Earlier today President Obama answered questions submitted through CitizenTube via the White House Live Facebook application.

I had hoped to have the video from the question and answer session to embed here, and have been waiting for it since CitizenTube hours ago claimed that it would be available shortly, but unfortunately it is not yet posted. (I’ll add it once it is, whenever that may be).

I was pleased for the most part with the question selection, which included questions about Sudan (an area many Millennials are interested in), net neutrality, college affordability, and one from the Energy Action Coalition about clean energy and the environment.

As for the execution of the session, the video quality was a little choppy and would occasionally stop, requiring a refresh, but the chat/status posting discussion was a nice touch.

On the whole I think the session was a great move and fits in with my belief in taking your message to the places where people live and hang out (even virtually), and Facebook is certainly one of those places.

What are your thoughts about the President’s Q&A over Facebook? What would you like to see next time?

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Great news for user-generated government. New Obama CIO Vivek Kundra (one of the brightest minds when it comes to government and technology) indicated on a conference call that data.gov is about to become a reality:

In a 25-minute conference call, Mr. Kundra discussed some of his plans and interests, including his intention to extend the use of “cloud computing” in the federal government and to create a data.gov web site that will put vast amounts of government information into the public domain.

Some of you might remember when I called for this last November:

I think there should be a centralized usdata.gov that provides all of the data in a single location. The site should also highlight and share the best mash-ups and applications created from the data.

A lot of Vivek’s work up to that point was influential in my writing that post, so to see him get the appointment and get off to such a great start is a dream come true.

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Michael’s post on voter registration modernization made me think about Millennials, the Democratic Party, and the relationship between the two regarding issue advocacy and legislative priorities.

I see three distinct dynamics based on the legislative priorities of young progressives and the Democratic Party.

1) Youth asked to support Democratic legislation that is not a youth priority

This is the dynamic that has been dominant in the past for young Democrats and progressives. An example would be legislation on social security or medicare. While these issues are important, they are not a legislative priority for youth nor do they immediately impact most young voters. Young activists and youth organizations tend to jump on to the Party’s action campaign to basically just add numbers.

2) Action on shared legislative priorities

This dynamic occurs when the Democratic Party’s legislative priority is also a youth priority. An example would be higher education policy or the current stimulus package. However, I see two variations of this dynamic. In the first, young activists sign on to an existing action similar to Dynamic 1. In the second, youth activists create their own campaigns and coalitions, often for a broader agenda. An example of this would be the Energy Action Coalition and their approach to global warming and environmental issues.

3) Youth press for issue that is not a current legislative priority for the DNC

This dynamic brings me back to Michael’s post mentioned earlier. Voter registration modernization is a very high legislative priority for youth activists, but is often pushed aside for the DNC’s priorities. Advocacy campaigns for such issues have to be created on their own and must be directed at the DNC as well to try to convince them of adopting the issue/legislation as a priority.

What does this mean?

The power of the youth vote in 2008 has moved us a lot closer to getting a seat at the table and puts us in our strongest advocacy position ever. In the past we were most often relegated to jumping on board all of the DNC’s legislative priorities while our own were ignored unless they were shared.

It is also important to note that youth-led campaigns such as the Energy Action Coalition build the strength of the youth movement more than bandwagon advocacy.

The question remains whether our legislative priorities will finally see the light of day in the wake of 2008 or whether it is going to be business as usual. We need to continue to really push for our issues in order to sustain our strength and make sure that the DNC respects our priorities the same as other constituency groups.

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Cross-posted on Future Majority.

Mike’s analysis of the failure of the Youth Ball highlights an issue that is often overlooked regarding the youth movement: the disconnect with young political staffers.

To add insult to injury, many of us who have worked to engage youth for 4 years or more were scrounging to receive ANY tickets to this event, while many young Obama interns and staffers apparently received as many as ten tickets apiece. That was a huge slap in the face for dozens of people whose work laid the ground for Obama’s youth surge.

There is a big difference between those of us that consider ourselves part of the youth movement, whose goal is to increase the role of young people in elections and governance, and campaign/government staff who happen to be young.

