census data showing that nearly 40 percent of Millennials do not identify as being white. "[A]bout 62 percent of Millennial adults are non-Hispanic white, 18 percent are Hispanic, 14 percent are black and 5 percent are Asian," the report notes. What sharpens the debate is that many of the areas having the most diversity among youth also have fairly homogeneous white Boomer/Silent populations.

Given their demographic diversity, Millennials hold progressive opinions about immigration compared to the rest of the population. The Times piece, for example, provides some anecdotal evidence ensconced in the opinions and stories of youths Meaghan Patrick and Nicole Vespia.

Meaghan Patrick, a junior at New College of Florida, a tiny liberal arts college in Sarasota, says discussing immigration with her older relatives is like “hitting your head against a brick wall.”

[...]

Nicole Vespia, 18, of Selden, N.Y., said older people who were worried about immigrants stealing jobs were giving up on an American ideal: capitalist meritocracy.

“If someone works better than I do, they deserve to get the job,” Ms. Vespia said. “I work in a stockroom, and my best workers are people who don’t really speak English. It’s cool to get to know them.”

Her parents’ generation, she added, just needs to adapt.

“My stepdad says, ‘Why do I have to press 1 for English?’ I think that’s ridiculous,” Ms. Vespia said, referring to the common instruction on customer-service lines. “It’s not that big of a deal. Quit crying about it. Press the button.”

The stories are backed up by data on Millennials. In his 2008 book/project Generation WE, Eric Greenberg cites data revealing Millennials' open attitudes on immigration.

Generation We also has an open and positive attitude toward immigration, much more so than older generations. In the Pew Gen Next poll, 18- to 25-year-olds, by 52 to 38, said immigrants strengthen the country with their hard work and talent, rather than are a burden on the country because they take our jobs, housing, and healthcare, compared to very narrow pluralities in this direction among Gen Xers and Boomers and 50–30 sentiment in the other direction among those 61 and over. In a 2004 Pew survey, 67 percent of 18- to 25-year-old Millennials thought the growing number of immigrants strengthens American society and only 30 percent believed this trend threatens our customs and values—again, much stronger positive sentiment than among any other generation.

Unfortunately, most Boomer-run news outlets do not pay attention to Millennial opinion on this issue. With older Americans voting at higher rates than young people, the age and views of Congress and other officeholders reinforce the fear-driven status quo. Just like many other issues, to change this reality, youth must vote in higher numbers, be willing to run for office themselves, and pair this with some organized, non-traditional resistance to mount a strong opposition.

It might be convenient to take a John Mayer approach and wait for the world to change, but how many hard-working families who already embody American values will suffer in the meantime? This is yet another issue on which we must begin making change now.

You've read about this movement before here.

And now, it's taken another step forward.

After a failed student campaign a year ago, William and Mary students put together an organization called Students for a Better Williamsburg (SBW), an organization engaging local government in order to provide the best outcomes for students. This effort led to the amendment of a housing ordinance, making it more student friendly and eliminating an issue that divided the town and gown factions in the community for years.

This past spring, a student ran for a Williamsburg city council seat once more. Last Tuesday night, Scott Foster, a graduating senior, dominated the contest.

Foster was elected to the Williamsburg City Council on Tuesday night, becoming the first William & Mary student ever to do so. The 22-year-old said his win was a victory for town and gown relationships.

"Today, the people of Williamsburg demonstrated that our city is truly unified," Foster said Tuesday night. "When I decided to run for City Council, I hoped to receive the student vote. Now, I have been additionally honored and humbled to have received such strong support from across our City."

Foster received 1559 votes in the election, 741 more votes than the next finisher, Planning Commission Chairman Doug Pons, who also earned a seat on the council Tuesday night. Five candidates, including one incumbent, ran for the two open positions. According to Foster's campaign, approximately 67 percent of his votes came from students and the remaining votes came from residents.

Over 1000 William and Mary students voted for their fellow student in the election, ensuring that college students will have a strong voice in the city's government. Between this victory and the aforementioned organization of Students for a Better Williamsburg, William and Mary students have provided students across the country with a model for organizing within the system to produce positive outcomes.

How did Foster do it? Well, in textbook Millennial fashion. Foster used online social networking to spread the news, and then benefited from a student-coordinated voter registration and GOTV effort on William and Mary's campus.

