INTRODUCTION TO PEER-TO-PEER

Peer-to-peer campaigning is built on three principles:

1. The more personal a contact, the more effective it is in turning out voters.
2. People are most strongly influenced by people they know and people that are similar to them.
3. The most effective way to reach potential voters is to go to the places where they live or hang out.

Most field programs in the past were based on the assumption that young Americans were not receptive to political appeals, however research done over the last decade reveals that young voters are just as affected by political contact as other age demographics.¹ While this research tore down one assumption, it confirmed another: personal contacts are much more effective than impersonal methods. The findings of Green and Gerber showed an 8-10% mobilizing effect from door-to-door (in person) contact and a 3-5% effect from calls made by volunteers. Other less personal contact methods such as calls made from professional phone banks, leafleting, and direct mail all yielded a mobilizing effect of 2% or less at a dramatically higher cost-to-vote ratio. ²

A person is influenced the most by their family, friends, and neighbors. These social bonds increase the pressure to say yes to a request and carry the strength of trust. The eminent social psychologist Dr. Robert Cialdini of Arizona State University uses the following example in Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion:

Take, for instance, the growing number of charity organizations that recruit volunteers to canvass for donations close to their own homes. They understand perfectly how much more difficult it is for us to turn down a charity request when it comes from a friend or a neighbor.³

This principle applies not only to charity requests but to political requests as well, from registering someone to vote to turning them out on Election Day.

People are also more likely to comply with a request made by someone that is similar to them. For example, you are more likely to do something that is asked of you if the requester is dressed like you, and you probably will not realize that it had any effect on your decision. Cialdini highlights a study from the 1970s where “marchers in an antiwar demonstration were found to be not only more likely to sign the petition of a similarly dressed requester, but also to do so without bothering to read it first.” ⁴

When it comes to electoral participation, young voters “need the authentic encouragement of a peer to become a participant.” ⁵

The greatest challenge in reaching young voters for traditional field programs is finding them. Millennials move more frequently and are more likely to rely solely on a mobile phone than older generations.⁶ The key to reaching this important demographic is to go to the places where young people live and hang out. University campuses, concerts, cultural and community events, parks, sporting events, progressive churches, bars, restaurants, coffee shops, and shopping centers are all places that campaigns can engage peer-to-peer with young voters. As Michael Connery described in Youth to Power, “concert halls and bars became the progressive equivalent of how evangelical churches are used by the conservative movement.”⁷ The key is to contact and engage young voters using the context of their own lives.

PEER-TO-PEER TACTICS

The ideal location for peer-to-peer outreach will have a large concentration of young people and an environment that is conducive to socializing and communicating. A great way to find out where the best opportunities are is to ask your young supporters: nobody knows where young people hang out better than a young person. Here are some examples:

• High traffic areas of college and university campuses – Outside the entrances of the library, student union, residence halls, and large classroom buildings. It is important to not focus solely on a single location but to periodically switch locations so you reach a variety of different people.⁸ A successful tactic that many Young and College Democrats chapters have used is to help students move in to their residence halls during the first week of school and use that opportunity to talk to the students.
• Outside of sporting events – Talk to young people as they enter and exit a stadium for a sporting event. Using the principle of similarity mentioned earlier, have your organizers wear clothing representing the home team.
• Community and cultural events – For example, in Phoenix there is a First Fridays art festival on the first Friday of every month. The Young Democrats of Arizona reserve table space at the festival and have been extremely successful collecting voter registrations, petition signatures, and email list sign-ups.
• County fairs and 4-H events – In rural areas county fairs provide a great opportunity for reaching rural youth, which is one of the hardest demographics to reach. 4-H clubs are also very popular with rural youth.

Tabling is a very popular tactic among campus organizers due to it being particularly effective on college and university campuses. However, tabling can be effective anywhere that allows you to set up space in a high-traffic area as long as it is not so crowded you are completely drowned out.

The most common mistake made while tabling is for organizers to just remain seated at the table waiting for people to come to them. The main purpose of the table is for visibility and to hold campaign materials. While an organizer should always remain at the table, other organizers should only use the table as a home base and spend their time out in the crowds engaging young people.

