This week, Gen-Y Magic will be profiling 4 young leaders on the political landscape. All 4 are dedicated to covering the involvement of young voters in progressive politics and write for multiple sites and communities. All 4 are players in Future Majority, a site started in in August of 2006 by Michael Connery, Alex Urevick-Acklesberg, and Josh Koenig. Today we are chatting with Sarah Burris, a blogger at Everyday Citizen and a long time writer and researcher for Wiretap Magazine as well as working on campaigns and with Rock The Vote. In this conversation she talks about mainstream vs online media, teen pregnancy and explains Rock The Trail. Enjoy!

Gen-Y Magic: This election is turning to the small towns. How can young people in these small towns really raise their voice and be heard?

Sarah: Participate. They say 90% of success is showing up – and that’s what small towns have to do to matter, show up. To everything. Not just voting, but asking questions to legislators both state and federal, talking about issues that matter to rural people, and help to organize within their own communities. Whether its with churches or the Red Cross, community organizers have the ability to develop enthusiasm around them and empower the rest of their community.

GYM: What’s this Rock The Trail business?


Sarah: Rock the Trail was a contest Rock the Vote launched that chose 5 people to cover the campaign trail with the view from a young person. Many news services realized that young people were showing up – not just at the rate they usually do – but in huge numbers. In some states the youth turnout doubled, tripled, even quadrupled. And media doesn’t exactly have the infrastructure to be able to get into this community and understand what is going on enough to cover it.

So they started to partner with organizations that did know young people. BET, CNN.com, and the Washington Post coordinate with Rock the Vote to run some of the pieces that we post about our experiences on the campaign trail. I’ve reported from the Democratic and Republican Conventions, I’ll be at the first Debate next week, and the Rock the Vote candidate forum in Ohio. My pieces have been on CNN.com and this coming week CNN International is running some video I did as part of their coverage on the election.

The goal is to discuss issues in a way that young people understand and from a peer’s perspective. Young voters are going to be an important and powerful voting bloc, so reporting on issues and situations and candidates is important to informing them before November.

GYM: Can new media, be it blogging, social media, social networking, be used to create real change in the real world? What needs to happen next?

Sarah: I think that it can. Thomas Friedman – the NYTimes columnist would disagree with me. There are several remarkable organizations that started out with only social networking sites and organized young people online in ways we’d never seen before, around issues. Save Darfur and Invisible Children are good examples. They mobilize their members online and then give them tools and ideas for offline action. With Save Darfur it was getting kids to encourage their colleges to divest in their Sudaneese assets. With Invisible Children young people actually volunteered in Uganda and helped march children to save places to prevent the night commuting.

In Kansas, we had a 5 term Congressman that lost in large part because Talking Points Memo, a blog, found out that he got a $300,000 break on a house he bought because Abramoff and Delay had to unload it quickly.

A friend of mine decided she wanted curb-side recycling in her city. She mobilized an online campaign and had the city hall servers were shut down for days because so many people were emailing and asking for it.

These are the early days of action online and its only going to get bigger. The test of any online empowerment, however, is the extent to which it can be taken into offline action. Do people change their light bulbs? Do they begin recycling programs? Do they pick up the phone and call their Congressman and demand action? There are ways to mobalize online that are free and easy and young people know how to utilize them to the point that now I think they expect organizations and candidates to have these options.

We need to increase participation between generations, and that’s a big gap. You have a supposedly open federal government where we can turn on CSPAN and see what is going on, but everyone knows that emails are nearly meaningless when it comes to action on a federal issue. Having folks like Rep. Culberson (R-TX) and Rep. Ryan (D- OH) using things like Twitter.com and Facbook and MySpace are unique ways to create a more online town hall like atmosphere with constituents. Or at the very least create more transparency.

GYM: Can traditional media reach the Gen-Y audience? Does Gen-Y trust traditional media?

Sarah: I think in some cases they trust traditional media. I think, however, its restricted more to cable news outlets rather than network nightly news broadcasts. And online media certainly gains traction from Millennials. A big part of that is unfortunately purchase power. The 18-29 year old demographic is a powerful generation in terms of what we buy and what we convince our parents to buy for themselves. So, I think, more tv stations are beginning to understand if they want to benefit their advertisers they have to go where the purchase power is.

Sadly, I think they interpret that as being more about flashy graphics and weird stories about Big Foot and things that flash and blink. Young people are smart, and we pay attention to what’s going on from about 50 different sources at once. There was a recent Harvard Institute of Politics poll that said that Gen Y is the leading group constantly reading and paying attention to this election. We crave information, but being talked down to isn’t a good way to do it.

GYM: With teenage pregnancy being a social hot topic per say with Juno, Secret Life of the American Teenager, Jaime Lynn, etc, can Bristol Palin be a leader for the younger Millennials who are now growing up with this problem/situation?

Sarah: Oh definitely. I think teen pregnancy has become so mainstream that most teens know someone that is pregnant, was pregnant, or know someone who knows someone who is pregnant. But, I think that it builds a divide between parents and non-parents. Even as an older Millennial I have already started to see a difference between my friends with families and without. But, then again, its all about what she does with the opportunity. Like Megan McCain has done talking about women and super skinny not being healthy, Bristol has an opportunity to use this to teach other young people and possibly talk about the importance of protection.

GYM: Sarah, you are off the Gen-Y Hot Seat. Thanks for participating! To read other Hot Seat entries from Political Week, check them out below:

Mike Connery

Craig Berger
Kevin Bondelli