you hit on a huge issue that is not being adequately addressed here in washington. host: that is it for time. we thank you for taking our viewers' questions. >> tomorrow on "washington journal, taylor marsh, founder of the taylor marsh law and tim kearney discussed the news of the week, including health care debate, the economy, and the war in afghanistan. the former afghan finance minister offers his perspective on the afghan elections as well as the future of american troops in the country. . . talks about congressional legislation to address climate change. >> we need to make sure that all the options are on the table out there. what are we doing to make sure we're meaningfully reducing our emissions? it seems like we've gotten to this point where you're either for waxman or against backman. that's not a fair comparison. you can be for a good, strong economy and also for working toward reduce r -- reducing our emissions. it doesn't have to be an either-or proposition. >> you can see the entire interview sunday at 10:00 a.m. and 6:00 378 sunday. this week on prime minister's questions, sunday at 9:00 p.m. eastern an c-span. now a discussion about civic participation by young people. part of a two-day conference. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] >> thank you, everybody for coming. i'm heather mcgee, the director of demos' brand-new washington office. we were founded in 2000 and head quartered in new york but felt like, i don't know, something had changed in washington and it was time for us to be here and really maximize our impact on the federal policy debates here in washington and i think not a moment too soon. as we've been discussing throughout this conference perhaps the greatest story of our generation is the unique economic challenges we face and they've been brought on simply by the dominance of conservative ideology throughout our lifetime. as we enter adulthood, mill enyals are confronting higher unemployment, lower wages and having been raised during what is aptly called america's second gilded age, ind income inequality has recently reached record levels with the share of the income held by the top 1% doubling over the course of my lifetime to 18%. each of these conditions i've spoken about is directly traceable to ascendant quoif public policies in the reagan and post reagan eras. dive evidentent, trade po policies that favor multinational corporation over the regular working people and refusal to enact universal health coverage year after year as well as tax policies that detective -- shift the burden of the nation's taxes from wealth to work. this tidal wave of bad economic policy has left our generation grasping for a better deal and i'm not just saying that because that's the name of our conference. we really are. as a generation we want progressive interventions in the economy that will level the playing field and lift all boats and choose your metaphor. we are ready for it, are we not? a record 84% of us agree that the gap between the rich and the poor has grown in the last 20 years and 94% of us disapprove. on that progressive goal, universal health care, more mill inials support it than any age group ever surveyed. 8% of mill enyals want more government spending on health care even if it means a dreaded tax increase and 95% of us say the same about education. 61% of millennials want more government services in general, a higher nuck in that age group than any surveyed in history. and mill enyals are actually more progressive than our parents and grandparents were in their youth as well. but it takes more than public opinion to create public policies. it takes something a lot messier and that's politics and getting young people registered and educating them and turning them out to vote and keeping them engaged on the back ond farther beltway nonsense so they can keep their public officials accountable, then doing it all over again every two two -- two to four years and it's frankly very hard work. but it's what today's panelists have devoted their lives to. heather smith of rock the vote and the others are two of -- three of the leaders of youth politics and we are so honored to have them here today. we're going to start in a free-wheeling conversation. i want to start with the first question to heather. you are the executive director of rock the vote, which is in a way the oldest brand in youth politics and my first question is fory. can you explain what our generation did in the historic election of 208 -- 2008 and what role rock the vote played in? sure. first? -- first, it's great to be here and be speaking with so many -- so many of you and heather you did amazing work with all the staff of demos. 2008 was certainly a year for the record books in young people and turnout in the elections. it wasn't a blip in the radar scene, though, and that's important to remember. for three major election cycles in a row turnout among young people increased by record margins. in the 2004 election, turnout went up compared to the last presidential election at a rate greater than any other in the increase of our country. and in 2008 more young people cast a ball it than in any other election in the previous history of the united states president that's a lot of people. and contrary to the conventional wisdom there are actually more voters under the age of 30 who voted than over the age of 65. i mean i love my grandma but she gets a lot of credit in this political world and the turnout increase and the amazing engagement of young people in the electoral process didn't happen by accident. it was a rull of course a lot of hard work on the ground, actually going out and reg stirring millions and millions of young people