Take Back America

Due to a scheduling conflict with my book tour, I missed Take Back America for the second year in a row. Some folks put together what looked to be a stellar youth panel and the reports coming in seem positive.

One thing that did come to my attention (via Google Alert) was that a discussion took place about the role of celebrities in reaching young voters. I would have loved to be part of that conversation as I think this is an area with great potential and even greater pitfalls for youth activists. Celebrities can bring a great deal of media attention to your work, but it can also overshadow it. As far as I know, celebrity "endorsements" of voting mean very little in and of themselves, yet if celebrities can encourage a culture of participation among their fans and drive people to action, that can be a powerful thing.

The dividing line between these two is very fine, and it's why I've always loved music endorsements more than endorsements and PSA's by actors. Musicians have a community of supporters with shared experiences that they can activate (Punks for Dean, OK Go fans for Obama). These communities also have geographic meeting spaces - music clubs. The same can't be said about actors - at least not in the same way and I'm not sure in a way that lends itself to organizing. Actors can be validators of a message, but again I'm not sure how effective that is and you run the risk of the personality overriding the message.

I've been looking around for the video of the youth panels from Take Back America, and while I still can't locate the full video (CSPAN has it, but only on dvd) I did find this clip of Highlander Center's Elandria Williams, which was definitely one of the highlights of the panel as well as the conference. Her speach seemed half presentation half performance, and she definitely captured the crowd's attention really quickly.

I really liked her point about how youth organizations need to ask young people what it is that they want and need. Simply put, the issues that are most concerning to activists in poorer areas aren't always the issues that the broader "movement" sees as most important. As she notes, it's hard to think about global warming when you're concerned about where your next meal is coming from (or something to that effect)

In about five minutes I'm jumping in a car and heading down to DC to attend the Take Back America 2007 Conference. I'm going to try and do one or two "live-blogs" from there, though that will depend a bit on getting some free time. Either way, if you're reading this, and you're attending the conference and would like to meet up, let me know in comments. If you're in DC, but not planning on going to the conference, you should still come out to the Drinking/Living Liberally parties. There's one on both Monday and Tuesday night.

Update 1: I'm heading to a panel on youth voting right now. I'll see how it goes.

Update 2: Fred and I have added some comments on the conference below.

Update 3 (by mike): Here's our own Alex UA talking to the Dodd campaign about student loan transparency and reaching out to young voters: