youth

This is going to be a sloppy post because I don't quite have my head around the topic. I just want to get out something that I've found interesting lately and is starting to rattle around in my mind.

Apropos of all the talk about defunding the left and Obama's consolidation of the party, I've been reading a new blog lately called Tactical Philanthropy, and wondering about ways that we can make our movement and nascent infrastructure more stable and sustained. If the well of partisan dollars dries up, what are our alternatives? Or even if it doesn't dry up, how can we supplement it so we're not so reliant on those few donors?

One post in particular at Tactical Philanthropy piqued my interest - The Next Generation of Philanthropists. The post identifies them as new program officers or low-level staffers within the foundation community, social entrepreneurs like Joe Green (Facebook Causes) who are building new ways for young people - and all people - to make charitable gifts, and Millennials as a generation, who are showing surprising ingenuity in contributing to the causes in which they believe and which a new study shows that is giving at a rate consistent with previous generations.

Generally speaking, there are two kinds of dollars in politics/social change: partisan (or PAC/c4/527 dollars) and non-partisan (c3) dollars. The partisan dollars are mostly what Obama is talking about when he says not to give money to outside groups. He's starving independent organizations engaged in partisan issue/candidate advocacy. These dollars are not tax deductible and are generally harder to raise from donors than c3 money. The large donor pool for 527/c4 dollars is much smaller than it is for c3 money. This is unfortunate, because these partisan dollars have done a lot of good work over the last few years, particularly in the sector of youth organizing.

That c3 money, however, tends to come not merely from a few wealthy individuals willing to stick their neck into the political fray. It comes from major foundations like Robert Woods Johnson, the Ford Foundation, the Tides Center and the Open Society Institute, to name a few. Those foundations - and that whole world of charitable giving - is what Tactical Philanthropy covers everyday.

The name is also very apt. I'm somewhat familiar with this world in that my previous employer, The Opportunity Agenda, is a Tides Center Project and my old boss was a former program manager at the Ford Foundation. Foundation money helps many good, progressive nonprofits with their work. The problem is that foundation tends to be, well, tactical in how their dollars are deployed. Program officers fund specific geographic ares and issues for limited periods of time. Programs are funded, but general operational support is rarely provided. It's not very strategic and it is a piecemeal way to build a movement. In fact, in some respects it's anti-movement because foundations are afraid to appear too partisan.

Nevertheless, foundations - particularly the George Soros Open Society Institute - provide a good amount of money to pieces of youth infrastructure like Young People For, Campus Progress, Center for Community Change's "Generation Change," Young Elected Officials Network and more. Even with that support, though, these groups are vastly outspent and out fundraised by their conservative counterparts.

So the first strand of thought I want to unravel here has to do with foundations, their program officers, and how their dollars are spent. During our panel at the Demos conference, Maya Enista of Mobilize.org mentioned that a new study (sorry, no link - Maya is trying to find me the study) were incredibly few young people in any position of power to direct funds at the major foundations. Will that change soon, and with so many young people coming out of the new leadership pipeline on the progressive side, what will that mean for the kinds of grants foundations make to youth-oriented projects and the amount of dollars directed at those projects? Is there a way we could boost some of our own into the ranks of foundation staffers to hurry this process?

Tactical Philanthropy has one suggestion along these lines - another "leadership" organization called Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy. I don't know much about it now other than the blurbs they put up on their site, but perhaps it could be a vehicle?

Beyond foundations, what about young people as donors? One specific post on Tactical Philanthropy made me aware of a group called Resource Generation, an organization geared towards helping rich young people find smart ways to promote charitable causes with their wealth. I've heard some stories here and there about well-off young people supporting partisan,electoral youth organizing, but I wonder if there isn't a way to more systematically get them giving and working with today's progressive youth institutions. Would it be possible to start a partisan version of Resource Generation? Does such a thing already exists?

Finally, what about normal young people as fundraisers? As the Nick Kristoff column I linked shows, young people can be quite ingenious in raising money for the causes in which they believe. That surely seems like what they are doing for Barack Obama (side note - it is a shame that we'll probably never know just how much cash Obama received in small dollars from donors under 30). How do we get them to be mini-bundlers and fundraisers not just for campaigns or Darfur or world hunger, but for partisan organizations supporting youth engagement and youth issues? This is the age old question in youth organizing (at least since I've been involved), but evidence from the Obama campaign and the foundation world suggest it can be done. Why do we have such a hard time tapping into it?