actually educating them about the political process and turning them out to vote and the result of a candidate who spent time and money and resources and spoke to young people in a way that was meaningful. that combination of education happening on a peer to peer level and political campaign that was actually relevant to our lives, they were speak about the issues in a way that made sense to us, created a record number of people who went to the polls. there is a lot of work to be done. there is no civic education today in our high schools. that was cut 30 years. but there's a movement happen,momentum and it really does feel like this be is the millennial generation's turn to take politics back and shape how this country runs. >> and maria teresa, you are probably with the newest brand, the latino vote. another story of our generation is the incredible diversity brought on by the meteoric rise of the latino population. years ago you had to do something entirely from scratch. there weren't that many lat -- national organizations devoted to young latinos and organizing them and i getting them to vote. you took a unique approach. could you tell us a little bit about that? >> thank you. first i -- of all, thank you to democrat os -- demos and the work that you do. >> thank you. >> very briefly just to couch it a little bit so folks understand why it's so critical to start focusing on the hispanic commupt -- community at this time, 50,000 latinos turn 18 each month. for every person that dies in the u.s. we have eight latino babies born in the country. so when we start talking about the issues facing america we immediate -- need to have a very healthy latino popation because it's no longer an influx of immigration but of the babies of those immigrants. we want them healthy, happy, strong, and highly educated because i want to enjoy my social security day, right, and we all know how social security works the we did a very flashy campaign, focusing on the celebs and talk about the latino vote. it was difficult twofold. when i started looking at the latino vote, no one was really targeting them or looking at the size of their numbers but also no one was looking at figuring out how to get this into the political process even though it was something they were already being molded to. these young people are the ones already translating cultural norms for their families. so why not better, i always say corporate america already figured out how to basically ensure that the latino community was emptying their pockets so why not look at corporate america to see what they were doing well and apply it to kive -- civic participation. we started looking at technology, using text messaging and my space and with a greant that was very generous from heather smith at voten strategy, we started looking at who were the best to represent this and it wasn't the celebrities but the local radio d.j.'s. now we're hoping to have 75 by the end of the year. what they did is literally repeated the message to a group that haven't heard of -- a political message before and tailored it to them in their language. and by their language i don't mean spanish but highly aculturated english. we worked in five bat ol ground states. we uses the radio dee jase, partnering with local organizations and worked with different celebrities. the celebrities that we used, it wasn't so much to get the kids excited but all of a sudden to shed light on the importance of this growing demographic for our community. and with that, in the five areas where we worked on we saw higher participation in the lat thino voter base above the national average. in colorado we actually saw a 9% increase. the reason it's important, and like healtder, this is not a blip. this something you actually saw from 2004 and 2006 and it increased, it because they're the ones who are going to be the cultural translaters into their families. because more than likely if you get a young latino to vote more than likely you're going to get their parents too. in my household, i literally get the -- on the phone with my mom and grandma and others and go down the ballot and that's 25 votes. that's where we're going to maximize our youth. >> and hip-hop caucus is also sort of a new kid on the block and daryl perkins has -- we talked on the phone and he was telling me some stories about what he does to make politics cool before broke -- barack obama made politics cool. can you tell me a little bit about that? >> sure. first, thank you, heather and demos for this wonderful gathering. just looking out at this audience the diversity here is amazing. it's great to see and i think it really speaks to our generation and how we come together to -- around issues that affect us all. whether you're white, black, brown, yellow, it doesn't matter, we're dealing with issues that affect all of us and i think going into what we're doing with the hip-hop caucuses, how they're really engaging us all, engaging the most disconnected,, in our past camplee we worked to make sure we engaged the most december ingauged and marginalized and connected them to our political movement. what we did with the past campaign, rement my vote, as vote lit -- latino and rock the vote, we had a three-pronged approach that we did, over the air, over the internet rmed and then on the ground and really for us we have to all go to where our constituents are and to where the people are who we're trying to engage, go to their they are. how he -- we go about looking to engage them in ways that are revel and and getting information to them in ways where we can see the relevance of that, we used celebrity as a piece, as a voice. so we worked clea close -- very closely with t.i. and keisha cole