A few hours ago I attended "We Voted, Now What?: Building A Youth Movement," a panel discussion over at the Take Back America conference. The panelists, moderated by Anna Lefer of the Open Society Institute, came from a variety of progressive organizations. Lefer noted that conservatives pour $40 million a year into youth development, and that millenials (that is, Americans born between 1977 and 1997) are the largest and most diverse generation in American history. Millenials, in other words, are up for grabs, and the panelists that followed outlined some of the ways progressives can work toward appealing to them and building a long-term majority.




"Coalition" was definitely the key idea; almost of all of the panelists spoke of the importance of establishing relationships between different activist organizations. Gabe Pendas, Vice President of the United States Student Association, described his time as a student activist in Tallahassee. Early on, he helped organize a 114-day tent city protesting sweatshops. It was a total failure, he said -- his organization had "no infrastructure" and hadn't built the ties necessary to properly carry out the protest. Later in his career, however, things went differently. After working to establish a network with other progressive groups, Pendas found himself a far more effective activist. In early 2006, he was able to help quickly organize a hugely successful sit-in at then-Florida governor Jeb Bush's office to protest the death of Martin Lee Anderson, a teenager who was beaten to death two hours after arriving at a boot camp for young offenders (authorities immediately tried to cover up the abuse by blaming Anderson's death on sickle cell trait).

The most interesting panelist may have been Adam Klaus of Working Assets. Klaus made the case for Web tools as a means of political organizing. He described Web 2.0 (an oft-abused term, but loosely defined as the Internet's exploding amount of new, user-generated content) as an "incredibly rich environment" that "turns the tables on more top-down, entrenched models of organizing." Klaus also provided some impressive numbers on Working Assets and Rock the Vote's joint effort to register voters online. He said that the two organizations have registered over 2,146,000 new voters, 60% of whom ended up voting. 70% of those who registered through Rock the Vote were under 30, while 50% of those who registered through Working Assets were under 30. Perhaps most importantly, the registration process left Klaus and his organization with a huge database of young registered voters -- a "really productive, valuable list for organizations" to use in their advocacy and fundraising efforts.