The most frequently asked question I get as the executive director of HeadCount is, “what are you going to do after the election?” My canned response is, “take a nap.” It took us five years to build a national organization and register over 160,000 voters. After Election Day, we almost need to start again from scratch. I’d rather sleep it off a little.

But, really, there’s a plan for HeadCount after this November that we’ve been thinking about for almost as long as we’ve been around. It’s a plan that takes HeadCount logically forward — building on our collective momentum and experience — but is also far more ambitious than anything we’ve yet attempted. Call it HeadCount 2.0.

Starting in 2009, our broadened mission will be to use music as a platform to inspire people to be more active participants in our democracy. We will stretch the incredible grassroots network we’ve built to new purposes. Voter registration will always be a core element of HeadCount’s work. But registering voters is only the first step. The next step is to give music fans the tools and inspiration to become more involved, more organized, and ultimately more influential citizens.

By our count, there are more than a million of us attending festivals or concerts by the heavily touring artists we love. We make up a community, and we believe that our community, in all its many faces and branches, has something significant to contribute to the world. There is a set of inherent values that tie us all together: an underlying “Love thy Neighbor” credo that is implied by our lifestyle and our choices. That extends to how we treat the planet, what we expect from our leaders, and what we expect from ourselves. Personally, I believe the world benefits when these values are reflected by the electorate and by our government.

So what would happen if we got organized? If we, as a group, were politically active? If there’s any doubt that the live music community has the power to change the world, just think back 40 years ago, when the culture and aesthetic we’re keeping alive was born. Musicians provided the soundtrack and the rallying cry for people taking to the streets — demanding a national debate on issues like Vietnam and gender equality. They won some battles and they lost others, but they forever shaped the future in ways we can’t quite measure and should never take for granted. Back then, the ’60s counterculture was at the forefront of a social revolution. We are living in its echo, and it is up to us whether it will be a ripple or a wave.

With 21st century technology at our disposal–the social networking sites and blogs and text messages and micro-communications that have already changed the way our society functions — a unique window has opened. With the right strategy, resources and people, we can weave this all into something truly transformative, something that will have an impact well beyond the homey confines of the live music scene.

In many ways we are like any other subculture or population segment that is poised stand up for its values. If labor unions or mega-churches can be politically influential, so can Festival Nation. We have something they don’t, remember. We have the all-powerful force of music at our backs, and that makes the potential as limitless as improvisation itself. When the artists get behind us, as they have with excitement so far, it pours rocket fuel on everything we do. We can change the planet. We can and we will.

Here’s how it’s going to happen: we are going to take HeadCount’s teams of volunteers and bring them well beyond concerts, using live music and affiliations with musicians as a conduit to bring socially-conscious young people together. A HeadCount table won’t just be a place to register to vote. It will be place for people who share strong convictions to meet. The concerts will be the gathering place, a point of entry, but our real work will go on away from shows and in the communities we live - both online and physical. HeadCount’s current structure will be the foundation of something far grander. We’re going to build a home that politically-conscious music fans can call their own.

There are many, many ideas as to what exactly this will look like. And this evolution comes with challenges. How do we take a stand on issues and remain politically non-partisan? How do we maintain a defined sense of purpose when our results can’t be measured by number of voters registered? What exactly will a politically engaged live music community do to make the maximum difference?

We don’t have all the answers yet, but many exciting ideas are already brewing. Perhaps we’ll work with other non-profits who are already making a positive difference and can break new ground with help from our volunteers and musicians. Perhaps we’ll tackle issues through a national campaign, or turn our sites to the Gulf Coast and New Orleans — a place so dear to live music fans that remains neglected and in great need. Maybe we’ll work with the non-profit and charitable organizations that our supporting artists hold most dear, and put our volunteer network and know-how at their disposal.

The ideas don’t end there. Imagine using music to directly drive civic engagement and socially conscious acts. What if someone could get better seats at a concert or a free download by writing a letter to their congressperson or documenting their carbon footprint? Who is to say HeadCount can’t make that happen? Or, what if we were to connect the musicians themselves with the fans who are making a positive difference? Thousands of music fans are leaders In their community or their schools and have a long resume to prove it. What if these fans were to receive special invitations to soundchecks, or dinners with artists? How about a weekend-long retreat, bringing together the most socially conscious musicians with the most socially responsible fans? We can create a dialogue between the artists and the public that can be the spark that lights a fire.

