More notes from RootsCampDC...

Student Organizing

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There were two sets of notes for this session:

  1. Notes #1
    1. United States Student Association
    2. Campus Climate Challenge—non-electoral.
    3. Campus Impact—focused on progressive US foreign policy.
    4. Young Voters Strategies
    5. Maryland Dem party—
    6. College Democrats:
  2. Notes #2

Notes #1

United States Student Association

-voter registration efforts

-issue campaigns, college access

-Fighting for higher ed programs

-Lobbying Day March 6th

-2007 to institutionalizing work on campus. Training students, run year-round campaigns

-Importance of localizing issues; provided national training, but each state and campus localized it

-Creation of voter guides for voter education

 

Campus Climate Challenge—non-electoral.

Good for keeping people engaged. Mission is to turn college campuses into models for new energy & clean energy policy.

-Climate change is long-term issue for young people.

-Defined goals with defined roles

-How do we make momentum & excitement similar to election season, even when it’s in between. Try not to start from scratch every cycle!

 

Campus Impact—focused on progressive US foreign policy.

Recruit campus contacts who will share the mission on college campuses. Last cycle was promoting endorsed candidates and getting people plugged into campaigns and helping people vote.

 

Young Voters Strategies

worked on campuses

 

Maryland Dem party—

Obama to campuses, increasing awareness of midterms

-recruiting interns

-want sustained infrastructure through cycles

 

College Democrats:

-Institutional knowledge is key because of turnover.

-Republicans see CRs as breeding ground for future leadership and sustain their support.

-Board elections in January rather than beginning of the year to maintain organization over the summer & breaks.

 

Key with college students is to give them a campaign. Need clear, strong advocacy. What energizes people is having something to do rather than sit around and talk. To empower people is to give them achievable goal.

 

Local work or efforts important to make efforts tangible & salient

 

Try to get students to think power that they have on campus. Student government has access and huge budgets.

 

Notes #2

Subject: THE YOUTH VOTE

Date: December 2, 2006

Time: 5:00 P.M.

Location: Room A1

 

To start, everyone made introductions:

 

(Please forgive the typer’s typos)

 

• Jennifer Pae

o USSA – U.S. student association

o GOTV, Education, Registration efforts

• Mary McClelland

o Field dir. With Young Voter Strategies (?)

o Coordinated effort to register ½ a million young voters.

o Wanted to learn what are

• best pactices on community colleges, campus schools

• ifferent populations – Latino, evangelist, etcc.

• different media – internet, blogs?

o 2 million new voters this election cycles, esp. young. U of Michigan, 300% increase in voting over 2002. Average where there was targeting: 150% increase in participation. Far surpassed any other age group (old people did not turn out).

o A key constituency in races that swung for Democrats.

• James Hannaway

o MN Youth Coordinated campaign

o Had HW within broader campaign effort. Everyone working on campaign was college student. Staff of 12 – dir, deputy dir., comm. Director, plus 10 field staff working on every college campus. Given a stipend and high standard for registering and IDing voters. The DNC invested in it, and had tremendous result. Was “extensive, thorough”.

o Events:

• Go to Minnesota state fair – one of largest nationwide. Hand out “debt on a stick”. Popsickle stick with information about student debt on it.

• The most extensive on-campus GOTV efforts in Minnesota, ever.

• 600 volunteers on Election Day from colleges

• 4,000 students @ U of MN – 20% turnout

• Ousted the local state rep by 57 votes…in a race of about 20,000 votes.

• Alex A.

o Organizer with Buildling Votes

o Volunteers take responsibility for neighborhood block or building. Registration and community-buildling tactic. Therefore, volunteers would return during GOTV.

o Outreach program. Well-researched, targeted event outreach. Ultimatley, registered 20,000 votes. 15,678 of those were under 30.

o 6% electorate increase across state for under-30

o 54% of people registered with us voted (usual average = 25%)

o “peer-to-peer” conversations

o 43% increase in two targeted precincts in Eugene, a college precinct that more or less didn’t vote in 2000.

• Michael Connery

o 2003-04, was founder of …for America (sp?). reaches to youth @ concerts.

o Writing a book about young voters in politics.

o In this cycle, media and elected officials recognized that youth vote turned out. The question is: how do you turn that into donations to youth programs? We’re getting warped funding in programs.

