New Voices in Youth Political Engagement

By Grant Garrison, Rockefeller Brothers Fund

On Friday, April 16th, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund welcomed an enthusiastic crowd of nearly 50 funders, nonprofit leaders, and democratic theorists to hear presentations by five organizations that are carving out a new space in the civic engagement landscape for “alternative structures for youth political engagement.” After a brief welcome by Stephen Heintz, president of RBF, Adrienne Maree Brown of the League of Young Voters; Tracy Sturdivant of Vote, Run, Lead; Portia Pedro of the United States Students Association; Baye Wilson of the National Hip Hop Political Convention; and Jennifer Calderon of WE GOT ISSUES engaged the audience in a dialogue about this emerging field. The energy and sophistication of the presenters combined with the engagement of the audience—including a few “embedded” spoken word artists from the WE GOT ISSUES crew—to create a wonderful atmosphere of excitement. In a significant shift from previous generations, today’s young Americans are sacrificing our time and expressing our passion for a better society by volunteering at record rates. However, we are largely abstaining from exercising political power at the polls or in legislatures. We may believe—with some justification—that this preference for pursuing change one person at a time through service while forsaking the power of politics to enact systemic change makes sense and even improves upon other generations’ styles. In fact, we are limiting our civic effectiveness today and stunting our civic growth by taking refuge from politics, indulging a one-dimensional understanding of citizenship as neighborliness, and overlooking systemic solutions to social problems.

Today Someone Inspired Me by Martha Rodriguez, Hunts Point resident Today I was Inspired to become educated! To think of questions I’ve never thought had answers to them! Just a question to why the air I breathe seems so thick in stink that never it even fazed me! Today someone enlightens me to say why our children seem to be unable to catch a deep breath because the air they breathe seemed unworthy! Tired of concrete streets with no greenery to clean the air around me! Tired of mothers dying of a sickness ‘cause no one ever told me! What did you think, that little old me would never speak and ask the questions I never did seek! But you see today someone enlightened me! As I heard the voices of the beating of drums, mother earth crying loudly through the spirits of the drums, screaming child its time for you to help me! The air you breathe is not made by me! Seek the questions and you shall see the answers to help clean me. I need your voice strong and loud for no one ever seems to hear me! Be a strong community for I whisper in the air you breathe...it’s time for you to save me!

While young people have settled on this style for our own reasons and responsibility for its limitations ultimately lies solely with us, its popularity and persistence are at least partially due to its endorsement by leaders across the political spectrum and subsidization by government, business, and philanthropy. To create a modicum of funding balance and equip young people to achieve social change through both service and political engagement requires an immediate increase in support for youth political engagement.

More money alone, though, is not enough. Unconventional, bold, and creative new approaches deserve an opportunity to improve on the failure of mainstream youth political engagement programs (think Rock the Vote) to achieve lasting improvements in voting and other indicators. “Alternative structures for youth political engagement” stand a chance to succeed where mainstream approaches have failed because they acknowledge two key underlying causes of the consistent refusal of young Americans to commit equal time and passion to political processes as we do to volunteer activities.

First, young people feel a complex disaffection—both emotional and rational—from their government, which appears remote, corrupt, and inefficient. Believe us, we’ve been paying attention, and nothing seems more clear from what we’ve seen and read and heard than votes don’t matter, money buys influence, politicians lack the courage to take on tough problems, public effort is inherently inferior to private enterprise, and on and on. Pushing youth political engagement as a duty, as an end in and of itself, is no longer a relevant incentive because the impact of political engagement—including voting—appears minute within a largely broken system.

Second, young people, particularly low-income youth, inhabit an imposed, negative political identity. Structures of power lack youth representation; public investment in young people has deteriorated at an alarming rate; and young people are worse off today than a generation ago, particularly those born into low-income families. As a result, young people are asking “political engagement for what?” Our answers to this question represent, individually, the political engagement incentive to replace duty and, collectively, the outlines of a self-defined, positive political identify—what are we for? To engage young Americans today and for their lifetimes demands freeing political engagement efforts to connect participation in the system to the purposes of that participation. But, and this is important, young people must determine that purpose for themselves lest we become pawns of larger forces, parties, or ideologies.

The five alternative structures for youth political engagement presenting on the 16th are working together to start the decades of grassroots work needed to heal the breach between young people and government and move from youth political identity to political power. The League of Young Voters is training a grassroots infrastructure of young “voter organizers” who can convince peers active in a-political organizations of the merits of participation in local, state, and national elections. Vote, Run, Lead is bringing young women into the pipeline of political leadership, which has been too male for too long. The United States Student Association provides training and resources to students interested in organizing on their campuses. The National Hip-Hop Political Convention is organizing a national gathering this summer to establish a nonpartisan structure to funnel the political and cultural power of the hip-hop generation into mainstream political discourse and decision-making. WE GOT ISSUES is utilizing the performing arts to encourage a national dialogue among young women about the connection between civic participation and the most relevant issues facing young women in America today.

The focus is on participation in political processes, not issues or elections. The object is lasting increases in political participation, including voting. The vision is of a country in which young people have not just voice but power. The vehicles are organizations that embody young people’s desire to work in a non-hierarchical, collective, entrepreneurial style with diverse individuals whose input is respected regardless of position. And the spirit is one of collaboration, not competition, among organizations whose commitment to a better democracy outweighs any differences of focus or style.

These organizations are off to a great start, often with insufficient funding. Moreover, the field’s youth and its members’ inclusiveness ensure that it will continue to grow. With more available and responsive institutions, more young people will connect with interested peers, overcome feelings of isolation, inform themselves, build coalitions, aggregate the many issues that concern young people into a collective agenda, and gain strength through affiliation with a larger youth movement for social change. In short, young people at last are gaining access to institutions that can help them become full political actors—not one-dimensional volunteers—able to hold public officials and policies accountable at all levels.

For more information, visit www.rbf.org.

Sustainable South Bronx is a community organization dedicated to the implementation of sustainable environmental and economic development projects, informed by the needs of the community and the values of environmental justice. After years of being the poster child for urban decay, indigenous leaders in the South Bronx have joined together to reclaim the environment that lies hidden in our streets, and to be a voice for the people suffering from the consequences of pollution and lack of beautiful spaces. In February 2003, SSB held an event honoring Women in the EJ movement, our Sheroes. These women have used the space around them to fight unjust policies and create beauty through parks, gardens and the reborn Bronx River. This poem was inspired by that night. For more information about SSB, contact majoracarter@ssbx.org.

We got issues! is a cutting edge performance based movement, built from a national dialogue among women between the ages of 18 and 35. We are calling on thousands of young women from all over the country to submit rants and poems that speak to their personal, social and political views about the state of the nation and electoral politics. For more information, contact rhagoddesssam@aol.com.