Youth // Current

Working to Get Back on My Feet

Working to Get Back on My Feet Video , Min Lee, Nov 20, 2009 Editor's Note:... more

YouthOutlookMultimedia
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23 hours ago
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When Parents Yell

What happens to a young person's emotions when they get yelled at by parents? As some... more

YouthOutlookMultimedia
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3 days ago
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H1N1: Why I'm Willing To Get Vaccinated

H1N1: Why I'm Willing To Get Vaccinated... more

YouthOutlookMultimedia
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4 days ago
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My Community is My Downfall

One young woman tells her story of getting evicted from her home, searching for new... more

YouthOutlookMultimedia
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4 days ago
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Richmond Youth Take Health in Their Own Hands

http://youthoutlook.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=d6246678995c453f54e4e18307b49... more

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4 days ago
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Run Tellman Run

A modern day "Forrest Gump" is running from one coast of America to the other in order... more

jdamonb
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9 days ago
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The Four M's of Millennial Politics

Pundits were quick to point out that the percentage of Millennial voters (those 29 and... more

sarahkatheryn
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12 days ago
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Equal Equity Project: Upgrading Our Schools

People are helping to fix our schools. www.YouthOutlook.org

YouthOutlookMultimedia
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12 days ago
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Roots and Branches Oakland

Roots and Branches is a youth-led community-building collective. We improve exposure... more

BASTA
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13 days ago
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Latin American Youth go Green at CILA 2009!

over 1200 youth gathered from all over Latin America for the International Conference... more

achanceforpeace
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14 days ago
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3 comments

My Son Saved My Life

One young woman tells her story of getting kicked out of her house at 15-years-old,... more

YouthOutlookMultimedia
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16 days ago
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Youth for Human Rights International #2

PepsiJuror
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17 days ago
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What Yesterday Says About Young Voters

Watching election returns last night proved to be a very interesting evening. What became consistent was the impact of the lack of outreach on the youth segment of the electorate and the diminished rate of enthusiasm.

In Virginia

“Only 1,973,868 of a total 4,955,755 voters participated in the gubernatorial race — “a miniscule number when you consider there were 3.7 million voters in the 2008 election,” said Isaac Wood, assistant communications director at the University Center for Politics… He added that generally one-third of Virginia voters in presidential elections choose not to participate in gubernatorial elections, and that, as such, yesterday’s voter turnout was even lower than usual.”

One difference this year than in 2008 was young voters had a candidate at the top of the ticket who actively sought their vote. This isn’t generally the standard in other elections, despite our efforts to teach candidates otherwise. Outreach is so important, asking young people for their vote is key, and peer to peer outreach is a must. All of these things happened nation wide in 2008, in large part because the Obama campaign placed a high importance on getting out the vote for young people.

Let’s also not forget the huge outreach done by non-party groups like HeadCount, Rock the Vote, and state youth groups around the country. I did receive a “Go Vote” email from HeadCount yesterday but didn’t receive a text messages from Rock the Vote, and no facebook reminders from any groups. There just wasn’t the kind of work done this year that was done last year from national youth groups. (I did receive an email from Rock the Vote saying they did send texts out to target areas, no word on if those target areas were NJ and VA but not Maine or who they “targeted”).

This was echoed in a brilliantly articulated piece in the Washington Post

“It doesn’t seem to have been enough, and one immediate lesson from these off-off-year elections is already clear: Democrats have a lot of work to do to bring Obama loyalists to the polls, particularly the young. Early exit polls suggest that the share of the electorate represented by voters under 30 will be cut roughly in half compared to 2008. No one expects that young voters will be as excited by this year’s election (or by next year’s midterms) as they were by Obama’s own candidacy. But Democrats are more dependent on young voters than ever before – something I wrote about earlier this fall. Virginia should bring home to them the imperative of mobilizing the millennials with more than just a nice ad toward the end of a campaign.”

Read the rest here: http://www.futuremajority.com/node/9147Watching election returns last night proved to be a very interesting evening. What... more

sarahkatheryn
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17 days ago
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Richmond High Responds to Homecoming Rape

Richmond High School students, staff, and community react to the rape of a 15-year-old... more

YouthOutlookMultimedia
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22 days ago
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Young People Process Homecoming Gang Rape

The gang rape of a 15-year-old student at Richmond High School has made national... more

YouthOutlookMultimedia
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22 days ago
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Hip-Hop Chess Festival

YO!TV covered the Hip-Hop Chess Festival at John O'Connell High School in San... more

YouthOutlookMultimedia
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24 days ago
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CIRCLE Report: Peer-to-Peer Works, Registration Choice, and Absentee Ballots