I just found out that one of the two panels that Jane Fleming Kleeb and I proposed to Netroots Nation was approved. I'll be moderating the panel, which will be called "Youth and Technology: Moving Online Engagement to Offline Activism," or what Josh Levy at Tech President likes to call "onffline" activism.

We had another panel about connecting the different threads of youth activism that was declined. More details to come in the next week or so.

In the meantime, here's some morning reading:

• Apropos of our panel topic, New America Media reports that young voters are putting in serious hours on the ground - not just online - in this campaign. The piece ends on something of a low-note.
• The AP discovers Cafe Press and decides to gauge the candidates support based on swag sales.
• And Fox New remembers the good old days (aka the 1980s) when young people voted Republican. Interesting sidebar to this story, a few weeks back, I sat next to the reporter's mother on an flight to Denver and we started talking about the youth vote. A week later, her daughter was using my talking points in one of her stories. Still no call or citations though . . .

The Economic Policy Institute released a snapshot today on young people in the workforce. The results were neither encouraging nor unexpected.

This month’s crop of new college graduates will confront a more inhospitable job market than their predecessors faced in 2001, the beginning of the last recession.

In particular, wage and benefit trends show that the labor market for recent college graduates (ages 23-29) was weaker in 2007 than before the last recession in 2001. Inflation-adjusted average hourly wages for young college graduates were $21.09 for men and $18.17 for women in 2007 (Figure A). While the hourly wages for both men and women have ended their steady decline, they have barely risen and are still lower by about $0.60 for women and $1.60 for men than they were six years ago.

EPI's conclusions: With persistent job losses and rising unemployment expected, there is little evidence to suggest that the job market will improve for recent college graduates in the near future.

Yikes!

This is probably the best "news" piece I've seen about how Sen. Obama is turning out young voters in record numbers. It's not just technology and it's not just star power. It's a real commitment to field organizing, and making sure that young people are targeting their fellow youth. In other words, it's all about the peer-to-peer organizing.

This is the real message that needs to get out there because this is the strategy that campaigns, the DNC, DCCC, and DSCC need to learn if they want to replicate Obama's successes in down-ballot races.

The program will air on Current TV tonight at 10pm Eastern. You can also grab it here.

I'm going to be on KRCL RadioActive in Salt Lake City at noon Mountain Time today. The program is scheduled to be an hour long and I'll be on with a number of local youth activist. Should be fun. Tune in if you can. Later tonight I'll be speaking at the Boulder Bookstore in Boulder Colorado at 7:30pm. If you are in the area, come hang out.

The internet knows things:

• John McCain tells Chris Matthews that he will "contest every youth vote" in the general election.
• McJoan at Daily Kos notes that in the deepest of deep red districts in Idaho, young high schoolers are converting to Democrats at dramatic rates.
• The San Francisco Chronicle looks at how the media and the parties are looking to engage young latinos, a large and fast-growing swing vote. Most interesting fact, half of all Latinos in America are under the age of 40.
• Michell Obama survives her appearance on the Colbert Report:

If it is at all possible, Ralph Nader made himself even more irrelevant yesterday. Emphasis mine:

Consumer activist Ralph Nader brought his independent presidential campaign to Chicago on Tuesday, railing against state election laws that he complained have prevented him from gaining ballot access and criticizing the news media for trivializing campaign coverage.

“It’s almost painful to watch the Sunday opinion shows and to see reporters around the round table, wallowing in this tactical speculation [and] commentary on the seriousness of gaffes and who can take a shot of beer in the most authentic manner,” Nader said at a news conference at the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum.

Nader, who called Sens. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain the “corporate candidates,” repeated his calls for universal health care, a minimum living wage of $10 an hour, slashing the Pentagon budget in half and shifting more of the burden of taxation onto polluters and financial speculators.

The 74-year-old Nader acknowledged the odds of his social justice candidacy winning in November are long but, quoting the iconoclastic journalist I.F. Stone, Nader said, “You have to be willing to lose.”

When asked if he sees young people playing an influential role in November, Nader said no. “If there was a (military) draft they would. They sure would,” he said.

For a man who spawned a student movement, it's pretty shocking how out of touch he is with today's youth.

Many of you might already know about this - or at least some of it - but the last five days have seen something of an uproar in the youth community as young political activists and candidate supporters found themselves cut out of the state-level Democratic National Convention delegate selection process, first in California, and now apparently in other states as well.

I've refrained from commenting on it as youth advocates worked behind the scenes to rectify the situation, but now I think it's time to present a summary of what has happened, what is at issue, and where we stand.