Over the next few months we will consider these ideas and many, many more. Like our country’s future, it’s an open book. We encourage your input and welcome your suggestions. HeadCount is a collaboration between fans, the artists and the people who make live music happen. Our future will reflect a collective vision where all the best ideas have an equal chance of coming to fruition.

Some of the best concepts, we hope, will come from the musicians. When I meet with the musicians and their managers next year, I will ask them a series of questions: “What do you want your impact on society to be?” I imagine the answers will be similar — that they hope to use their influence to enlighten and awaken, to make the world a better place.

I will then say to them, with humility and confidence, “We’re here to help you do that.”

A privilege that comes with running one of the largest grassroots voter registration campaigns in the U.S. is occasionally being invited to speak for the youth voter movement itself. So when producers from ABC’s 20/20 called and said they were putting together a segment (view or read the segment) that would ask whether attracting new voters to the electorate was a good thing or not, we eagerly agreed to represent the “pro” side of the argument.

In preliminary interviews, the producers showed great enthusiasm for our viewpoint. We argued that democracy is, by definition, inclusive and functions best when involving the broadest number of citizens. We argued that the notion of only an educated elite deciding who should lead is an age-old idea that is still championed today in totalitarian regimes, but that one only needs to look toward the stark differences in quality of life between those countries and ours to support the merits of a republic where all individuals have equal say.

When we were told that John Stossel would be conducting the on-air interview, it probably should have alerted us that the final segment would be more of an editorial representing a contrarian view than a piece of actual journalism that strived for quality. But in extensive conversations with the producers, we were promised a balanced piece.

So when the producers then explained they’d been doing “man on the street” interviews testing people’s knowledge about the election, and would like to conduct some at one of the concerts where we register voters, we were more than happy to help. We suggested several concerts on our schedule, and they selected the festival Camp Bisco, hosted by our co-chair Marc Brownstein.

When the camera crew began an afternoon of shooting these interviews, something pretty funny happened. The producer, Harvard graduate Andrew Sullivan, read a list of questions from a piece of paper – “How many states are there? Who is the vice president? How many Senators are there? What is Roe v. Wade?” The first interviewee answered some correctly, some incorrectly. Sullivan then came to the next question on his list – how many years a member of the U.S. House of Representatives serves in each term. The interviewee answered “two.” Sullivan, with a smug smile, said “No, it’s actually four.”

“Uhm,” I said uncomfortably. “It’s two.” He shook his head no, insisting it’s four. Was this really happening? I mean, were we actually going to debate this? One of our volunteers went to his Blackberry to verify, but that was farcical in itself. The answer was obviously two and has been since the birth of our country. The fact that an ABC producer was reading off a sheet of questions and had it wrong was just – well comedy and tragedy all at once. We corrected him and moved on. According to Stossel’s argument, Sullivan should not vote (we respectfully disagree).

We then spent several hours interviewing fans as they came to the concert. They were not, as the ABC piece would falsely assert, people we registered to vote. They were simply entering the concert grounds. Some answered almost all the questions correctly. Some knew very little. Interestingly, the segment that aired on ABC showed interviewees struggling with two of the questions that the majority of people answered correctly (all but two people, out of dozens, knew how many states there are, and most were familiar with Roe. V. Wade). Not surprisingly, the question about how many years a U.S. Rep serves for never made it to the air.

In hindsight, it was naïve of us to believe that 20/20 would do anything but use the worst interviews of the dozens at their disposal. The purpose of the segment was to entertain, not to win any awards. The goal is to generate ratings and probably nothing more. And it’s certainly more entertaining to watch someone get stumped than correctly recite a 7th grade government lesson.

The fact that ABC quizzed people on civics and not their awareness of issues in this election pointed to just how tone deaf Stossel and his crew are. Had they asked how young people felt about the economy, the War in Iraq, and the environment, they may have gotten a very different reaction. Their little “test” was more an indictment of the American education system than a cogent or credible argument against voting.