Foster benefited from a coordinated get-out-the-vote campaign by William & Mary students. Earlier this year, student organizations, including the Student Assembly, worked to encourage students to vote in the election through a series of registration efforts. Approximately 300 students registered this year as a result of the drive. More than 2,100 students are registered to vote in the City of Williamsburg and early estimates indicate that roughly 50 percent of registered students voted in Tuesday's election.

On election day, the Student Assembly provided transportation for students between the Sadler Center and the Stryker Building voting location. Sarah Rojas ‘10, outgoing president of the assembly, also sent an e-mail to the College's students, encouraging them to vote in the election.

[...]

Much of Foster's campaign was run by students who utilized a website and social media outlets such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube. Foster also spent a good deal of time meeting city residents.

After his upcoming graduation, Foster plans to continue his studies at William and Mary in 2011, attending the William and Mary Law School.

Bill Maher's recent comment that "Twitter didn't save Iran. Iran saved Twitter" has sparked some debate about the use of social media and its relevance to important issues and events.

Personally, I don't think Maher's comment hits the mark. Twitter wasn't a service that needed saving, nor is it alone responsible for helping promote Iranian protests. It would be more accurate to say that Iran helped the general public realize Twitter's potential, and that Twitter is one component of a new media toolset that is enabling activists in oppressive regimes to communicate where state-run media dominates.

The situation in Iran shows the world that the communications game has changed. It isn't Twitter or Facebook specifically, but the general principle of online and mobile communication.

Mashable created a social media timeline of the Iran Election crisis. It shows how a wide range of online tools have played a role in getting the stories of Iranian protesters to the outside world. These tools range from Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to Flickr and even Wikipedia.

The essence of the matter is that previously if a country expelled all foreign journalists and had a state-run media, the world would have no way of knowing what was happening within its borders. The emergence of online and mobile technology has turned every person with a camera, cell phone, or computer into an amateur journalist; on location and with unfiltered access journalists have never truly enjoyed.

While it may be a while before these new media tools can change the game everywhere (Africa is still largely left behind, and they could use it the most), the Iran election protests have shown the world what online organizers have known for some time now: social media has fundamentally advanced the way we communicate and coordinate.

Clay Pope is the Executive Director of the Oklahoma Association of Conservation Districts, and has been severely impacted by the lack of organizing both online and off in his state. Great to have him guest post to motivate folks! --Sarah

Want to make a difference? What are you doing about it? Really, what are you doing?

I think it is great all that is going on in with young voters twittering, blogging and all; but at the end of the day, how can we continue to push that into offline actions?

It is easy to get caught up in the world of the web, cell phones and virtual interaction; too often we let ourselves get caught up in the conversation among our friends, talking in a virtual echo chamber where we really don’t have a true discussion, we simply get our preconceived notions reinforced by like-minded people with an occasional interruption by someone who holds a directly opposed opinion and only enters the conversation to upset those of us on the other side.

Bottom line, are you putting your beliefs in practice? If so how? Are you volunteering in your community? Are your friends? Are you engaging in conversations with people in your neighborhood, your community, your town and seeing what the views of the people in the non-virtual world are? Do you work in a Church, Temple, Mosque or Synagogue? Are you volunteering in a city campaign this Spring? Have you ever thought about running for office?

Have you talked to your member of congress? Yeah, I know you e-mailed about that issue last week, but have you actually gone and seen your member of congress when they are back home in their district? Have you visited your state capitol? Have you watched your city council or county commissioners do their work? Have you raised questions with these folks directly?

I know it is a lot more fun to get in a chat debate about the wisdom of the AIG bailout with someone in LA, but is that really going to influence the opinion of the person who will actually vote on this issue in your name? And, if you are focusing on issues like the debate on the national economy to the exclusion of all else, you are not paying attention to the sales tax increase in your local community to pay for the bridge being built by the Mayors son-in-law. Do you know what your state legislature is doing (or not doing) for the environment if you are only following the debate on global climate change in Washington D.C.? Who will you have more influence on, the state representative who will be personally knocking on your door next election year or the Congressman who will campaign through mail pieces and TV ads?