What Happened
Young people running for delegate positions on behalf of their candidate at the Democratic National Convention in California were informed earlier this week that they had been cut from the process. This happened within both the Clinton and Obama campaigns, but the issue became particularly focused on the actions of the Obama campaign, which cut far more potential delegates and which relied heavily on young voters to secure victory in the primary contests held thus far.

To be clear, it is within the rights of the campaigns to make these cuts. I believe the technical term is that the campaigns are exercising their "right of refusal." Campaigns are granted this right in order to ensure that those delegates attending the convention are indeed hard core supporters of their candidate.

The Issues:

Nevertheless, this was problematic for several reasons:

• First, the criteria for being cut was (and continues to be) non-transparent and arbitrary. The campaign stated that it's purpose was to weed out potential Clinton supporters or all but the most hard-core Obama supporters, but a quick glance at the names of some of the youth who were cut put the lie to that claim rather quickly. Many were not only leaders in youth organizing, but solid Obama supporters as well. A second explanation that the campaign was concerned with the logistics of the nominating process and the sheer number of applicants was more reasonable, if still less than satisfactory.
• Second, the cuts showed a startling lack of recognition for the support that young voters gave to the Senator in his many victories and reinforced the worst tendencies of the Democratic Party in discouraging young people from participating within the party structure as a vehicle for change.
• Third, the move undercut the work of many youth groups, including the DNC Youth Council, which has actively run a campaign to encourage young people to run for delegate slots to the convention within their states.
• Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, the Obama campaign made promises to a number of youth leaders that the right of refusal would not be exercised against young supporters.

There is also another angle to this as well, having less to do with the Obama campaign than with how the DNC treats young people at the state and national level.

In 2006, the Young Democrats fought the DNC over affirmative action language in the DNC charter and mandatory goals for young people in each state delegation to the convention. You can read a write-up of that fight here, but in short it boiled down to this. YDA claimed that language in the DNC charter requires mandatory affirmative action goals for youth in each state delegation. The language in the charter mandates that young people be represented within the state delegations commensurate with the level at which they participated in the prior election (eg, if youth were 15% of a state's Democratic electorate in 2004, they should make up 15% of a state's delegation to the convention in 2008).

The DNC claimed that a rule issued at a later convention made those goals advisory/voluntary, and elected to ignore the language in the charter, which should supercede any committee rule. This has resulted in a hodge-podge or commitments/goals for youth delegates at the state level. Some states like California do have mandatory goals for youth in their delegation. Other's don't, creating the chance for young people to be underrepresented at the convetntion. And here's the rub. Whether states do or don't have mandatory affirmative action goals for youth, striking young people from the delegate lists can exacerbate the problem of unequal and nondemocratic representation for young people at the convention.

If too many young people are struck, it can make it difficult for the state party to meet its targets for youth delegates. The only way for the party to overcome that deficit is to use PLEO (Party Leader and Elected Official) and at-large delegate slots. Youth, particularly unconnected party activits, tend to get screwed over in this situation. Young people are are not, for the most part, Party Leaders or Elected Officials (though the latter is changing). And at-large delegate slots are more likely to go to the children of party leaders or donors than to Joe Activist who put in 1000 hours on the campaign trail.

On multiple levels, the system weeds out young people, particularly unconnected young people. The Obama campaign potentially made that situation worse by cutting so many young people from the prospective delegate pool.

Resolution?
Late last week, these concerns were all made known to the campaign privately by youth leaders, and publicly by Young Voter PAC , which released a statement echoing the concerns listed above. Not long after, the campaign relented and agreed to reinstate the cut youth candidates in California. At the time, they issued this statement:

There has been an extraordinary outpouring of grassroots support for Senator Obama among Democrats and Independents in all 53 California Congressional districts.

In recognition of this tremendous enthusiasm, our campaign has asked the California Democratic Party to allow all persons who have filed to be a district delegate candidate for Senator Obama at the Democratic National Convention to participate in the caucuses this Sunday, April 13, 2008.

We are confident that delegates elected from this pool will reflect the Senator's commitment to a diverse and unified delegation at the National Convention.

An overwhelming number of supporters have signed up to run for delegate, so there will likely be lines and tight space at the caucus locations. We ask for everyone's patience and cooperation.

Most of all, please enjoy this opportunity to meet other Obama supporters and elect delegate candidates to the Convention in Denver.