That aside, what the segment did not properly represent is how seriously HeadCount takes the education piece of our mission. They left out, for instance, that we printed and distributed 10,000 voter guides. They even chopped up a quote from Brownstein where he acknowledge that there are large numbers of uninformed voters, but cut off the next sentence where he detailed our efforts to educate as well as sign people up – the classic “out of context quote” that’s a sign of weak, and agenda-ridden, reporting.

But we conclude by pointing out that, if indeed we accept the notion that the electorate and particularly young voters are not as well informed as we’d hope, it only speaks to the need for organizations like HeadCount that encourage civic engagement. Voting is, almost by definition, the first and most inclusive step a citizen can take toward participating in democracy. HeadCount addresses those who may not see politics as personally relevant to them, and reminds them that in this country we all have a voice and that people have died to defend our rights to use it. On Election Day, over 100 million Americans will vote, and more than 10 million of them will be young voters age 18 to 24. Some will have spent the last few months voraciously reading blogs and consuming cable news and come to the polls with deep knowledge about the issues. For others, voting will be a lone act of civic engagement. But HeadCount aims to create an environment in the live music community that encourages them to do more. We try to make the issues of the day part of the ongoing conversation among music fans, and weave that into the social fabric of our community. This is a long process that will take many years to fully bear fruit. The first step – registering 100,000 voters – is near completion. Post election, you’ll see us take on new initiatives that use music as a platform that inspires people to get more involved and politically active.

John Stossel has carved out a niche for himself as an independent-minded reporter whose shining moment came more than 20 years ago when he got manhandled by a professional wrestler. Since then, he’s been in and out of the news from time to time, facing accusations of shoddy journalism. We are confident that regardless of the angle of the piece and the opinions Stossel espoused, that most Americans will recognize that young voters have a great deal at stake in this election and will be serving the greater good by making their voices heard on Election Day.

Cross-posted from Future Majority.

On Friday at 10pm, 20/20 will run a piece on the youth vote called “Maybe It’s Your Civic Duty Not To Vote,” in which they suggest that uninformed voters - primarily young people - not turn out to the polls. In talking to the youth group,HeadCount, featured in the piece, it is clear that 20/20 and Stossel were less interested in discovering the truth about young voters while filming their piece than in crafting a hatchet job meant to cast doubt on the growing youth vote.

You can view the 4 minute segment here.

There is a lot that is wrong with this piece. Yes, there are many uninformed voters, but that category is not limited to young people, who are unfortunately the main target of this piece. Anyone who has ever watched Jay Leno could tell you that many Americans are uninformed about current events. Unfortunately, some see that as an excuse to rob people of their constitutional rights, and Stossel and ABC are happy to play along.

But all is not as it appears in this report. In talking with HeadCount, the group featured in the piece, it’s clear that Stossel and 20/20 were not interested in giving the young people they interviewed a fair shake. They had a narrative to their story and stuck by it - facts be damned. More than that, they worked -um, creatively - to make sure their point of view dominated the piece. Here’s a list of inaccuracies and selective editing that viewers won’t see:

• At 1 minute into the piece, Stossel interviews two voters who can accurately answer questions about American civics, after which, far more concert-goers and “regular folks” are shown who are unable to answer similar questions. According to HeadCount, this is not an accurate representation of the percentage of interviewees who successfully answered the questions. Far more concert-goers were knowledgeable than implied by the report.
• At minute 1:20, the report shows a girl saying that there are only 12 Senators in the US. The only problem? She wasn’t responding to a question about the number of US Senators, but about the number of Supreme Court Justices. Yes, she was still incorrect, but Stossel and 20/20 manipulated the footage to make her appear even less knowledgeable than she actually was.

  Staffers at HeadCount say that this is often the case with the featured interviewees, who were asked not a single question, as the report implies, but many. Many interviewees were knowledgeable about some issues, but less so when it came to other issues. The young voter responses included in the report were cherry-picked by Stossel and ABC producers to highlight only the incorrect answers.

