More on the Protesting Students

In a comment to my post on protesting students, my friend Todd Bucy – a political anthropology major, who in my academic opinion is making tremendous strides toward awesome, useful and relevant research – responded to my thoughts with the following:

Todd Bucy said...
I tend to agree with your musings on the high school kids but (if I may put on my anthro hat) I think that it has more to do with our cultural tendency to rebel against authority figures at that particular age. As such, this issue should be seen as an opportunity to create a strong sense of ‘communitas’ with a group that is otherwise inclined to be apathetic to these issues. We have been waiting for an opportunity for something like this. I urge everyone to withdraw your kids from school and escort them to this event. Who knows we all might learn something.

In drafting a response to his, I found that I really had too much to say to put it into a comment box, and I thought I’d make a full post out of it. I also found that I meandered toward a point I didn’t set out to make, but heck, it made for a good yarn, and brought me to a thought that I’d like to share.

Todd,
I think that you may have a good analysis, and I like your prescription.

I’m taking what you’re saying as a way for Democrats – and the Young Democrats (incidentally the purpose of this blog) specifically – to engage young voters. I see three ways of engaging the youth - by which I mean late teens and twenties (not old farts, like you and me).

The first - I think you hit the nail on the head - ‘communitas’. Make it a community value to participate in politics, through which they can voice rebelliousness, if they choose. Make them knowledgeable about politics, so that they know how to voice their dissent. Unfortunately, really creating such broader community, where there really is none now, if far too great a task for the present Democratic infrastructure to manage. (The Republicans, on the other hand do have that infrastructure - they've taken over the churches in order to do this.)

The second, we can gather energy by having a club that is REALLY fun to be a part of - and oh, we vote once in a while too - to simply associate voting with "fun" things, like drinking and partying. That may get more young people involved, but the organization, unfortunately, loses any serious credibility it might have. ("We'll vote for the guy who brings the booze!")

The third, and from my perspective the most fruitful, is to target those already engaged. Unfortunately for us, the young-uns that I see being really engaged are either Republicans, Greens or workers rights groups. The former are a lost cause for us. However, what about the Greens and workers rights groups? They have a lot of young people who are active! At the Cesar Chavez march, at 1st Fridays, at the Esperanza Center, the Greens and worker's rights groups, as well as unclassifyable activists, are crawling out of the woodwork!! When I ask them, "Why won’t you participate with the Democrats?", it really comes down to credibility. We’re the party of compromise – ie. The ones who will sell their values downriver to get moderate votes. That's troubling, and we need to look at that.

This doesn’t mean that I think we should become so stalwart that we righteously shoot ourselves in the foot in order to bring these guys and girls - greens and workers rights groups - on board. We need to remain the party of responsible government, and responsible government means that you need to chart your course through competing values. But what we need to do is engage. We need to show respect for their ideals. We need to collaborate: ie. tie them to us through activities. In the end, I think, if we positively engage them, they’ll come around to our side, and meanwhile, the fruits of the collaboration can be very worthwhile.

Authored by: Michael Wright, SAYDs Treasurer