Campus Progress

With the economy in a serious slump, state systems of higher education are on the chopping block again, as governors and state legislatures trim the "fat." Private schools have seen large chunks of their endowments vanish. Who is the biggest loser? Students. As endowments and costs are slashed, tuition rates and fees for incoming students increase.

Citing the strains on lower- and middle-class families who are trying to send sons and daughters to college, a coalition of higher education and consumer advocacy groups sent a letter Thursday to Speaker Pelosi arguing for some assistance for students in the upcoming stimulus package. Campus Progress, the U.S. PIRGs, and the Project on Student Debt were all involved in this effort. The letter proposed some actions Congress could take in the new stimulus bill to help college students:

• Raise the maximum Pell Grant to $7,000
• Increase funding for the Federal Work-Study Program by 25 percent.
• Improve access to Parent PLUS loans.
• Provide a limited “emergency access” student loan pool for colleges that commit to providing adequate need-based aid.

While there are those families too poor to realistically consider college right now who we should never forget, these lower- to middle-class prospective students should absolutely be remembered as Congress prepares to draft this legislation.

As the last point in the proposal indicates, one way to honor the blue-collar student is to substantially decrease merit-based aid in favor of need-based aid. Ben Miller, at Higher Ed Watch, explains why:

Every single public college contacted for a recent survey by the National Association for College Admission Counseling said it provided non-need based assistance, or "merit aid." The same survey found that merit aid made up 41.9 percent of public institutional funds, only slightly less than the 46.6 percent devoted to need-based institutional aid. This is troubling because "merit aid" is not targeted at low-income students, and is instead used to compete for the best (and sometimes the wealthiest) students to boost prestige and fundraising. Schools should not be allowed to continue to spend their limited financial aid budgets on non-needy students when low- and moderate-income students are being asked to shoulder ever-larger tuition burdens.

Miller's post as a whole is instructive. Too often institutions of higher education pass on their financial troubles, in the form of tuition increases and student fee hikes, to the students. Perhaps the institutions could look at possible cuts they could be making from within and examine opportunities for streamlining instead of erecting barriers to a college education, a critical piece of the American Dream for many families.

Congress could help my incorporating most, if not all, of this proposal into the new economic stimulus legislation.

(h/t to Pedro de la Torre at pushback)

Conference season is upon us as groups debrief from the '08 election and look ahead to 2009. Here's some worth checking out:

• Roots Camp DC: December 13 - 14 at Trinity College. This will be a debrief from campaign staffers and organizers who worked on the '08 election. With no pre-set agenda and no distinction between presenters and listeners, the conference is incredibly organic and free flowing, creating a learning environment that I've never seen matched. Roots Camp DC 2006 was the best conference I've ever attended. I'm hoping 2008 will blow that away. I'll be there. Look for the guy wearing the Future Majority pin.
• Constitutional Convention 2.0: January 9 - 11, Philadelphia, PA. Mobilize.org will sponsor a two day conference where 100 Millennials will recap the 2008 campaign, look ahead to the future of civic engagement, and compete to receive funding for their projects.
• Campus Progress Southern Regional Conference: February 6 - 8, Atlanta, GA. Campus Progress hosts it's first conference in the region for 200 activists, journalists, and bloggers.
• PowerShift 2009: February 27 - March 2nd, Washington, DC. Take part in the second annual summit of the youth climate movement. Climate change and energy policy will probably be the issue around which we see the most youth organizing in 2009. I'll definitely be at Power Shift to get a handle on what that will look like.

• Hat tip to Tony Cani, the Political Director of the Young Democrats, for catching the most cynical youth story of the week. From the conservative Washington Times:
  

  Republicans can keep young voters who support Democratic nominee Barack Obama at home by giving their young relatives and friends gift cards to iTunes and Starbucks that are good only on Nov. 4, election day.

  “That’s the only way to keep them away from the polls,” said Kellyanne Conway, president of The Polling Company, during a breakfast with the delegates at their hotel near the University of Minnesota.

  Tony has the appropriate response.