and a number of other artists and we were right there with them on their towers -- tours so we were able to go to where people were, going to clubs, going to concerts, reaching people where they are and one of our biggest focuses was people that have been convicted of felonies. there was so much -- we got so much response from them because it was just a sense of i don't know if i can vote. i don't know my role. can i vote? can i register? an -- am i registered? we were going to them to answer the questions and reaching them. working with radio. radio is a huge piece because that's one thing. if you're listening to the radio, going home, to school, you're listening to radio so that's a uge -- pugehees -- huge piece and then going, connecting with young people on the ground where they are so we can continue to connect with them beyond that and continuing to engage them beyond that and then also as another piece as was briefly touched on, we're not getting that basic civic education and it's so difficult to be engaged in our democracy ifier -- we're not understanding how it worked, that we have such a, so many people that are not, we don't get how our democracy works and we have to really teach that because then you see the power that we have in our democracy, as a democracy is supposed to work, when the power is supposed to be in the people. it's teaching how the power is within us, just how to bring it out. >> absolutely. >> so between these three organizations millions of young people were reg serd to vote. we did it. we turned out. voted, we got involved and the question is now what? i want to ask heather, you definitely are a veteran of the youth politics movement. we did it. we finally showed up in record numbers, swung elections all over the states, and so do we get credit? are we now seen in washington here as a legitimate powerful constituency by the pundits and officials in washington? are we going toe to toe with the a.a.r.p.? what's going on? >> that's funny. i met with the a.a.r.p. the other day and said what if rock the vote were like a.a.r.p. for young people? some day when we have 1 $100 plus million dollars. power in d.c. is about voters and also about money and we don't have the same money that a.a.r.p. and the labor unions have and that is ok but it still means that we need to, you know, flex our political muscles in ways that are creative and unique to our own generation. i don't think that just because we turned out in record numbers means that conventional wisdom suddenly is flipped on its head and now everyone is catering to the youth. i actually think it's really dangerous to believe that because we have a lot of work to do and policies right now are being made that will have an incredible i am impact on our -- impact on our lives as the lives of plouns in our country. you look at the health care debate and they went right back to the same old messages. the story on the health care debate is we're young people. they voted but obama mania is over. where are the young people? well, the young people are trying to make ends meet, going to school, working three jobs, they're going to jobs with $27,000 worth of delta and no one has taught them how to engage in the governing process just the same as the election process. so we have a lot of work to do, same way we had to explain as you were talking were talking about earlier, the political process. here's how that works, here's what these policies mean for you and here's how you can get involved. unfortunately we're all doing this in times when politics as usual and the sausage making process has turned kind of nasty. they're biting people's fingers off. it doesn't really entice you to show up and participate. the role that rock the vote has taken off and over two dozen organizations that have joined us in the health care battle say here's what you can do, here's the process, and we moved our offices to be up there on the hill to say don't you dare forget about us because we might not have millions to give to your re-election campaigns but we did vote and we will do it again. and then i just style -- smile and walk away. you know, we're doing a lot of work but we still have a lot of work to do and that's important to remember. you know, one election in the ives the political pundits didn't suddenly make a generation full of political power. >> yeah. good question also from maria teresa, who's been really challenging that paradigm of the sort of, the flash in the pan youth vote and working really hard to try to keep young people engaged between elections. what have you learned and do you think we need to be doing better? >> i think one of the things, heather mentioned it, we need to communicate and to communicate not just within our circles and those folks that are already active but we have to communicate with folks that are not necessarily active. when we start talking about young people and participatization -- participation, the volt itself is increasingly on economic lines. you had folks who were incredibly active on college campuses and then you move next door and they weren't. this generation is the most diverse generationing in our history and what that means is that not everybody's going to college, unfortunately. in the latino community unfortunately you have a 51% dropout rate by high school. conversely, they're the highest seeking employment in their community as well, in that age group. mostly when you hear a latino community is making an nble -- income of $35,000 for a family of four, that usually means the mom, dad, and the older kids are working. so we're in unemployment also the group that's getting hit the hardet. when folks are talking about unemployment rates they're