The campaign should also prioritize the actions that they want people to take, whether it is registering to vote, signing a petition, signing up for an email list, or completing a vote pledge. Once a person has taken your priority action, this may be your foot-in-the-door for secondary and tertiary actions. Be careful not to be too aggressive with people, be polite even when someone blows you off, and always thank someone for taking an action. You want to ensure that people leave with a positive impression of the campaign.

In addition to your general campaign materials, the table should also have plenty of voter registration forms as well as any other technical forms depending on your jurisdiction (for example, in Arizona there are forms to request a ballot by mail or to sign up for the permanent early voter list). Your table should be fully equipped as a resource for any election needs, including the ability to give polling place information closer to the election.

Vote pledges are based on the power of commitment and consistency. According to Dr. Cialdini, “once we have made a choice or taken a stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment.”⁹ A vote pledge asks a voter to commit to voting in the next election.

The vote pledge was the primary tool in the Young Democrats of America organizing arsenal during the 2008 election. The YDA vote pledge was not only a pledge to vote, but a pledge to vote for Democrats throughout the ballot. The young people that signed a vote pledge committed to take that action, and they were much more likely to actually do so in order to be consistent: “Once a stand is taken, there is a natural tendency to behave in ways that are stubbornly consistent with the stand.” ¹⁰

For this commitment to truly take hold of the signer, the must take ownership of their pledge. This means that campaigns and organizations should not offer external incentives for people to sign:

Social scientists have determined that we accept inner responsibility for a behavior when we think we have chosen to perform it in the absence of strong outside pressures. A large reward is one such external pressure. It may get us to perform a certain action, but it won’t get us to accept inner responsibility for the act. Consequently, we won’t feel committed to it. ¹¹

Using incentives such as raffle tickets or free chum diminishes the sense of inner responsibility, and while it may boost your numbers in the beginning, your results on Election Day will suffer.

An effective vote pledge form must allow you to collect contact information from the signers, specifically their name, address, email, and phone number. Hard copies of vote pledge forms should also include a signature line, since the act of signing a document increases psychological commitment.¹²

Collecting the vote pledge is only the first step. With the information you have collected you can follow up with the people that signed to remind them of their pledge and give them voting information such as the location of their polling place. Following the election you can check the voter file to evaluate how successful you were in getting those people to the polls. Given the difficulty of finding good contact information for young voters due to increased mobility and exclusive use of cell phones, this data is extremely valuable.

David Plouffe’s memoir of the 2008 Obama for America campaign, The Audacity to Win, frequently returns to the importance of expanding the electorate to winning the election.¹³ To expand the electorate a campaign must register and turn out new and unlikely voters.

A campaign or organization’s emphasis on voter registration should depend on the mission and the distance to an election. There are organizations that focus almost entirely on registration, and for them it is a priority up until the registration deadline. A candidate or partisan youth organization will benefit from registration efforts early in a campaign but will be better served focusing on turning out voters as the election draws near. However, organizers should always have registration forms on hand regardless of the timing.

One tactic that has been successful with some youth organizations are Pledge to Reg programs geared towards Millennials that are about to turn 18. Similar to the vote pledge tactic, organizers get 17-year-olds to complete and sign a Pledge to Reg form with their contact information so the organizers can follow up with them once they are eligible to register to vote.

Campaigns should always make photocopies of collected registration forms so the new registrants can be later contacted with election reminders and polling information. Organizers should also be trained to be able to quickly look over a registration form to ensure that everything is complete.

In states and districts with a Republican registration advantage, registering new young voters and following up with them to get them to the polls can be the difference between a celebration on election night and a heartbreaking close call.

The most important aspect of a youth GOTV effort is to convey information to contacts about when and where to vote.¹⁴ In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell describes a study at Yale University that tested methods used to encourage students to visit the student health center and receive a tetanus vaccination. While information packets with fear-inducing information about the disease had virtually no effect, researchers were able to increase the vaccination rate by 28% solely by “including a map of the campus, with the university health building circled and the times that shots were available clearly listed.” The interesting aspect of the study was that the students that responded to the map already knew where the building was. According to Gladwell:

The students needed to know how to fit the tetanus stuff into their lives; the addition of the map and the times when the shots were available shifted the booklet from an abstract lesson in medical risk – a lesson no different from the countless other academic lessons they had received over their academic career – to a practical and personal piece of medical advice. And once the advice became practical and personal, it became memorable.¹⁶

This same principle applies to getting young voters to the polls on Election Day. Your campaign needs to give young voters the information that puts voting in the context of their lives. A GOTV effort on a college campus that has an on-campus polling location could include a handout of a campus map with the polling location circled with the times that the location is open. You can email young voters that were registered or contacted earlier in the campaign a Google Map with the directions from their registration address to their polling site. At a minimum your campaign should be telling voters when and where to vote.