The electronic universe is great. We can talk to each other and reach out into a world wider than our parents and grandparents could have ever imagined, but as state legislatures are finalizing their work this Spring spend some time talking in a personal way to your elected official. As city elections approach don't forget to vote and take your friends to the polls.

We can quickly and easily make a huge difference on policies that have a faster and more direct impact on our lives. As they say – all politics is local.

Frances Moore Lappe wrote a piece on Huffington Post amid the inauguration festivities this week asking whether "service" is really the best word/tool to use when intensifying national civic engagement efforts.

My own hesitation about the service frame is simple: If I serve, someone else is being served. If I serve, I act, but the other -- the beneficiary -- does not. Making ourselves servants, we might also ignore our own legitimate needs as well as be tempted to imagine we already know what others' needs are. In any case "service" seems to create two classes: the givers and the receivers.

And that's a big problem. Doesn't this dichotomy help blind us to the reality of the human condition that Martin Luther King, Jr. called us to see? In his "Letter from Birmingham Jail," he wrote, "We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly."

Lappe goes on to point out that serving is about more than the "helper's high" that 95 percent of volunteers reported feeling in a recent study, as a result of helping others. Creating King's "network of mutuality" leads to developing a "liberation of talents," that, once relieved from oppression, can bolster our society.

So, instead of "serving" others, which continues the oppression of the receivers' skills, Lappe argues that we should be sure that a partnership exists that uses the talents of all stakeholders -- group problem-solving instead of service.

Lappe cites Obama in this post, given his example as a community organizer with an affiliate of Gamaleil, a large Chicago-based advocacy network, supporting activist leaders of low-income communities. What's intriguing to me is that I saw Obama's experience with this approach come into play when he was in Erie last April.

A gentleman asked Obama a question in the town hall portion of the event in which he laid out the problems he was having in his life and essentially asked, "What are you going to do for me?" Instead of providing a litany of policy prescriptions, Obama first asserted that the appropriate first question was, "What are you going to do for yourself?" and then he went on to speak about responsibility, much like he did in his inaugural address.

In a world with rapidly growing technology that breeds an efficiency-first approach, Lappe's argument and Obama's philosophy reminds us that even though fixing another's problem might make us feel good, it doesn't do anything long-term for society. We should be doing all that we can to collaborate, pool resources, skills, and gifts, and tackle our challenges together.

Looking to get involved in progressive youth organizing?

I got a lot of emails from folks looking for job candidates, pimping conferences, and scouring or interns. It seemed to make sense for me to put out a call and compile as much as I could into on place. So here's a fairly comprehensive listing of all the jobs, internships, and conferences that can help you do it.

I hope folks find this valuable. Also, I'm pretty appalled that there is no central repository for stuff like this. There are places to go, sure - NOI's job boards, Idealist.org, Democratic GAIN, etc. but all of those seem somewhat incomplete and are hard to navigate. Building a real "youth movement job board" isn't at all a bad idea and it could probably be done super cheap if it was all done wiki style.

Job listings in the extended entry. Please spread widely.

Zack Exley has a must-read piece posted to Open Left about how the campaigns - specifically the Clinton campaign - is grooming the next generation of field organizers.

Seriously, this is mandatory reading.

It took me a while to pick up on this whole Facebook business, but when I finally did... WOO what a blast! While it lasted anyway.

See, not so long after I logged on for the first time, Facebook shut down my account.
But I don't hold it against them. I wasn't playing by their rules -- it's fair, and it's square.
So I got some explaining to do.

Now, I was virtually dragged into Facebook--and when I finally joined it, it wasn't just to post silly pictures and update my status. I joined to organize.

I was organizing a group of people who have been institutionally exploited for years, but who have not previously had any viable way to speak up for themselves. This group is comprised of young, progressive activists--fellow veterans of the Fund for Public Interest Research, Public Interest Research Groups, and Grassroots Campaigns Incorporated.

SOME BACKGROUND!

The Fund, PIRGs, and GCI are interconnected organizations that run fundraising canvasses for a huge chunk of the progressive world. Veterans of these organizations have taken to the internet before to call for change to their notorious labor conditions, and there were a number of groups on Facebook that had already been started in protest of their policies. But these were just scattered outbursts of frutration leading nowhere. The organizers needed organizing.