touting 9.5%, 9.7% across the country. folks under age 24 are experiencing a 16% unemployment rate. when you're talking about not being able to make ends meet, as heather was saying, this is something that's very real. when our parents and grandparents are saying i don't want a public option, we're saying dad, mom, you don't want me to be covered then. it reminds me of the great switch. did you see that? mom, dad, if you don't vote for obama you're not going to see me next christmas. it's not that far off. when you -- we have to have those conversations with them, that when you say you don't want health insurance, you're talking about me and your future grandchildren. it's trying to find out how we can cultivate ourselves into action, into movement. that's what we saw in the last election. by concern is the mid term elections are coming up and a lot of folks are saying young people aren't going to go out and vote because they're too busy, they're disillusions, because they don't have health care and have high unemployment, they don't think the system works. that's where we have to work increasingly with partners because we can't work insilence anymore. if it is working with the a.a.r.p. or other large organizations we have to do that. the because the odds are against us not to be, apom -- apocalyptic or anything but -- >> we're good at this -- at that at this conference, believe mement >> but if we don't take charge and have that conversation it's looking tough. >> well, i know that one of the things that can always motivate people, young, old, whatever race, when the washington nonsense gets a little bit dispiriting is sort of getting back to local activism. no matter how much back and forth there may be about health care if you can actually do something in your community and take that everything in that you had in the election which was knocking on doors and talking to your neighbors and keep that going on something that's a little bit more local, there can be a real promise for keeping that momentum going and i think, darryl, i wanted everyone to hear a little bit more about what doing alt hip-hop caucus about green the block. >> the campaign we're work on currently at hip-hop caucus as well as respect my vote is green my block, a new campaign we're working with green for all based out of oakland and it's about how we're looking at poverty and pollution at the -- at the same time and making sure our communities are engaged in this conversation, in this climate, this clean energy climate that's coming forth but also -- let me take a step back. we are now dealing with, i think everybody sees it now that it's not sustainable, we cannot continue down the path of fossil fuels moving into the future because literally our kids' kids will not have an earth to live on so we have to have a shift. we're looking alt how do we look at these two things, poverty and pollution and work at both at the same time and make sure that our communities are aware of this shift that's going on and of this clean energy economy as well as the opportunities that are coming forth with it. we -- there's a problem that has to be solved and we have to be there and make sure owe communities are engaged in this conversation, are aware of these opportunities, of these green jobs and are there for them. so when we go to people and they're talking about climate, there are so many other issues that are going on in their lives and it's not always easy for them to make the, for our constituents, they don't automatically often see the connection but once we say it it's like oh, that makes perfect sense and i unts -- understand it and it's something that the energy and pollution and poverty, it's something that hits our pocketbooks as well as it's hitting our environment. so making sure that we are in a position to get these clean energy jobs that are coming forth, so with the green our block campaign we're making sure we're can connecting our communities with the jobs and making sure to do energy and education, awareness about this and really getting our, all of our constituents really focusing from high school into outer school the full gamut of jobs that are available and some that will become available so we see that from installing a solar panel to working on the cap and trade bill, these are jobs that are going to be coming forth as high school students now go to college -- college or even if they don't go to college, even just green collar labor jobs that are available, that there are a full gamut of jobs that talk to our pocket books and our economy and our financial situation and making sure we're making that connection so we can see and look in that direction as we move forward and there are jobs now in these sectors so let's look at them and how can we become the forefront of this clean energy economy that's coming forward when we want it or not. it's coming forward to we have -- so we have to be on top of that and head of that so we don't miss out on that opportunity and conversation that's available in front of us. >> darryl, you mentioned starting early, in high school. and that's a really great point. our generation has some of the highest college-going rates in the country but we don't necessarily always drop out -- i'm sorry, we don't necessarily always finish. one out of five of college students who take on debt actually drop out, so they have a dim -- diploma -- or they have delta but no diploma. a lot of organizations that are dealing with youth, also partly -- particularly with what maria teresa said about this huge gap during the election of voting by college students, young people who had some toling -- college or had college degrees versus young people who did not, so