• At 1:42, Stossel asks Marc Brownstein if voters should be “knowledgeable” (whatever that means) before casting a ballot. Brownstein replies that “there are a lot of of uneducated voters out there.” But that wasn’t all he said. In the full interview, Brownstein went on to explain that HeadCount distributes nonpartisan issue sheets at the tables alongside the voter registration materials the organization offers each night. That educational effort was completely left out of Stossel’s report.
• Also cut out of the full report were interviews with very knowledgeable young HeadCount staffers, teachers, and youth activists - generally the most informed portion of the pool of interviewees.

HeadCount staffers who followed the camera crew throughout the day offered interesting coda to those interviews. During the filming, Andrew Sullivan, a Harvard graduate and producer of the piece, mistakenly tried to correct one young concert goer who was asked about the length of single term for a congressional representative. The young concert-goer, correctly, said two years. Sullivan, incorrectly, tried to tell them it was four. I guess Sullivan won’t be voting this year?

All of this is par for the course for John Stossel, who has often had a rocky relationship with the truth. Here are just a few examples pulled from his Wikipedia page:

Controversies

[edit] Galbraith and Stossel

Liberal economist James K. Galbraith said that Stossel, in a story on laissez-faire economics in September 1999, used an out of context clip of Galbraith to make it seem that Galbraith had said nearly the opposite of what he meant. Stossel denied that Galbraith’s views had been misrepresented but changed the words with which he introduced the Galbraith clip in rebroadcasts of the program.[27][28][29]

[edit] Organic Vegetables

A February 2000 story about organic vegetables on 20/20 included statements by Stossel that tests had shown that neither organic nor conventional produce samples contained any pesticide residue, and that organic food was more likely to be contaminated by E. coli bacteria. The Environmental Working Group objected to his report, mainly questioning his statements about bacteria, but also managed to determine that the produce had never been tested for pesticides. They communicated this to Stossel, but after the story’s producer backed Stossel’s recollection that the test results had been as described, the story was rebroadcast months later, uncorrected, and with a postscript in which Stossel reiterated his claim. Later, after a report in The New York Times confirmed the Environmental Working Group’s claims, ABC News suspended the producer of the segment for a month and reprimanded Stossel. Stossel apologized, saying that he had thought the tests had been conducted as reported. However, he asserted that the gist of his report had been accurate.[30][31][32][33][34]

[edit] Televangelist Lifestyle

In a March 2007 segment about finances and lifestyles of televangelists, 20/20 aired a clip of a TV minister originally broadcast by the Lifetime Network in 1997. The clip made it seem that the minister was describing his wealth in extravagant terms, when actually, he was telling a parable about a rich man. ABC News twice aired a retraction and apologized for the error. The minister filed a lawsuit against Stossel, his source for the clip, 20/20, and ABC for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress.[35][36]

Stossel, who is a self-proclaimed libertarian (a position that obviously does not extend to the freedom to vote for one’s leaders), and frequent contributor to the conservative website Townhall.com, closes out the piece by highlighting the work of fellow libertarian Byan Caplan, an econ professor who made his bones espousing an elitist view of democracy in which only a select few should cast their ballots:

“Maybe 75 percent of people can name the vice president. … The public’s knowledge of politics is shockingly low,” economist Bryan Caplan said.

In his book “The Myth of the Rational Voter,” Caplan argues that people who know little about our government ought to stay home on Election Day.

But aren’t Americans always told it’s their civic duty to vote?

“This is very much like saying, ‘It’s our civic duty to give surgery advice,’” Caplan said. “Now, we like to think that political issues are much less complicated than brain surgery, but many of them are pretty hard. If someone doesn’t know what he’s talking about, it really is better if they say, ‘Look, I’m just gonna leave this in wiser hands.’”

But isn’t it elitist to say only some people should vote?

“Is it elitist to say only some people should do brain surgery?” Caplan said. “The bottom line is, if you don’t know what you’re doing, you are not doing the country a favor by voting.”

Voting is serious business. Democracy works best when people educate themselves. So maybe instead of telling people things like “Rock the Vote,” these groups should say “Rock or Vote.”