Successful cultural outreach does not happen overnight. In the past the ‘cultural outreach’ efforts of campaigns and organizations were just “campaign rallies and civic drives in cultural drag, exploiting the culture to attain a specific goal.”¹⁷ Using Malcolm Gladwell’s definitions from The Tipping Point, Michael Connery argues that “a real cultural outreach strategy finds the mavens, connectors, and salespeople within each subculture and uses them to change the entire culture itself from the bottom up.”¹⁸

Biko Baker of the League Young Voters Education Fund highlights some of the errors organizations make in organizing non-college youth. First, campaigns have to earn the trust of young people in low-income communities: “you can’t just pop up in a neighborhood and get respect. You have to earn it.”¹⁹ Second, the focus must be more on organizing and less on just promoting your campaign or organization: “Low income communities only respond when they see a real commitment to organizing and local leadership development.”²⁰ Cultural outreach is a powerful tool in organizing non-college youth, but to be successful you need to earn the respect of a community’s influencers and develop them into organizers.

Cultural outreach requires active and continuous engagement in order to be effective. Because of this, many campaigns and organizations ignore cultural outreach and instead focus solely on college students – the low-hanging fruit of youth organizing. By neglecting non-college and low-income youth, campaigns waste important opportunities to expand the electorate with new progressive voters and empower these communities.

Notes

¹ See Friedrichs, Ryan. Mobilizing 18-35 Year Old Voters: An Analysis of the Michigan Democratic Party’s 2002 Youth Coordinated Campaign, 2003.; Green, Donald P. and Gerber, Alan S. Getting Out the Youth Vote: Results from Randomized Field Experiments, 2001.; and Nickerson, David W. Hunting the Elusive Young Voter, Journal of Political Marketing, Vol. 5 (3) 2006.
² Analysis of Green and Gerber’s findings in Friedrichs 2003.
³ Cialdini, Robert B. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. New York: Quill, 1993. (169)
⁴ Cialdini (173)
⁵ Nickerson (26)
⁶ Pew Millennials Report (32)
⁷ Connery, Michael. Youth to Power: How Today’s Young Voters Are Building Tomorrow’s Progressive Majority. Brooklyn: Ig Publishing, 2008. (158)
⁸ Student PIRGs Activist Toolkit (6)
⁹ Cialdini (57)
¹⁰ Cialdini (67)
¹¹ Cialdini (93)
¹² Werner, Carol M., Jane Turner, Kristen Shipman, F. Shawn Twitchell, Becky R. Dickson, Gary V. Bruschke and Wolfgang B. von Bismarck. Commitment, behavior, and attitude change: An analysis of voluntary recycling. Journal of Environmental Psychology, Volume 15, Issue 3, September 1995. Pages 197-208.
¹³ Plouffe, David. The Audacity to Win. New York: Viking, 2009.
¹⁴ Gerber and Green 2001 (4)
¹⁵ Gladwell, Malcolm. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. New York: Back Bay Books, 2002. (97)
¹⁶ Gladwell (98)
¹⁷ Connery (156)
¹⁸ Connery (157)
¹⁹ Baker, Biko. Doing REAL work with Non-College Youth. FutureMajority.com. March 4, 2010.
²⁰ Baker, 2010.

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Gallup’s new presidential approval report, Obama Approval Continues to Show Party, Age, Race Gaps, indicates that young and minority voters are the strongest supporters of the President.

The poll shows why the Vote 2010 strategy for OFA/DNC that President Obama spoke about last month makes sense. Younger and minority voters are the most supportive, are traditionally underrepresented at the polls, and require outreach to boost turnout.

Moving away from the old white high efficacy voter turnout model is going to require hard work, which is why campaigns have be so hesitant to do so in the past. If there is one positive externality of today’s divisive political climate, it’s that it may actual lead to real youth and minority outreach efforts in traditional campaigns.