heather, you've been reaching into high schools for the first time with rock the vote recently, isn't that right? >> yeah, we have. you know, we learned that once you register someone to vote, they vote. [laughter] like oh. 84% of the people that we registered to vote last year cast a ballot. that's amazing. we had 23,000 partners online that we worked with last year and combined we registered over 2.5 million people. so 84% of them turned out to the polls. the problem was they didn't know where to go to register. they didn't understand the political process. so when we went out and asked them and said this is, you know, how you do it, it's really easy, let me walk you through it, they filled out the form and went and cast the ballot. we had 22,000 phone calls in our offices on election day about people asking where to do -- go. approximate they registered at home and showed up at their polling place at school because i don't know, they registered to vote and then went to the polling station but it was the wrong one and they didn't get it. i don't think it's because young people are stupid as the media might like to stay -- say or because they didn't read the instructions, it's because no one gave them the instructions. no one said this is how you do it, this is how democracy works in our country and this is how you participate -- participate the we looked at the fact that a lot of people in college get the opportunity to learn this but those people who weren't going on to school, who aren't graduating high school even are less likely to be turning out and this fall we're going into 25 classrooms to teach civics our way. this is what it means. this is the history of voter registration because in fact voter registration was put in place to keep people away from voting. that was the point of it and they're doing a pretty good job at it. we're going in to break down that barrier and teach them this is what it means and we're going to help you get over that barrier and tell you how to do it and really start shaping the mindset of a generation about how to be involved in the political process. >> heather, who is doing that train tg? >> last year we had 1,600 street teams around the country who registered voters and when the election is over they need something to do to stay involved so we're going to have them go into the classrooms in those same communities and teach young people in the high schools about the political process and we'll test that this year and roll it out next year around the country, make it available to anyone who quants to use it and hopefully get more young people engaged and ultimately voting in our country. >> that's great. that sort of peer to peer model is one that every youth organization shares and sees the real power in. and it has to do with the fact that young people trust one another. you know, we don't quite have a mob mentality but we do have a little bit of a recognition that what the people we share our values with and our space and our communities with are going to be the most trusted people on politics as far away as it may seem, as far away as climate change may seem. fp you've got someone from your neighborhood knocking on your door asking you to join them in green the plorks -- block, it's really powerful. this leads me to ask, what can the people in this room do? the people in this room are some of the nation's most exciting young -- young activists from all over the country, from alabama, north carolina, oregon, who are recently graduated, community college students, people reaching their 30's who on various different issues have made it their work to organize young people, to organize their peers and i guess i would like to just open it up to the panel to, for you to share some of your sort of best practices and thoughts about what works, what they can take home to start moving their communities around an agenda for greater economic prosperity for young people. >> i can talk a little bit about the work, also we're about to launch a campaign called be counted, represent. which is the 2010 census. it's been really on a down-low on the radar but it's going to be very critical to our communities. one, it brings in federal dollars to our communities to when we're talking about transportation, health care, what have you, it's federal dollars that are going to make the difference. and two, you're going to be looking at redistricting by congressional districts as -- and that's going to be critical as wment three days ago the veder amendment went before the judiciary committee asking that the census -- right now it's a very simple form. literally 10 questions. and they've asked that they include status as whether or not the person is a citizen or not. in the actual census. right now it's going to go before congress, before the judiciary again next week because it was tabled. but why that's so critically -- how that affects immigrant communities and just folks in general is all of a sudden you can start creating targets. you have roughly 12 million undocumented folks in this country. if they're not counted in the census your community is going to suffer directly because they're not going to be able to support whether it's education or clinics or what have you, what these folks are going to need to ensure that you're not in the red. so we're actually creating a tool kit and trying to get as many local organizations and national organizationes to use that tool kit to start very easily talking about the census. we've just partnered with i tunes so folks are going to be able to get an itunes card which is 23 cards -- songs but before they download it they have to pledge to hear about -- how to make an impanth we'd love you to go