• Lanya Shapiro

o Program called “traction” (sp?). Issue-based long-term movement buildling, focusing on X & Y generations. Had tailgate party around election.

o Got a large headline about the party, and early voting – positive coverage despite the long lines.

o Got funding that will enable partisan work.

• Christina Hollenback

o Nat’l Field Director for League of Young Voters

o Contacted 150K+ voters this season. Worked not just on college campuses, but in communities.

o “This election cycle was monumental for young people, and especially for young people in college campuses who aren’t seeing 300% increases.” They’re still involved.

o “We elected our members into city councils. We elected our members into school board.”

o “No one’s going to represent us like we represent us.”

o Mobilization → accountability → lobbying → power @ max. potential.

• Siko (last name?)

o Organizing director for LoYV.

o Lowest increase, 8% to 35%. 70% in some areas.

• Ghita (sp? Last name?)

o Major donors’ individual gifts. Fascinated by way that statistics are not a big part of public discourse. Wants to build on the moment.

• Megan Hall

o Secretary of State project. Worked in 7 races to elect secretaries of state who don’t implement laws with < effects on young voters. Have to fight laws with goal of minimizing barriers before 2008. We already have an ID law this fall in Texas – photo ID laws, 3rd party registration laws, where Republicans are putting a ton of resources. Need more awareness across movement so Republicans don’t put more laws in place.

• Anna Enkidjian (sp?)

• Jon Margolick

o Robert Reich – the largest demographic in the U.S. is the one that doesn’t vote.

o It’s a natural demographic, but it is underused. How do we tap it?

• Franz Hartl

o Started “music for America”, a drupal shop

o Work with technologies, doing MySpace pages – e.g. John Edwards. How we continue to leverage information sharing technologies to do organizing, and not just to push out information

• Unidentified person from Virginia

• Ken Bernstein

o Teaches high school students

o MD has provision – if you’re eligible to vote in general election, you can vote in the priMary McClelland. Should hve this done in the national basis.

o “Vietnam generation was able to persuade the American people that we could go fight and die in a war without choosing the people in charge. If you can’t participate in the picking of your party’s candidate, and can only vote afterwards… we ought to get people more interested…and leverage them in.”

• Christine Chen

o Growing Asian-American Greek system in colleges to get them engaged.

• Ivan Frishberg

o Dynamic decision efforts to see how we can get more youth involved.

o Young voter PACs

• Kimberly Fountain

o MoveOn, etc. Don’t work with youth but am interested.

• Ben Adler

o Cultural magazine

• Jefferson Smith

• Garrett Downen

o Last election – change from 2002/04, where in state house races, there were zero progressive candidates under 35. 8 candidates in this election, and 5 won.

• Matt Serym (sp?_)

o Increase youth vote share – 12 points break for John Tester to get him elected. 7 people under age of 30 in state house. Board member elected to Dem. Caucus Chair.

• Unidentified speaker

o Campus Progress.

o Run issue campaigns (C3). Student debt, college affordability – so heartened by turnout and glad to see that “for one of the first times, people were acknowledging that young people are coming out to vote” [because there are issues that matter to them.]

• Ramya Raghavan

o Outreach.

o 125 student reps across the country. One of the things: worked on No one (sp?) affirmative action proposal. Action grant program for issue campaigns (e.g. one given to U=Mich)

• Courtney …

o Issue-based campaigns (used since 1972). Always trying to explore, because that’s why people vote. “Getting people to see why they need to vote – issue campaigns are really what do it.”

• Jennifer Pae

o Summary:

o Money: how folks are going to have money to do this work

o Accountability: how do we make significant changes

o Disenfranchised students

o How do you tap into HS students and immigrants and noncitizens

o Focusing on the issues that matter

• Alex A.

o Let’s share core elements of getting a registration campaign.

• Mary McClelland (#2)

o Best practices?

• Lanya Shapiro (#6)

o How to we learn from what’s successful? …above and beyond the sentiments over Iraq? Esp. in outreach precincts vs. “control” (not targeted) precincts.