If I may say so myself, I was good at organizing my fellow veterans. I have many years of experience as an "organizer" for the Fund and GCI; I'd worked in every town, I'd worked on every campaign. I'd trained hundreds of people and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, lied to my staff about how our campaigns worked, fired people for any old reason just to get rid of them, and taught young idealists to think about grassroots activism in terms of cold, inhuman numbers. And when the situations arose, I busted up the early formations of what could have become a...shhh...union. Eventually it all reached a certain point when I stopped to think about it all and decided that no, this isn't how a progressive movement is built, and yes, I was finally pissed off.

Yes, I announced on my new Facebook profile, I am still pissed off. There's a lot to be pissed off about.

See, over the course of the second half of 2006, I'd watched with budding interest as some of these GCI and Fund veterans turned to the blogosphere to expose these practices and explain how they are harmful to the progressive movement. I'd watched with even more interest as they were dismissed, derided, and demeaned by defenders of the Fund and GCI. But the defenders always lost the argument. Many of them even ended up agreeing with the protesters in the end. I did as well. The point was very much made: these organizations, the ones I'd sacrificed years of my life for, were hurting the progressive grassroots. Not because they were staffed by bad people; but because they were being led by a handful of prideful, fearful, haughty leaders who retain power under the dangerous condition of being simultaneously out of touch and wholly unaccountable.

Almost every single person I knew, inside the organization and out, had been personally burned by this crisis of leadership - whether they were willing to admit to it or not. Now that it was all being blogged about in public, people openly wondered whether anything could ever be done to fix the system.

Eventually, the blog posts died down. My friends in PIRG and GCI pretended they didn't exist any more. If the posts were ever brought up, they were quickly dismissed as the delusional rantings of a rabid few losers in pajamas.

And yet, the unrest continued to brew. People kept reading the blog posts and spreading the word among themselves. This year, a group of canvassers from the Fund filed a class action lawsuit seeking to recover unpaid wages. A group from GCI sought to do the same thing. They needed to spread the word and recruit others.

And so I was selected to go to the place where the people were: Facebook.

So today I want to riff a little on numbers 35-39 of my youth vote theses:

35. Culture is a progressive's natural advantage.  We should use it.
36. 95% of the people in these constituencies won't ever care about politics as much as you do
    
37. Asking them to participate in hard core political actions (canvassing, phone banking, etc.) as their first introduction to politics is doomed to failure and low conversion rates.
    
38. Politics must be made relevant to the life of a person if you want them to participate and make civic participation a habit.
    
39. This means there must be a ladder of participation providing substantive involvement for people at multiple levels of engagement.

Culture is a progressive's natural advantage.  From Hollywood to Madison Avenue, the creative class leans heavily democratic.  Most often, that translates into money for campaigns, or a pretty face on the trail.  Rarely does it mean employing the natural talents of that segment of the base.  We see it when campaigns hire political consultants to manufacture stale, uninspiring ads while guys like Bill Hillsman get locked out.  This is as true on campus and among young professionals as it is among the "adults." Yet if you look at the work of someone like Michael Moore, or watch An Inconvenient Truth, creative use of media (old and new) can be one of our biggest assets.  Considering their media consumption habits and the growth of new outlets for that creative energy online, this is doubly true when reaching out to young people.

I don't mean to traffic in stereotypes - there are certainly exceptions to what I'm about to say - but in general, political involvement on campus and among young professionals typically draws membership from a specific type of person: (ex)poli-sci majors and aspiring politicians/staffers/policy wonks.  The volunteer and leadership opportunities in youth activism are similarly limited: donate money, canvass, phone bank.  

I fully understand that democratic youth groups are under enormous pressure to justify their existence to the party and to political operatives.  That means they need to quantify their work and produce tangible results: voters registered and GOTV'd; doors knocked and phone calls made.  Volunteer efforts are generally focused like a laser on producing the highest numbers possible in those categories.  But that leaves a lot of people who (understandably) don't want to participate in those activities out of the Party.

It doesn't have to be that way, and I worry that by not reaching out and involving these folks while they are young, we're making more work for ourselves (and shooting ourselves in the foot creatively) further down the line.  These lost volunteers have a lot to offer, and Democratic youth groups, and the progressive movement generally, need to make an effort to expand the scope of what it means to volunteer to include the types of activities and talents that these other people who are left out can offer.