to the votolatino.org. it's basically be counted, represent, and we'll actually add your logos and information and give you the tool kit. we're hoping to unveil this by the middle of december and we'll send it to you guys. if you guys wnt t-shirts, what have, we'll give you whatever you need to get that to penetrate to the local level. >> and we're talking about collaboration, working together and we're all talking about how we're doing that but coming together in real ways. son the green the block campaign there are 70 plus coalition organizations that are part of dwreen the -- green the block and what we're doing is how do we use the expertise of our other coalition members so if their expertise is something they do very well, how do we work together? it's in their programming plan to do these parts of green the block and then we're working with them to use the skills. in this room there's amazing skill sets. each of our organizations have. so how do we then tap that and work together in very real and meaningful ways to really -- because we begin then to really build our movement instead of just working parallel, we're actually working together on these things. it makes us stronger. because there are certain things we can't do at the hip-hop caucus that votto latina -- latino or demos do. how do we work together to do those things? we have 70 coalition members and we want more. we're just figuring out how do we work together not just for the sake of having a coalition and having you athe names but to actually work with one another and use the specific resources we have whether tapping into a community, a skill set, the whole gamut of possibilities but making sure that we're working together and doing that. >> i want to get heather's thoughts about what you can do but also amplify a little bit about what darryl says. we are not a top-down type of generation. we are not a top-down type of movement here in the youth political movement. we let many flowers bloom. on the other hand, the a.a.r.p., not to pick on them, but it's a good parallel, right? the a.a.r.p. is just one organization. there really aren't that many organizations competing with the a.a.r.p. to represent and communicate with the older voters. the n.r.a., another very, very powerful organization in washington, the national rifle organization is single issue. we're not single issue, as you've heard. we're we're not just one organization. what we think of as our strength, our drers -- diversity, is that sometimes a weakness? is there anything we can do when we look another sort of an agenda for a better bale -- deal, from health care to education, it's quite diverse and unfortunately dispersed. would we ever be able to come together in coalition that is as darryl said, really profound and deep in that we are maybe losing some of our identity as individual organizations and missions and initiatives to advance some single agenda? >> yes, i think that's an excellent question that i would encourage everyone to think about and perhaps we can have a longer conversation about it at another time. but 10 years ago the youth movement was pretty much nonexistent in our country. and there was a huge problem at least around civic participation and the turnout had just hit a bottom. like it was awful. in 2000. and so a bunch of groups came together and we decided on a common goal and that was to increase civic participation at the polls. that was not the goal of every organization there. some groups were about promoting, you know, civic research and other groups were about, you know, increasing the participation of a specific sub set of the group. another group had an issue agenda. and groups like m.t.v. wanted viewership. so it was really dependent on, everyone had different angles but we all agreed that to hit our angles, greater participation in the political process by young people would get us there. we all came together and agreed on a few things. no matter who was on the air we were going to say make them pay attention to us. make the politicians pay attention to us. no matter what was going on we were going to use best practices and share them. we were going to test everything and share what we did so we developed technologies and techniques and shared them among the groups and 10 years later we have the 2008 elections where after three election cycles in a row there's increased turnout. we hit that goal. now we have to look at the next 10 years. what does the youth movement look like? it is ours to decide and design. are we more powerful with this web of diverse groups that communicate through a common structure or do we just say let 1,000 flowers bloom? do we want to take on a top-down campaign or model the way obama did? we need a new generation of young leaders like all of you who are grappling with these questions in a sophisticated way because this is not -- the impact is huge. this is our future we're talking about and if all of us got together and the leaders who -- were think -- thinking and working on this every day and we set aside our egos and said what's the most effective way to build a religious right or a christian coalition or an a.a.r.p., we could come up with something really good and i'm all for it. if you can't tell. >> maria teresa, darryl, are you all for it? >> >> i think increasingly what healther says it right and you've touched upon it, that we have so many topics that are of concern to us. a.a.r.p. is very focused and n.r.a. is very focused but we have to -- so many issues that are critical and unlike other movements where you have to wrestle people for power because they stay on so long, we kind of get aged out just bit nature of it. so we actually could create instigses