The October 2009 CIRCLE report has been released about college students and voting.... more

sarahkatheryn
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26 days ago
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Nightmare of a Dream Student

Nightmare of a Dream Student New America Media Commentary, Roberto Dr. Cintli... more

YouthOutlookMultimedia
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26 days ago
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Spies, Lushes and Child Killing Snipers

Spies, Lushes and Child Killing Snipers Audio , Donny Lumpkins & YO!Radio Crew, Oct... more

YouthOutlookMultimedia
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29 days ago
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Does the White House Lack Youth Outreach

Jose Antonio Vargas has a piece on the Huffington Post asking what happened to all of the young people that turned out for Obama. He also asks where too is the mainstream media

"the same MSM that declared 2008 as "The Year of the Youth Vote" -- in covering how young people are impacted by the health care debate, which has dominated the news for months? (Studies show that a quarter of Americans ages 25 to 34 don't have health insurance, while about a third of Americans ages 21 to 24 live without it -- more than any other age group."

Vargas says this is in part due to the high unemployment among young people and that many employers don't offer health insurance.

"Where is the Team Obama that adeptly leveraged the enthusiasm of its digitally-plugged young troops, who scheduled rallies on Facebook, passed YouTube videos around their network and sent text messages reminding their friends to vote? Speaking last month at George Washington University, just a few blocks from the White House, Obama's campaign manager David Plouffe told the college crowd: "Your generation won the election. . .Obama simply wouldn't have been the nominee without you."

He goes on to quote our friend Tobin Van Ostern who created Students for Barack Obama but who is now working with Campus Progress

"But, as far as I can tell, engaging young people hasn't been a top priority for the OFA, DNC and the White House."

Sad but true. Vargas talks about who is knocking doors for OFA and who is doing the work for the DNC but the long and short is that the work done by the campaign to do outreach to young voters, on campus, online, in their communities isn't even half of what they did during the campaign.

We were lucky to have a representative from the Treasury Department speak at the 80 Million Strong Conference and had Interior Secretary Ken Salazar talk about the outreach he is doing to young people to encourage them to get more involved in our state and national parks. Beyond that there is very little outreach to young people, particularly considering that young people were such a large portion of the voters.

"The sentiment is echoed in a blog on the popular site Tech Crunch that's gone viral in the past few days. "On the night of your acceptance speech, just before you walked on stage, 'you' sent out an email saying 'I will be in touch soon' -- but you disappeared and all we were left with was the strange feeling you get when your older brother ditches you for his cooler friends," began the post, which blogger Edo Segal wrote as an open letter to Obama."

He goes on to quote many who say that Obama the candidate ran a new and different campaign based on change, but governs in the same old way politicians always have. The New Media Strategy has also seen a major change. While it was a major facets to the campaign with their director reporting directly to the campaign manager, the White House new media strategy falls under one of the many outreach tools in the communications department.

Not mentioned by Vargas is the office of public liaison whose youth outreach representative is the same as the faith based and non-profit outreach person. Can you honestly tell me that one person can handle all of the faith based outreach and non-profits and then have time to do an aggressive youth outreach strategy? Not a chance. At the same time, faith based groups are accustom to having a seat at the table in the White House, and they know very well how it works. Youth are accustom to being ignored, so they aren't as likely to stick their neck out and demand a meeting with someone from the White House.

At one point there was a monthly conference call among youth leaders and the office of public liaison, but one youth leader who asked to not be identified said it was such a colossal waste of time that he quite participating and he doesn't know if they continue.

While the process might seem trite, the result has the appearance that youth aren't a major conceJose Antonio Vargas has a piece on the Huffington Post asking what happened to all of... more

sarahkatheryn
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29 days ago
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tagged w/ Youth

Working to Get Back on My Feet

When Parents Yell

H1N1: Why I'm Willing To Get Vaccinated

My Community is My Downfall

Richmond Youth Take Health in Their Own Hands

Run Tellman Run

The Four M's of Millennial Politics

Equal Equity Project: Upgrading Our Schools

Roots and Branches Oakland

Latin American Youth go Green at CILA 2009!

My Son Saved My Life

Youth for Human Rights International #2

What Yesterday Says About Young Voters

Richmond High Responds to Homecoming Rape

Young People Process Homecoming Gang Rape

Hip-Hop Chess Festival

CIRCLE Report: Peer-to-Peer Works, Registration Choice, and Absentee Ballots

Nightmare of a Dream Student

Spies, Lushes and Child Killing Snipers

Does the White House Lack Youth Outreach

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