David Plouffe
Campaign Manager

The statement was bizarre in that it seemed to lay blame for the situation at the feet of the California Democratic Party, but it was a welcome move by the Obama campaign to rectify the situation, and it was applauded by the youth vote community. Unfortunately, it didn't end there. On Saturday, Kevin Bondelli, the YDA Southwest Regional Director, received this letter from the Obama campaign:

Dear Kevin Bondelli:

Thank you very much for applying to be an Obama At Large Delegate to the Democratic National Convention. When we started this campaign, we knew that our only path to victory was to inspire grassroots activism across our state, and we know you have made that possible. We are thrilled to have so much interest among Arizonans to represent the Obama campaign in Denver.

In compliance with the rules of the DNC, the campaign has opted to limit the list of candidates that have filed to run as an at-large delegate. The campaign understands the desire of all of our supporters to participate in this process, but to fully achieve the DNC’s goals of a diverse pool of delegates, and to accommodate the time this selection process will take, we have trimmed the list. Please know that we value every single Obama supporter and all of the hard work and energy that you have shown in working to make Senator Obama the Democratic nominee.

Our campaign understands and appreciates all of your tireless enthusiasm and commitment to Senator Obama. We thank you for your time and efforts on behalf of our campaign and we look forward to working with you in the upcoming months to elect Senator Barack Obama as President of the United States.

Sincerely,
(Staffer Name)

Kevin was gunning for one of those at-large delegate positions, different from those which were cut in California, but the letter raised the prospect that the campaign's reinstatement of youth delegates in California was not being replicated in other states. Which is where we are now.

Kevin wrote an open letter to the Obama campaign and the DNC in response to these cuts. He's knee-deep in this situation, as a rejected at-large delegate from Arizona, and he's been doing a play-by-play of his own situation as it unfolds.

To my knowledge, the Obama campaign has yet to issue a statement about the process and the status of youth delegates in other states. The DNC Youth Council is working to put together a guide for potential youth delegates to help maximize their chances of navigating the selection (and right of refusal) process. That guide should be ready later today pending DNC approval, and I will post it here after it is approved for distribution.

• Can Youth Swing Pennsylvania?
• Young Voters Help Start Political Phenomenon
• Marvin Krislov, the President of Oberlin College, talks about barriers that young people - particularly college students - face in voting, and how a simple action on the part of universities can help lower those barriers: Laying the Foundation for Voting
• Keli Goff appeared on Fire Dog Lake's book salon today to talk about her new book: Party Crashing: How the Hip Hop Generation Declared Political Independence. It's next on my book list.

Yesterday in USA Today, Republican operative David Frum published an Op-Ed acknowledging the Republican Party's huge loss of support from young voters, and outlining a four-point plan to recapture the youth vote and revive the days of Reagan and Bush Sr.

Frum gets a few things right. Millennials are the most anti-Republican age group in the electorate, that position is a response to the failures of the Bush Administration to adequately address any number of social, economic, and geopolitical problems, the dominance of Christian conservatives and their culture war values on choice and GLBT rights also plays a part, as does the fact that the Millennial generation is the most diverse, tolerant generation in history and the Republican Party is not at all diverse or tolerant.

But Frum is smoking something if he thinks his four-point plan can turn things around for the GOP.

Three of his proposals amount to nothing more than putting a kinder, gentler face on policies that a majority of youth roundly reject. I see little room for a pro-environment, pro-choice, multilateralist generation that believes in the power and obligation of government to protect and provide opportunity for its citizens to embrace a unilateral foreign policy, green washing environmental policy or a more compassionate anti-choice agenda.

But one recommendation sticks out among the rest and it deserves closer scrutiny.

Think Social Security taxes, not income taxes.

Today's young voters are paying much more in Social Security taxes than in income taxes — and contributing much more into Social Security than they will ever see out of it.

Republicans took a beating on the Social Security issue in 2005. But the issue is not going away. And Barack Obama's solution — taxing more income for Social Security — is neither workable nor popular. Personal accounts offer hope for personal wealth to a generation that is increasingly anxious about its economic future. With a relatively small subsidy — $300 per year for workers earning less than $40,000 — a revived Republican personal account plan could guarantee that every American worker would retire a millionaire, even if they never earn more in their lives than minimum wage.

Republicans will always face overwhelming disadvantages among blacks and Hispanics. President Bush's attempts to woo Hispanics via lax immigration policies disastrously backfired, alienating white Republicans without achieving gains among Hispanics.

But we can talk to young blacks and Hispanics as young people, who share economic interests with an entire generation of overtaxed young workers, regardless of race.

This is a common narrative heard not just among conservatives, who use it as their supposed "Ace in the hole" when talking to or about young voters, but also among progressives. During my book tour this question has come up a number of times. Yesterday at the Roosevelt Institution conference, Andrea Batista Schlesinger, the Executive Director of the Drum Major Institute, made reference to an alleged conservative view of Social Security reform among Millennials. I myself have fallen into the trap of believing that young people consider Social Security broken and privatization as the most viable option for "fixing" it.

