Hard Core Young Voter Organizing Discussion

[Prank Monkey]

If you are involved in young voter organizing, or have experience in it, I invite you to check out this discussion on Future Majority. Spectators also welcome.

A conversation began on Future Majority a few weeks ago about the effectiveness of Music for America's model for reaching and activating young voters. It started here, with a segment of Alex's thesis devoted to his experience volunteering with MFA in 2004. Both MFA's executive and communications directors posted replies to Alex. It continued here, in a response Alex wrote. In the comments section, a conversation evolved between Alex, myself, and Mark Ristaino, MFA's current communications director, about the problems with MFA's organizational model and execution (disclosure - I'm MFA's founding communications director but have not officially worked at the organization for over a year and a half, though I do give advice occasionally).

This is an important conversation. MFA has a list of 70,000 young voters. They've been present at over 4,000 music events since October 2003 and registered approximately 20,000 young voters. No other organization dedicated to engaging Millenials/"Echo-Boomers" is more integrated within the fabric of youth culture and touches so many people on a nightly basis.

Yet in many ways the organization is dysfunctional. There are problems with the volunteer process, little cohesion to MFA as a movement, and for many volunteers it is a dead-end, providing no way to move further into the ranks of the progressive movement. As a result, to quote Mark "employees and young activists and partner bands start to get disillusioned with politics due to MFA."

This post is an effort to keep this conversation going. As I noted above, MFA is uniquely positioned to reach young voters in the 2008 Presidential cycle. Parts of it are broken, but I hope that it is fixable. Below the jump I've summarized the conversation thus far, and I invite readers to contribute their own ideas. We have a rare chance here to openly discuss with the current leadership of MFA ways to correct the course of the organization well in advance of 2008, when once again MFA could have a significant impact on the outcome of the election.

As Alex noted in his thesis, this is not meant to as an attack on Music for America or any of the other groups that worked extremely hard during the election, but a critical critique of the problems people face when they attempt to become more involved. If we are to regain majority status in this nation we have to look at ourselves with extremely critical eyes.

Join the conversation.