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If there is a single universal truth, it is that young people love everything that is EXTREME!!! Especially when it is so extreme the first E can’t keep up, resulting in XTREME!!!

This past weekend conservatives swarmed the District for CPAC, their annual orgiastic encomium of Ronald Reagan, shooting things, racially-tinged humor, and bow ties. After losing the youth vote 2-1 in 2008, Republicans have called in the big guns for youth recruitment: Stephen Baldwin.

Stephen Baldwin and Kevin McCullough created XPAC for this year’s conference, which stands for “Xtreme Politically Active Conservatives.” The XPAC Lounge (AKA Kiddie Table) featured Xbox 360s and Wiis (kids love that crap) with Rock Band, Dance Dance Revolution, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

The best part is that co-host Kevin McCullough is the same guy that freaked out about a “sex scene” in the video game Mass Effect in 2008. Sadly the originally article he wrote does not seem to be available any longer since he was called out for being a complete idiot. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, if you would remember, is the game that Fox News lost their minds over saying it would turn kids into terrorists and killers. Of course now Fox News says it is “turning up the hip quotient.”

Below is some video that spends some time in the XPAC lounge:

Reports from the ground indicated that XPAC wasn’t all that Xtreme:

On the other hand, the party wasn’t always hopping. The schedule read: “11 p.m. XPAC Rap/Jam Session, live music and special performances by Rappers: Hi-Caliber, Young Cons and many more!” Alas, the reality — as a group of young Harvard conservatives found — was an empty room with a bunch of Wii video games (XPAC was strictly non-alcoholic). As the gray-haired contingent ate a “presidential banquet” upstairs at the Marriot Wardman, where the conference was being held, listening to George Will explore the future of the movement, the cool kids had already moved on to Adams Morgan and beyond.

Time magazine did a profile on the youth presence at the convention:

There was a “Smoke Out the Terrorists” hookah party at Queen’s Café in Adams Morgan where 18-year-olds coughed their way through apple tobacco and lamented Washington’s 5-cent tax on plastic bags. Down the street, things got rowdier at The District, where the DC chapter of the College Republicans hosted a welcome party. “Liberty is contagious,” said one underage drinker — you could tell by the giant X’s drawn on their hands — between shots of Southern Comfort.

Here is a lesson for both political parties: stop trying to be “hip,” “Xtreme,” or “off the hook.” It’s just embarrassing. If you want to win the youth vote, do youth outreach and voter contact. Invite young people to your actual events, not to the Xbox set up outside. The vote of an 18-year-old counts the same as someone who is 65. Maybe you should try showing them the same respect.

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During the 2008 campaign conservatives were portraying young voters as automatons with a cult-like devotion to Barack Obama. There was an assumption that young Americans would unquestioningly answer the beck and call of Obama and Democratic leadership regardless of what we were being asked to support. 2009 and the first month of 2010 have proved that assumption false.

Millennials are more progressive than previous generations. We also must live with the consequences of legislation and policies, or the lack thereof, much longer than the elected officials creating and enacting those policies. Unfortunately the Democratic Party has been myopic in its legislative vision, concerned more about the potential effects on upcoming elections than the effects of their actions over the coming decades.

Myopic policies do not inspire young Americans to devote their energy and effort to their passage. The re-election of a few septuagenarians in November does not outweigh our desire for real fundamental change that will make lives better for years to come. By most definitions Millennials are not even old enough to have a representative of our generation in the Senate, and there is only one member of the House under 30, and he is a Republican. Millennials must rely on members of older generations to create the legislation we need.

If Democrats want young Americans to fight for their policies, they need to propose policies that Millennials believe are worth fighting for. Extending the careers of older politicians is not motivation enough, nor is a vast Democratic majority if the Party isn’t willing to use it. Until we are asked to support legislation that is powerful and far-reaching, our response is going to be lackluster. However, if and when we do see such legislation, I have a feeling that this generation will be on the front lines for it.

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Prior to Tuesday’s election Craig Berger and I each wrote harbinger posts. Craig’s piece, Prepping for the ‘Youth Disengagement’ Meme, highlighted the need for candidates to respect young voters as any other voting demographic, and that they need to be asked for the votes and support. My article, What Happened to Investing in Young Progressive Voters?, covered the dramatic drop-off of funding to progressive youth organizing following the 2008 election and the need to invest in youth infrastructure in order to continue the momentum from 2004-2008.