• That last gem comes courtesy of a speaker addressing the Virginia delegation at the Republican National Convention. But I don't think the Virginia GOP needs any help suppressing the youth vote, they're already doing a bang-up job of that, according to this New York Times article. A local registrar near Virginia Tech is improperly and inaccurately threatening students with the loss of financial aid if they register to vote in the state.
• Meanwhile, in another swing state, the Ohio Secretary of State is actually doing her job and is taking precautions to prevent voter suppression at the polls in November.
• Everyone should read Glenn Greenwald's post about why McCain and Palin can lie with impunity on the stump.
• On September 18th, the Center for American Progress is hosting an event on Millennials and how they will reshape the electorate. RSVP here.
• AEI has their own event on Millennials as well. Let's say that their take is not so optimistic. Details and RSVP here.
• The WE Campaign, 1 Sky and Green for All are teaming up for a day of action to promote Green Jobs Now. So far there are 232 events scheduled for September 27th.
• YP4 is offering an online course (Free!) on how to fight the Religious Right. The course begins Sept. 15th.
• YP4 is also recruiting a new class of Fellows. Find out more here.
• The New York Times has an interesting piece on the state of the money-race, including an interesting bit about Obama donors collecting checks that will go to the state parties in Battlegrounds.

I highly recommend that everyone read these first two links.

• Over at Open Left, 21st Century Democrats has an excellent post describing the drop off in turnout between the Presidential contest and down ballot races in key states. This is an excellent argument as to why Obama can't do this alone. He needs outside groups complimenting his ground game and promoting those down ballot races.
• In a preview from this Sunday's New York Times Magazine, Matt Bai analyzes the generational rift between new black politicians like Obama and Newark Mayor Cory Booker, and the old guard civil rights leaders like John Lewis and James Clyburn. The piece also touches on the rift at the institutional level between the NAACP and new players like Color of Change. It's a must read for those trying to get a handle on the new political landscape.
• CQ Politics has a lengthy and fascinating (if geeky) look at why 2008 is a particularly difficult year for pollsters.
• Of late Rock the Vote is championing veterans' voting rights. Heather Smith blogs about their latest campaign at the Huffington Post.
• Conservative Young America's Foundation still won't let reps from Campus Progress attend their conference (despite CP gladly admitting YAF alumns). Read the drama here.
• Confusing reports on the attitude of teenagers (13 - 19) on the direction of the country from a survey out of Medill.
• New Majority, a group out of Virginia, is planning on targeting local youth and Latinos.
• In Kentucky, Democrats are increasing their share of the electorate, thanks mainly to an influx of young voters.

I wasn't able to make it down to the Campus Progress National Conference this year. My travel schedule has been such that something had to give, and unfortunately, this was the event I had to scratch.

But it's an important event and I was highly impressed last year by the diversity of the participants and quality of the programming (even as I was disappointed that the participants and the event seemed entirely divorced from the blogosphere and netroots).

Reports about the conference are coming out and here's what they're saying:

• The Washington Post highlights the pragmatism and policy knowledge of the participants, as well as the need to expand youth activism among non-college youth.
• The Politico focused on the keynote address by John Edwards and how his poverty agenda resonates with young people, even if he did not gain their support in the primaries.
• The Chronicle of Higher Eduation has an excellent rundown on the youth-vote panel at the conference featuring Ben Adler of The Politico, Heather McGhee of Demos, Maria Teresa Peterson of Voto Latino, and Biko Baker from The League.

Update: Jesse Singal from Campus Progress writes in to tell me that they will be shutting down the old CP community blogs and that PushBack Blog Network (PBN) will be a slightly edited, technologically superior version. Makes sense. More when PBN officially launches in the next few weeks.
---------------------------------
Campus Progress just launched PushBack, a new blog community dedicated to giving Millennials a voice in politics. The idea seems to be that the mass media chronically gets the youth vote/activism story wrong and they oftentimes fundamentally misunderstand the habits and trends of Millennials. Pushback will, well, pushback against those narratives through a new blog network run by and for Millennials.

I'm entirely in agreement that the mass media narratives about Millennials need to be challenged vigorously and corrected at every turn. I'd say that's a good portion of what this site has been about these past years, and I certainly welcome the company. At the moment, though, it's not entirely clear to me yet how Pushback is different from the community blogs at Campus Progress. Many of the same names are blogging and the content is far broader than a rapid-response vehicle might suggest.

But the site looks great and the content is interesting so far. I've added them to my RSS feed and to the "Breaking News" feed. Looking forward to seeing how this develops.

A few announcements about opportunities with six great orgs:

• The annual Campus Progress national conference is just around the corner (July 8th). Check out conference info here.
• The Nation and Brave New Films are teaming up to recognize outstanding, under the radar activism by young people. You can find out more - including how to nominate someone - over here.
• Democracy for America is offering scholarships to Netroots Nation. Apply here.
• Mobilize.org is gearing up to award a number of $3 - 5k grants to Millennials working on projects supporting clean elections. If you can't make Netroots Nation, they are holding a conference on the subject in Denver in July (The Democracy 2.0 Grant Summit, Money in Politics). More info here.

Last week, Alica posted about a video created by YAF alum and conservative "All-Star" Jason Mattera. Pretty much nothing he said in the video - about young voters or the conservative youth movement - was true.