that would insure we're providing leadership development so someone else can take the reins. that is not something that's talked about often enough. how do we do that? at the national and local level that's on you of -- one of our challenges. >> i always say we're more like the university than a.a.r.p. because you gralmt we need alumni networks. >> but these issues are going to be with us. that's why we at demos, we focus on the economic challenges of young people for a lot of reasons but one of our core values is focusing on long-term issues. really getting in on the ground level on something we project that is going to stay with us for a long time in trying to shape the arc of how that issue develops and how long-term public policy response is. so it's true that we won't all be under 30 forever if we still are, we're always as a generation going to be moving through what are the effects of the economic challenges that we're facing now as young people. but they're still going to be with us. i want people to start lining up for questions because this is such a great panel and i know you over the past 24 hours have been phenomenal at asking questions. so i want to give baby darryl a chance to address -- or maybe not -- did you want to -- i thought that you wanted to address a question about coalitioned but i also wanted to make sure that people got a chance to ready their questions and go up to the microphone the >> yes. thank you. well, i touched on it before but just as we, i think it is important, how are we looking at how our coalitions are being formed? and i think one thing as we're doing that as now youth, we're just looking at the issues and forming coalitions around issues that we're building, coalitions that are lasting and make sense, not just to build a coalition for the sake of it but that are making sense to deal with the issues that we're looking at. >> excellent. are there any questions? someone's coming up from the back. go right ahead. it's a race. first one who gets there gets to go first. >> hi, i'm lanicia whittington, i'm from north carolina. i began in student government association and i was the youngest student government female. to win. i could not vote during the election so i was determined to find other vouth -- youth to vote in place of me so on constitution day i ran a constitution day. i had candidates that were up for election. i kind of bid it, you know, like youth of -- are really voting this year and we had 16 candidates, for the commissioners and house of representatives and state senators actually show up to the community college and set up booths. while they were doing that i had voter registration going on and was able to register over 100 youth there on campus. my question is i believe that in order to rock the vote this coming election year is to put young elected officials in place to push youth to not only say you need to vote but have us already in that office to turn to our youth and say hey, support me so i can support you. my mother has no heath insurance. she's divorced, she's an entrepreneur, she owns a small downtown business and has no health insurance. that's pathetic the enrollment has been cut in north carolina. that's also pathetic the i have a young brother coming up so i respect -- expect to run for house of representatives before age 25 because i want to change this. [applause] but my question is when i do run do i have your support? is there something within each of your organizationes to support me on the radio station, to help me raise that $350,000 when i run for house of representatives? the reality is yes i have a dream but the reality is how am i goinging about -- going to do this? is there a portion of your organization dedicated to not only rock the vote or hip-hop or votto latino but is there something to help us get into office. >> great quement >> congratulations, first of all. it's amazing what you're doing and brave i think and in fact quite strategic. [laughter] >> it is. >> all necessary. >> and it's like we're voting but also we're running for office. it's like we are talk -- taking this country into our control because we have had enough. because it is pathetic that your mother can not take the chance and be entrepreneurial and run a company and not get health insurance, that we don't take care of our peers and our family and friends and fellow citizens. and i do, i think that's not just casting a ballot but raising up on the issues you care about and running for office and all those things. rock the vote specifically we are a 501 c 3 so by law are not allowed to endorse candidates. otherwise they'll shut us down so we can't help in that specific regard but that's where the coalition comes in. we have a great partner called the young elected officials network and the young elected officials network if you're not connected with them, come, i'll connect you with them right after this. they support young candidates who are running and that's something we need, to identify leaders and give them the encouragement to do so and you better be believe we will be out there registering voters in the district and you in turn, in -- it works both ways, you need to reach out to those people because a lot of young people are afraid to be seen as young so they avoid the campused and community centers because they don't want to be seen as the just the young person. but if you're going to have a party and invite people to come you got to invite everyone you want to come to your party. you can't go pay attention to everyone else and then be totally surprised when these people don't show up, "well, you didn't invite them." you promise to invite these young people to the polling place and to