After extensive conversations with some fellow youth leaders this morning, and a little bit of reading, I no longer believe that to be the case.

Back in 2005, the last time that this issue came up, Rock the Vote teamed up with the AARP to poll the electorate on the issue. Contrary to popular belief, they found that most young people did not support Social Security privatization if it entailed the dismantling of other parts of the social safety net:

Most Americans in the 18 to 39 age group, for example, say that they would flat-out oppose the accounts if, for example, it means that cuts to their guaranteed Social Security benefits would be so severe that they could not make up the difference with private accounts (70 percent say they would oppose) or that diverting some Social Security payroll taxes means "massive new federal debt in order to pay current benefits" (63 percent say they would oppose).

PEW found similar results at the time, and also noted that the more young people knew about the details of privatization, the less likely they were to support it.

A number of young activists wrote about the subject at the time. Dana Goldstein, then of Campus Progress, actually debated a pro-privatization student and found that the pro-privatization student group, Students for Saving Social Security, was little more than an astroturf group.

At the time, Matt Singer, now of Forward Montana, and Heather McGhee, who is now working on Demos's Better Deal Conference, also wrote critiques of the supposed youth support for social security privatization.

Lest you think that my outdated statistics from 2005 are no longer relevant, let's remember that in 2005, a number of Gen Xers were still in the 18 - 29 catagory (and they made up a majority of the 18 - 36 cohort). Gen Xers have consistently been far more conservative than Millennials. If anything, these numbers have likely seen a vast improvement. Again, Rock the Vote's poll data can provide some help here.

In February of 2008, Rock the Vote released a new poll of young voters (18 - 29) (pdf). When asked what their top concerns were for the country, only 2% responsed that Social Security was one of their largest concerns. 0% of African Americans agreed that Social Security was a major problem, and only 5% of Hispanics. Now granted, there are margin of error issues in these numbers, but the point is, the numbers are so small that it is hard to see how this could turn out to be the Republican's "Ace in the Hole" to win back young voters.

At best, what we have in Social Security is the one issue in which we may actually have to engage the Republicans in serious debate among young voters. But research shows that once young voters become educated as to the details, and the consequences, of privatization, they readily abandon the concept. Considering the conditions of the stock market recently, this is a debate I'm more than willing to have.

It may come as a shock to many in the world of political punditry, who live in a world where the military always votes Republican, but many of our troops aren't lining up behind war hero John McCain. Not surprisingly, troops on their third tour of duty in just about as many years want some time home with their families, and are worried about their own economic security.

From ABC News:

ABC's Martha Raddatz asked American soldiers in Iraq what issues are most important to them when looking at the presidential candidates.

Though the military is not supposed to engage in partisan political activity, these soldiers spoke out about their personal endorsements, and their opinions are likely to matter. In 2004, 73 percent of the U.S. military voted for a presidential candidate, and officials believe it may be even higher this time around.

PFC Jeremy Slate said he supported Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., because of his stated intention to pull out of Iraq right away.

"That would be nice," Slate said, "I'd like to be home, yea."

SFC Patricia Keller also expressed support for Obama, citing his representation for change.

Spc. Patrick Nicholls from Eggawam, Mass., pointed out that many soldiers on the frontlines frequently think about their families back home.

"We think about how our families are doing back home. That's a major concern, like how the economy is doing, also as well as where we're going to be in the future. Because really, truly, what we consider we're doing, we're doing a valuable job, we want to make sure that the efforts we make are appreciated."

He suggested he was too engaged in Iraq to keep up with politics back home. "I haven't really been following it too much since we've been over here, ma'am," he told Raddatz. "So, don't really know which issues are too important to me right now. ... I don't know who's running, ma'am."

Lt. Leah Wicks said that, tied into concerns about her family's welfare, were concerns about the economy, "where we're going to be in the future."

Only moments before speaking with ABC News, the troops had been listening to Vice President Dick Cheney give a rousing speech, but it didn't change their political preference.

Spc. Imus Loto said he supported Obama. "It will be something different. But he's out there and he'll probably support us a lot more."

By support, Loto meant pulling out troops. "Pull me out, too." he said.

Also interesting was the fact that military members vote at such a high rate. If the military rank and file turnout in high numbers for the Democratic candidate, that's good news on two fronts. It will be a significant boost in support, and it will also help loosen the stranglehold that Republicans have on "national security" in our public debate.