Following the election, Sarah Burris wrote What Yesterday Says About Young Voters, a lengthy analysis about the lack of youth outreach and the need to incorporate youth in both campaign and activism strategy.

Later that day I wrote about the success of young candidates throughout the country on election day and the Democratic Party takes the youth vote for granted at their own peril.

The Weekly Standard began to claim that the GOP’s youth vote win in Virginia was a sign that they are reclaiming the youth vote. Sarah Burris rebutted, and Aaron Marks of NextGenGOP agreed with her.

Jessy Tolkan, Executive Director of the Energy Action Coalition, wrote an excellent piece entitled Deconstructing the Myth of Disengaged Young Voters for the Huffington Post.

In summation the lesson learned from the 2009 election is that Democrats need to take young voter outreach very seriously, make a real commitment to building and funding youth organizing infrastructure, or risk losing all of the gains made from 2004-2008 that laid the groundwork for a dominant progressive Millennial generation that would pay dividends for a lifetime.

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Despite the chatter from the punditry, yesterday was a big day for Millennials. While they focus on two races with candidates that ignored the youth vote and wonder why turnout did not match 2008′s all time high, a number of young people won local elections throughout the country.

In New York, Young Democrats of America Democratic National Committeewoman Stephanie Hausner was the highest vote getter in her election to the Clarkstown Town Council. Former NYSYD National Committeeman David Carlucci won re-election as Clarkstown Town Clerk. Two former New York Young Democrats local chapter leaders, Dan French and David Fried, won local elections as well.

In New Hampshire, state Young Democrats President Garth Corriveau was elected Alderman in Manchester as was fellow NHYD Patrick Arnold.

In Washington, Kim Cole was elected to the Lynnwood City Council, Andy Ryder to the Lacey City Council, Amy Ockerlander to the Duvall City Council.

Over Twitter I’ve been told of a recent high school graduate that was elected to a school board in Michigan, as well as a number of other Millennial candidates that were giving victory speeches last night.

In towns and cities across the country young voters showed up to the polls to elect their own. These young local candidates realized the power of their generation, chose to run for office, and by reaching out to fellow young voters won their elections.

Yesterday’s lesson was not that young voters only showed up to the polls in 2008 to elect Barack Obama, but that Democrats must continue the youth outreach and funding that occurred during the 2008 cycle. The Millennial generation does not exist to serve at the beck and call of the DNC without being respected. When a candidate speaks to the issues of young voters and actively campaigns for their votes, they will deliver. The new generation of candidates understands this, and most of those candidates have a title with -elect after it today. Creigh Deeds and Jon Corzine didn’t, and in return were relegated to giving concession speeches.

The lesson for Democrats in 2010 is this: take the youth vote for granted at your own peril. If you want young voters to deliver for you, you have to be serious about earning their votes.

Also check out Sarah’s take on what yesterday meant.

UPDATE: It is important to note that the 2008 youth turnout was the result of funding and youth turnout effort from 2004 through 2008, and not an isolated 2008 effort.

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Yesterday Craig wrote about the “Youth Disengagement Meme” and closed with the following paragraph:

Unfortunately, given the lack of funding for many progressive youth organizations, the communications efforts aren’t there. By no means am I an expert in progressive youth infrastructure, but I do want to raise awareness of this. Because I have a feeling that the Corzine campaign’s inability to engage youth on a peer-to-peer level is going to have some rough consequences, I believe we’re going to be facing the “youth are disengaged” meme that will affect our preparations for 2010 and 2012. What are we going to do?

Last week Sarah wrote about the lack of youth outreach from the Democratic establishment. In that piece, she quotes Morley Winograd:

“There’s been a missed opportunity here in showcasing the kind of youthful, optimistic, hopeful energy that greatly Obama benefited from during the campaign,” said Morley Winograd. . .”But of course it does not at all mean that the opportunity has gone away.”

Between 2004 and 2008 progressive youth organizations were building a strategy and infrastructure to turn out young voters and engage them in issue advocacy outside of elections. Major progressive donors seemed to realize the latent power of the youth vote and the need to catch up with the conservative funding machine that supports conservative youth.

