In Youth Organizing, the Old Becomes New Again

Update: This post has been updated in response to the comment by Jesse Kocher to more accurately represent the relationships and roles of Driving Votes, Swing Semester, and Swing the State. Thanks to Jesse for the clarifications.

In 2004, Democratic politics witnessed a boom in youth organizing. Young people created dozens of new institutions that pioneered non-traditional methods for engaging their peers on and offline. Drinking clubs that maintained political interest and moved people slowly into political activism, road trips to swing states, peer to peer voter registration and candidate fundraising at small live music events, the list goes on and on.

These were not always the best and most efficient organizations on the block, but they identified and filled a vacuum in progressive youth politics that was not filled by traditional organizations like the PIRGs and the College Democrats. They pioneered new tactics, changed the way that many political activists thought about organizing, and they engaged many young voters that would not otherwise become involved in politics, helping to drive 4.3 million new young voters to the polls in 2004.

As often happens in progressive politics, the amount of money available to these organizations declined drastically after the election. Some organizations struggled and managed to survive. Others limped along until they could no longer be sustained. People moved on to other jobs. Sometimes in politics, sometimes not.

Four years out, history is repeating itself. The country is on the wrong track, young people are engaged, and they looking for a way to make a difference in the election. For some, the Obama campaign is the vehicle for that activism. For others, organizations from the 2004 youth org boom that are still going strong, like the League of Young Voters and the Young Democrats, help young people engage the process. Others are not so lucky, and for that subset of young voters, they are once again encountering the vacuum that initially spawned the 2004 youth organizing boom. In response, a newer (and smaller) boom is occurring in the youth organizing sphere as these people work to recreate or reimagine the organizations that did not survive into the current presidential cycle.

In 2004, four major organizations built a model that employed live music to register and organize young voters and support candidates. Music for America and Punk Voter each engaged in partisan activism at live concerts, registering voters and distributing issue-messaging while Concerts for Change focused its efforts on raising money for candidates. The fourth organization, HeadCount, was a non-partisan organization focused solely on voter registration at jamband shows. Of these four, only HeadCount survived into this election cycle leaving a major vacuum.

Shipping people into swing states - via roadtrips or other method, was also popular in 2004, and Driving Votes, Swing the State, and Swing Semester were the three organizations helping young voters in solid red and blue states find their way into battleground areas where they could have the greatest impact in the Presidential election. Despite Driving Votes' merger with Democracy for America, none of these youth organizations remained active after the election or reappeared to play a significant role during the midterm elections.

Today, both of these organizing models are witnessing a revival - or a second boom, if you will. In New York, a group of young people are hustling to build a newly launched organization, Music for Democracy, which will pick up where Music for America and Concerts for Change left off. In DC, Swing Semester has revived itself, and will work to move students from safe states into swing states, hook them up with voter contact efforts, and provide a crash course in field organizing and the contours of the current progressive movement in the area. As far as the organizers know, they are the only organization whose sole mission is to move young people into the battleground states.

The old has become new again, and both Music for Democracy and Swing Semester are rebuilding on the ashes of 2004. This is a good thing. These models of organizing clearly speak to a segment of the population not reached or activated by existing institutions. It's a shame that just four years out so much infrastructure needs to be rebuilt from scratch, but these organizations have a leg-up on those of us who started this movement in 2004. We have best practices to share and lessons-learned about mistakes that should not be repeated. The social capital behind the organizing in 2004 is still there, waiting to be tapped. That's also a good thing, because we are rapidly running out of time. A protracted primary process and a reluctance to give on the part of donors has meant that many of these organizations are getting started much later in the cycle than they did in 2004. This year we have the opportunity to build these institutions better, strong, faster, more efficient. Not just for this election, but far into the future.

Comments (3)

1. The overall arc of this post is right (big org boom in '04, smaller in '08 and some rebuilding of past orgs' capacities), but this post has some pretty substantial innaccuracies:

   * Democracy For America is alive and well. They have local groups that meet regularly in hundreds of cities across the country, plus regular training events and online workshops. They are organizing for Obama, and they endorse a set of congressional candidates each election. Howard Dean hasn't been directly involved in DFA since he was elected to his position as DNC chair in early 2005.

   * Driving Votes and Swing the State did road trips in 2004.

   * Driving Votes did merge into Democracy for America, because DFA had the infrastructure in place to keep people active on local issues in the years between presidential elections.

   * In 2004, Swing Semester ran a semester-long program, where college students and recent grads moved to a swing state, lived with a host family, and worked on the election.

   * In 2008, Swing Semester is offering resources to help people with do-it-yourself short or long trips into swing states. At the same time, it is expanding its semester long intensive program from 2004, focusing on 8 cities, where students will live with host families while working on the election. They've also added a curriculum which allows students to earn academic credit during the semester if they choose to.

   * Swing Semester didn't "absorb what was left of Driving Votes", but many of us Driving Votes alumni are aware of Swing Semester and glad to see them stepping up to fill the do-it-yourself space in addition to their core program, and some of us will be lending a hand.

   * Swing the State hasn't unveiled any plans for '08 that I know of.

   Posted by JesseKocher at 07/19/2008 @ 8:35pm

2. Look, Mr Connery, just get your "youth vote" to elect Obama.

   If you don't...then stop talking about it.

   Posted by Maskdelta at 07/21/2008 @ 12:28pm

3. Dear God I hope the,"so called", generational shift isn't some kind of illusion.

   Posted by julien38 at 07/22/2008 @ 3:06pm