• James Hannaway (#3)

o Have database of everybody on campus of most colleges in MN. Where they’re from, where they live on campus, their Facebook political orientation.

o I have a friend… who knows these things…

o Using the student directory, and where they’re from, plugging it into a database of competitive races (NY Times list), and telling people door to door – your senate and congressional races are competitive, you should vote at home. Where that outreach (personalized) took place, participation was tremendous.

o Amazing people working on the campaign – on things done this campaign that have never been done before. (presentation tomorrow AM)

• Alex A. (4)

o Smile at people on the street – they want to register.

• Siko (8)

o People were confused.

• Franz Hartl

o Showing up in the same spot time and time again, they’ll grow curious.

• Ben Adler

o Create fun ways to engage people. A lot of events organized here in D.C. are targeted to our local population, and some of the “fun” activities that we organize may not always apply.

o A lot of diverse, working-class people we need to reach out to – tailor events and websites.

• Courtney (last)

o Engage voters in whole electoral process. Teaching them skills to do work and engage their community. Expands electorate. Focus on the issues that affect that specific community – e.g. LGBT voters brought in around same-sex marriage issues.

• Lanya Shapiro (6)

o We try to make everything relevant ad appealing. One event – Tamer Drout (sp???) spoke about economic policy. Try to partner with other organizations on the ground. Association in NC talked about financial literacy telenovela that they broadcast.

• Press coverage talked about “teaching young people to plan their financial life/manage their money.”

• Having interesting issues brought general coverage, even though the event was progressive.

o Cheap date series – how can you eat on $5 a day? Stuff swaps, etc. Something that’s relevant to lower-income communities.

• Ken

o Ask people to make financial commitments. Have young people 2 young people – e.g. Act Blue. Co-sponsor things that are not necessarily political in their orientation. People like to feel that they make a difference. Even a nominal contribution creates a personal commitment. Beyond registration, we need to not just have them stuff envelopes.

• Siko

o Sell wristbands, small profits?

o Lot of canvassers were high school students – show them how much they were impacted by politics.

• Jon Margolick

o If students aren’t given a chance to vote, is that what makes them stupid? Or vice-versa?

o A lot of people can get registered when they get their driver’s license.

o Registering people for the first time, esp. college students. Requiring voter registration cards to get into an event.

• James Hannaway

o [Is there a legal issue?]

• Courtney

o Just don’t deny people access into your events.

• Christina

o Voter pledge card after registering high school students to vote. Sent students an exciting package on registering and voting in November.

o A lot of press coverage on an all-senior event.

• Franz Hartl

o A “fair election” bill regarding the election?

o If we organize a push for threshold of voter registration – it’s politically so savvy for the Dems to do it, freeing resources for issue advocacy, community buildling/outreach.

• Jefferson

o Middle school students. Frontal lobe development.

• Michael

o NFA – users on website – 14 to 16 year olds.

• Jefferson

o Vote by mail has little impact on youth vote due to college students’ movements. Automatic voter registration with license + vote by mail = results for college demographic.

• Ben Adler

o Youth early voting was extremely high in (CA?)

• Jennifer Pae

o Students were camping out before early voting in Florida. Meanwhile, @ UCLA, students had to wait in line and a lot of them couldn’t even get processed in time for the election and had to vote provisionally. Time constraints for students who have class, etc.

• Courtney

• Christina

o Early voting is great, but Election Day registration is really “it.”

o Access is a huge piece to this puzzle.

• James Hannaway

o 70% of college students who vote do it through same-day registration in Minnesota.

• Alex

o Provides a great opportunity for students to get involved.

• Lanya

o There’s another idea: no sex until you vote. As soon as early voting start, you swear off sex with anybody who hasn’t voted.

• Franz Hartl

o List building is very difficult with demographic, because people are active and transitory. Demographic searches you can do

• James Hannaway

o Voter file from state party was totally useless – it was never updated. Have to use the student directory.

• Lindsay Scola

o You’re not getting the 18 to 20 year olds in the first place in the voter files. Facebook was incredibly useful, and identified where they voted. Think of people in terms of lifestyle choices.

• Mary McClelland (2)

o We recorded cell phone numbers (usually never change). Think outside the box.

• Garrett Downen

o Learning from states that have early voting or EDR – should we make a contact info from people who have EDR rules?

• Mary McClelland

o The work isn’t over, it isn’t enough. We have a huge base to build…


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