Money came in to progressive youth organizations and they continued building on their earlier successes. In 2008 the work paid off resulting in the election of President Barack Obama and large Democratic majorities in the House and the Senate. Unfortunately, it seems that donors now feel like the mission was accomplished and the funding dried up.

There are some who argue that this is because of the financial crisis, but that is only a small part of it. There is still a lot of money being raised by candidates and PACs. It is that the donors aren’t choosing to invest in the long-term as they had been for the previous four years.

Progressives can’t take the support of young voters for granted, nor should they miss out on activating this powerful demographic when it comes to fighting for legislation or local races. As Winograd said, we are missing opportunities, and we will continue to do so until progressive donors recommit to building a long-term bloc of progressive voters.

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The New Organizing Institute is holding a free youth organizing webinar tomorrow from 3-4 PM Eastern Time. Here is the description:

Young people aren’t just a demographic anymore – they create and sustain movements.

With youth vote gaining in momentum, it’s critical that your organization learns how to organize young people effectively, whether it be to turn them out to the polls or to rally behind your issue campaign and your organization. Over 12,000 people came to PowerShift09 in DC this year – where are you going to find your 12k strong to lobby Congress or mobilize your issue? Ian Magruder, President of the California College Democrats and a member of the NOI Trainers Bureau, and James Hannaway, a youth organizer for the Obama campaign in Michigan and an NOI Fellow, are teaming up to give you the rundown of the best practices of youth organizing.

Sign up for the webinar here.

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Yesterday I sent out a tweet asking my followers to send topics that they wanted to see me write about here on Future Majority. Karlo’s suggestions received a couple of retweets in support, so I will cover the first one today and the second later this week. Thanks to everyone who participated and keep checking FM to see if your idea gets covered.

Today’s topic is local elections in or near municipalities with a high concentration of youth, especially universities.This is an area where I have had some experience. In 2005 I filed an exploratory committee for Tempe City Council after I was drafted to run through Facebook. I ended up withdrawing from the race because a friend of mine who was a much better candidate and also a Young Democrat entered. He now sits on the Tempe City Council.

University towns are great places for young candidates to run for local office. There is a lot of latent electoral power that can be engaged by a candidate to change the game of a local election.

District vs. At-Large Representation

City and town councils tend to elect their council members in one of two ways: district representation or at-large. In municipalities with at-large representation, young voters have the power to exert their influence to change the way the entire governing body addresses their issues. In district elections, the maps are often drawn to have the university confined to a single district, giving the youth community a single seat on the council. The other representatives tend to represent the older constituents and the youth district representative often ends up as a lone dissenting vote. In at-large elections, high youth turnout can change the entire composition of the council, so all of the representatives will have to take youth positions into account if they want to keep their seats.

Research

It is important to do research about the youth in the district or municipality. This ranges from the standard voter-file number-crunching (youth density in precincts, etc.) to finding out what the most popular hang-outs are for youth in the area. It is also very useful to have a copy of the school’s academic and activity calendars.

Peer-to-Peer

The most effective method of engaging young voters is outreach from their own peers. Candidates should work with a school’s College and/or Young Democrats chapters to run a peer-to-peer program on campus. Young candidates should be making stops to the places where students tend to live or hang out and get the support of those voters. Many of these young voters have never been talked to by a candidate, nor has anyone ever asked for their vote.

Online Outreach

Right now the most popular social networking tool among college students is Facebook. Luckily with advanced searching it is fairly easy to find young voters on the site that are at the college/university and would be likely to vote if asked.

The candidate or a young supporter can send a Facebook message to each of the people in the search results explaining why they are being contacted and providing information about the candidate/campaign, especially the link to the Facebook group.

It is also helpful to create Facebook events for campaign activities as well as publishing content that can easily shared by your supporters in their profiles. The News Feed has turned Facebook into a place where buzz is visible and users can sense if a campaign has online momentum.

Conclusions

The main thrust of this post is that there is a great opportunity for candidates to win their elections with the power of young voters in high youth-density areas. In order to take advantage of that opportunity candidates and campaigns must engage in peer-to-peer outreach to young voters in the places where they live an hang out.

What are your thoughts on municipal campaigns in youth-dense areas? Share in the comments.

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Erica Williams of Campus Progress does the entire youth movement proud at the State of the Black Union.

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