During my time running the internet/technology program for the Arizona Democratic Party I witnessed this disconnect first-hand. Our staff was overwhelmingly composed of youth, even at the senior level, yet for the most part was not-at-all part of the youth movement. At the end of my time with the party only two of us on the staff were involved with the Young Democrats. This in itself wasn’t the most dramatic disconnect, but the fact was that most of the young staff were dismissive or even hostile towards the youth movement.

There are many young campaign and government staffers whose primary concern is to get to the “adult table” themselves, and could care less if others are relegated to the “kids table.” It seems that some of those youth that make it show the same attitudes towards the “kids” table as the traditionally dismissive party elders. Sadly some of the opponents of the youth movement are youth themselves.

Not even all people that identify with a youth organization would necessarily qualify as part of the youth movement. There have been many heated debates at the local level of youth organizations as to what the role of youth should be in campaigns and whether or not young voters should be targeted. There are members of youth organizations such as the Young Democrats that prefer to fill the traditional youth campaign role of cheap volunteer labor instead of working to engage their Millennial peers and bring them into the process as new Democrats. These internal debates led me to write my Youth Targeted Voter Mobilization report.

While we should celebrate that some Millennials are rising in the political ranks, both at the elected and staff level, we must remember that their rise is not a panacea. It is important that people rising in the ranks share our belief in the importance of the youth movement, and just because someone is young does not necessarily mean that they do.

Bridging this disconnect is one of the challenges that we in the youth movement must face. As Craig wrote yesterday, the Youth Ball failure is about more than just the Youth Ball. As long as there is a lack of respect for the youth movement by those that sit at the “adult table,” there will be a stigma on being involved in youth organizations. The Youth Ball was a manifestation of that lack of respect. These situations reinforce the attitudes of those young political staffers that we aren’t to be taken all that seriously.

One of the reasons that progress is so difficult in advocating for youth is that each incident of oversight and disrespect on its own may seem small, petty, or unimportant. However, when all of these incidents are viewed together as a narrative it reveals a systemic problem. The 2008 election showed that we have been right this entire time: young voters do swing elections, they will vote when they are asked, and they do give the Democratic Party the potential to be the dominant force in American politics for a generation. We delivered, and it’s time that we make sure that the Obama administration and the Democratic National Committee return the favor.

If the youth movement is taken for granted by the left we run the risk of losing the opportunities that dominance among young voters brings. The Republican Party just got the crap kicked out of it, which is exactly the motivation they needed to reinvent themselves and change their game plan. They are already working hard to bridge the technology gap as well as the youth gap. The Democratic Party needs to fight to hold on to the Millennial Generation, because the Republican Party is certainly going to fight to take it.

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The Obama campaign sent out an email today from David Plouffe in an effort to bring the movement for change into action:

Please take a few minutes and help shape the future of this movement.

Share your campaign experience and your thoughts on the best way to keep supporting our agenda for change.

The inauguration is just 63 days away, and as President-elect Obama and Vice President-elect Biden prepare to take office, they’ll need your support more than ever.

You’ve built an organization in your community and across the country that will continue to work for change — whether it’s by building grassroots support for legislation, backing state and local candidates, or sharing organizing techniques to effect change in your neighborhood.

Your hard work built this movement. Now it’s up to you to decide how we move forward.

Take this short survey and share your ideas:

http://my.barackobama.com/whatsnext

Thanks to you, this country has an historic opportunity. Electing Barack was the first big step, but there’s a lot of challenging and important work ahead.

Together, we can keep making history,

David

David Plouffe
Campaign Manager
Obama for America

The survey functions as a comprehensive debriefing of the Obama field operation, allowing you to rate your experience with your local field office and staff, how often you used MyBO, and what resources were most useful.

The second part of the survey asks if you are interested in continuing to volunteer to support Obama’s agenda of change, asking about the issues that matter most to you and how you are willing to help.

An interesting touch is asking if you are interested in running for elected office yourself. It will be interesting to see how they use this information. The concept of them recruiting a local candidate farm team seems like a great idea.

Finally it allows you to provide extensive feedback about your thoughts on the campaign and the steps forward and then leads you to a donation page to support the Obama agenda.

Did any of you fill out the survey? What are your thoughts about it? Share in the comments.

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