Campus Progress just released a great video taking down Mattera point by point:

How could this be?! This is indeed breaking news, because it may very well be the first time FoxNews has done something right - er... correctly.

This comes on the heals of the CNN blunder in reporting a lot of misinformation about young people and the youth vote in 2008. Add to that Naomi Wolf and Courtney Martin and you're ready for your own nuclear meltdown of frustration.

There's been a pretty substantial rapid response linking to a brilliant post by Mike that details data and a fact sheet for reporters who can't bring themselves to research - and the response has been tremendous!

Rob Anderson from CP went after Naomi at the Washington Post, we hit CNN on FM, and Campus Progress nailed Courtney here.

After posting Mike's piece everywhere and emailing it to CNN, NPR, and all of my own local news and radio stations I figured the last to talk about young people would be a Republican News Network who so clearly excludes young people. But they did. As you can see they addressed all of our main issues.

The only fault I have with this is that the piece likens youth to phrases like "Yo Dude" when, shocking as it may seem, young people do have a capability to converse like adults and understand complex topics.

Alexandra Acker ED of the Young Democrats of America was interviewed in the piece and later commented to me

"One thing that stood out was Frank Luntz’s outrageous statement that young people want to be addressed as “Yo, dude” whereas I had spoken about the need for candidates to take young voters seriously and talk about issues they care about."

Another interesting thing to mention is the ways in which FoxNews reaches out to young commentators like Acker when CNN's and the piece on 60 Minutes was largely dominated by older generations who are out of touch with the reality of the Millennial Generation.

Fox is notorious for connecting with younger demographics (see MySpace, the Simpsons, and FoxNews Porn) - CNN's only got Anderson Cooper and Soledad O'Brien. Let's face it almost 3/4 of their airwaves are full of old angry Lou Dobbs, Larry "he's still alive?" King, and the Jack/Wolf Playdate (and my TV is always on CNN!)

The reporter doing the piece seemed young. Probably not 25, but she's definitely younger than Lou Dobbs. And Acker said she made a real effort to understand the issues:

She "went to resources like YDA and YVS, did follow-up with me after the interview to make sure she had the Harvard quote right, but CNN just recycled the same old, tired storyline."

Acker goes on to speculate that the youth friendly ways in which FoxNews and its family targets young people is perhaps because they are more aware of our generation's purchase power. And I think she's got something there.

While I agree that Fox is bad, evil, worse than bad and evil, I think if they could make more money by supporting Democrats they'd flip parties in a heartbeat. By targeting young people, regardless of party affiliation, with products, musicians, and the like their advertisers make more money and thus the network banks a pretty sweet deal.

In many ways we're being used - but at the same time, they're the only ones talking about the importance of young people in the first place - so what do ya do?

Until we can get mainstream news sources to report these facts correctly, you have to give props to the ones who do, even when they're traditionally crazy nutbars.

Cross posted to Kos, please recommend

Rob Anderson, the editor of Campus Progress has an editorial in today's Washington Post responding to an earlier editorial by author and activist Naomi Wolf:

In Sunday's Washington Post Outlook section, Naomi Wolf argued that most young people today don't understand how democracy works and that even those who do are too cynical to get involved in our country's democratic process.

We'd all have something to worry about if Wolf's argument were true. America's youth today are coming of age at a time when one group of extremists has launched a violent attack on liberal values abroad, and as another seeks to roll back our civil liberties at home.

Fortunately, Wolf's depiction of my generation is supported only by anecdotal evidence, off-topic research and a faulty analysis of recent history. In reality, we young Americans are reshaping the political landscape with our activism and innovation. And we're working to increase our influence on the issues we care about most.

Two things. First, to Ms. Wolf: Fact Check; There Is No Crisis among American Youth, as Rob Anderson ably demonstrates in his piece.

Second, I just want to note that there has been a lot of really great push-back from progressive youth organizers against misleading and downright inaccurate narratives in the press about American youth participation in politics. Between the retorts to Adam Nagourney's reporting, corrections to a piece by CBS, smackdowns to 60 Minutes, reactions to Courtney Martin's piece in the American Prospect, rebuttals to Tom Freidmans' condescending and hypocritical "Generation Q," the creation of the Journalist "Cheat Sheet," and now this, it seems like progressive youth organizers are getting their sea legs when it comes to engaging in rapid response. The narrative is already much improved over what we saw around this time in 2003 or even 2005, and after the caucuses we'll have a big chance to reshape it even more. Until then, it's good to see such strong pushback. It's likely priming the pump for better coverage as we get deeper into the election cycle.