your candidacy and we'll be out there getting them registered so they have the ability to show up. >> thank you. >> yeah. [applause] >> hi, my name is emily li, with the chinese progressive coalition in san francisco. this is primarily for marray teresa, one of the thing us mentioned about getting radio deejay to support youth voting, i'm curious because in the chinese community actually ethnic media is pretty conservative, run mainly by like business elites so voting isn't so crazy to try to get people to do but if you actually want them to support something more progressive and left, can you talk a little bit about the process you went through to talk with radio stations and deejay to get them to do stuff on the air? and the other question was around when you mentioned the 2010 census voting or the county, i know a lot of people are concerned over the question with you documented, documentation status because that can actually be a way that would encourage people not to do the census because it's like they are afraid they're going to be targeted. so i guess has votto latino taken a stance on whether that should be on the census or whether you guys are -- >> yeah. first of all i'm from son omeo -- sonoma so all our pilot programs are in san francisco so welcome. but i'll answer the second one first. that was the veder amendment i was talk about, the citizenship status and whether or not it should be tabled and we are asking our constituencies to basically very heavily start flooding the congressional phone calls, making congressional phone calls and trying to do outreach. latino outreach mainly identified folks that are outside the usual activists. not only radio dee jays but we have a coalition of about 100 online publishers so if you want to know what's happening in san francisco friday night you will see a votto latino embedded button on that web site as well. we try to go outside of the traditional avenues when you're talking about political engagement. now, to your other question, how did we get deejays engaged, we didn't talk to the high levels. we started cultivating relationships with the radio dee jase themselves and the general managers themselves. one was we have a very robust coalition of artists so we had everyone from eva long or yao to pit bull to fat joe. very expansey. we did very specific public service announcements tailored to that region so it wasn't just register to vote at latino.com, it was go to your local latino initiative tomorrow at the fair and we'll be there. we gave them opportunities and local oysed -- localized it and that was very appealing to them. we also promised them our celebrity coalition. all of a sudden you had eva longoria calling pueblo, colorado, a small market. it gave them a cool factor over other radio stationed and it proved incredibly effective because not only would they have eva longoria talking on the radio about tejada strer -- registering to vote, but we gave them talking points. you have to be sure they're on message and give them that training so they feel comfortable. then we would do radio deejay nights and literally in an hour and a half register 60 to 0 kids but it's because the radio deejay had been talking about it, welling up the camplee. that's incredibly hard to do in the lane -- latino community. usually to register one voter it takes an hour. so in an hour, 60 to 70 kids, that's low-hanging fruit. with the radio deejay they were hearing the message over and over again. it wasn't a flash in the pan like they go to a concert and the celebrity left. we would also use the deejay, we'd do a text messaging campaign, ask them to actually blair out a -- blare out a text message and do peer it peer so once they got the text message we would constantly remind them about the importance of registering to vote and then when the dead line came we did phone banking, asking young people to use their saturday and sunday minutes to do phone calling. >> one thing that comes to mind on the ethnic newspapers, i bet the readership for the newspapers in san francisco is a lot older on -- than the asian immigrant population lation in san francisco. you could make the case, do market research and say, make the case that by not having a young columnist like yourself, they're missing out and aging out of relevance the we've got on our side, sheer numbers. we are the millennials, bigger than the baby boofment so everywhere you are getting resistance to addressing young people's issues you've got the numbers on your side to say hey, we're here and we're not going anywhere the next question? >> so i think everyone knows that millennials are very technologically savvy and that's been in my experience a double-edged sword. it's great because it's really improved grass roots organizing and political engagement but there is so much out there that at times it can seem overwhelming. not sure how to organize all this potential and i was wondering how you have been able to utilize new media like facebook and twitter to garner that grass roots support. >> i know one thing that we do is connect online as well as offline. so using online ways to get people offline and connecting to whether it's events or -- so we're not losing because i think one thing we can't do is losing that press the flesh, literally talking to people face to face and enter acting with them. that's definitely one -- interacting with them. that's definitely one thing we're using, web 2 and internet to get people to have conversations they wouldn't have and make connections abandon also organize people online and offline and use it as an organizing tool that's kind of specific for whether it's your area
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