In his diary today, Adam Conner makes the much needed point that progressive youth infrastructure is somewhat lacking. It's getting better, thanks to the work of groups like Young People For, Campus Progress, DMI Scholars and others, but we still get outspent by the conservatives by tens of millions of dollars, and these groups can train only a small fraction of youth activists. For every attendee of the YPF conference, there's probably a hundred more that receive no training or assistance.
This problem is exacerbated by the fact that progressive youth organizing as a movement has no collective memory. People cycle in and out every few years. Some work their way deeper into politics, some move on to other fields. Very few leave anything lasting in their wake, and the next generation has to learn everything all over again. There are also a lot of great resources out there that no one has ever heard of. It's a bad situation that results in many youth groups repeating the mistakes of the past, and it inhibits our ability to grow quickly and build on past successes. Let's change that.
At Future Majority, we've started a new project to address these concerns that we are (tentatively) calling the DIY Organizing Wiki - a collaborative resource for progressive youth organizing. I'd like to introduce you to the project and invite you to participate.
What Is It?
The DIY Organizing Wiki is a How To and Who's Who guide to youth organizing. Members of youth politics organizations and the netroots (not just young people)contribute "How to" articles on a variety of topics, encyclopedic descriptions of the progressive playing field (youth groups: their history, their programs, current leadership, contact info, etc.), listings of resources that can be tapped, and testimonials from people describing their experiences with particular tactics and or for specific organizations.
In true wiki form, these articles can be edited, tweaked, rewritten and reverted by anyone with a user account on the site. We hope that the open source format can create a resource that is not only instructional and comprehensive, but honest.
How it Started
This project started a few months ago as an idea brewed up in conversations between myself, my fellow co-bloggers at Future Majority, and some of our readers - particularly Erin Kenzie. We realized that there wasn't a whole lot of institutional memory in youth politics, and no good single repository that people could turn to if they wanted to learn the tricks of the trade, research the progressive landscape, or bootstrap a new organization into existence.
This line of thinking crystalized (for me at least) during RootsCampDC, where I heard stories from some amazing young people doing really innovative work (such as building campus voter files using FaceBook and Excel, or creatively messaging around student debt). But there was a problem. After RootsCamp ended, all anyone had was their memories and a few new business cards for the Rolodex. Notes from the sessions were frequently incomplete or unavailable, and there was no efficient way to further spread these great ideas to those who couldn't make it to DC - let alone someone who became involved in politics months after the fact. (If I'm a newbie, do I even know that RootsCamp or the New Organizing Institute exist? How do I learn about them?)
So we got our act together and started the business of building this site.
State of the Project
First some good news: As of now, we have the wiki functionality in place. Some major categories have been set up, along with about 50-60 "stubs," (placeholder articles or content containers noting where content needs to be added and suggesting how it might be structured). I'm sure we're only scratching the surface, and much of the structure that is established will change as content is added and the full resource begins to take shape, but these stubs can provide an initial framework to build out the content.
Now some bad news: Right now the wiki is hierarchically organized by category (not searchable), the content theme is not well suited to the formats of articles that I think will make up the bulk of the site, and load times can be sluggish.
Now some more good news: By the end of the month, we hope to have a new theme in place that looks more like Wikipedia, along with a searchable structure. Josh Koenig, one of my co-bloggers and a professional web developer, has volunteered to create and implement that theme. Josh has worked on a variety of sites including The Sunlight Foundation. His company, Chapter Three LLC, has offered to host the site as well, which should improve load time.
Where You Come In
We've got good ideas and the talent to implement them (though more help coding is always welcome). What we don't have is content and visibility.
Content
Share your knowledge! If you have grant-writing experience, legal experience, worked a canvass, or misspent your college years working for the College Democrats (j/k), write an article. If you've been treasurer of a student group, or were in charge of PR, write it down. If you've built a MySpace page for a campaign or started your own PAC, tell others how you did it. If you know some tricks to help people find jobs or fellowships, share your secrets.
To get you thinking, right now we've got a few major categories that we're looking to fill: Communications, Field, Fundraising, Jobs and Training, Legal, Operations, Organizations, Policy, Technology, Youth Research.
Remember: we're trying to fill each of these categories with articles that either dispense basic advice and how-to information, list available resources that can be tapped, or map out the players in that particular field.
We've also got a more open-ended, free-form category called "Big Ideas."
Spread the Word!
This project is worthless if it sits unused. So we need to spread word far and wide - to college democrat and young democrat organizations, on the web pages or organizations like Campus Progress, etc. Let's work together in the comments section to devise a solid PR strategy. Or, if you like, just start emailing everyone you know who might be able to contribute or might like to use such a resource.
Conclusion
There's a lot of great information and experience out there - from the midterms, from 2004, and even before then, when the interweb was less than a blip in the political landscape and Generation X and Rock the Vote ruled youth politics. And there's lots of folks who are experts in something - grant writing, PR, fieldwork, social networking. Let's record that information and create a smarter youth movement in progressive politics.
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