All Americans - young and old - may not be experts on the every issue, but they are experts on their own lives. They know that they’re not getting enough help. That tuition is too high and grants are too low. That they need to drive to work, and heat their house or apartment, but energy prices are too high. That they are one broken leg away from bankruptcy and that getting a loan to buy a house just became that much more unattainable. And let’s face it, it’s not as if the experts have that great a track record when it comes to the issues of the day, whether we’re talking about the subprime housing market, the war in Iraq, or ending our addiction to fossil fuels.

Democracy is for all of us, not just a select few. As a nation, we eliminated the idea of literacy tests decades ago, and rightly so. Kudos to HeadCount for pushing back on this argument to the extent that was possible within the piece, and shame on Stossel and ABC for enabling it. Young voters have faced a hostile media for decades, always pining about youth apathy. Now, on the cusp of a record breaking turnout, for a major media outlet to question the validity of those votes on such flimsy grounds, in opposition our constitutional rights, is the height of irresponsibility. Dare I say it, it’s unamerican.

If you would like to express your displeasure about this piece to ABC, send a polite but firm email to the producer, Andrew Sullivan, outlining your concerns: Andrew.G.Sullivan [at] abc [dot] com

“Today was a huge victory for us,” Matt Segal the Executive Director of the Student Association of Student Empowerment (SAVE) said Thursday evening in an interview after testifying before the House Administration Committee on voting rights for young people.

This was the culmination of 5 months of SAVE members and volunteers working the Hill in efforts to educate Congress on the difficulties young voters face each election year.

These stories are not unique to us. Recently, even, we’ve heard about voter disenfranchisement affecting students. In Colorado and New Mexico as well as Virgina Tech students who are “being told that they risk losing their scholarship and tax dependency status if they register to vote in their college, as opposed to home, state.”

At a time when CNN is talking about the League of First Time Voters and the issues that matter most to them, few are stopping to ask whether or not these young people or first time voters will ultimately be disenfranchised on Election Day and turned away from the polls. Despite the lack of cameras and fanfair for the SAVE volunteers, members of Congress were pleased with the young people who took the stand.

The day leading up to the hearing, SAVE even had a press conference with Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and 9 other members of Congress, all who stood up for the rights of young voters.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, one of members of the 30 Something Caucus, congratulated SAVE on their work saying she was surprised in the progress that has been made in just a little over a year.

SAVE has also launched their campaign to SAVE VOTING RIGHTS along with Campus Advantage that works to help students with problems around housing issues, and Headcount a voter registration group that signs young people up at live music events.

Thursday’s success wasn’t easy. Segal and his friends began testifying on the Hill 4 years ago when along with the rest of Kenyon College, he was forced to stand in line for 10 hours just to vote. The question to the committee :

“What standards or safeguards are in place to ensure that Kenyon College 2004 can never happen again?”

The answer, sadly, is there is no guarantee, merely “recommendations.” This is the first time students and young people have had an opportunity to air the issues that face them in Washington. There have been hearings on disenfranchisement for African Americans, Spanish speaking Americans, overseas troops, many different communities… but never one focusing on students. The first step in guaranteeing this occurs, happened today thanks to SAVE’s hard work.

“This democracy isn’t going to save itself” Segal said, “young people are stepping up, and that’s an inspiring story. Its time they are able to do so without fear.”

SAVE lacks the glamor and non-stop excitment many young voter organizations provide. Instead, they work in the sometimes ugly world of Washington to write laws behind the scenes. They’ve championed Capitol Hill advocacy and formed careful and key relationships to garner results. From 10 hour lines to standing with the Majority Leader, the hope is to move even further toward more hearings and further investigation after the election to guarantee students’ votes are counted.

They have earned the reputation of a group that gets things done.

“We are damn persistent” Segal laughs, “But we’re polite about it.”

With schools back in session there are plenty of students looking to vote in the State where their University is come November 4th. This has always been a sensitive and unfortunately difficult issue for students. Many state and county election boards don't want students voting in their precincts, and some have gone as far to create laws to prevent this from happening.

For those of you back in school and looking to vote locally its important you are aware of your rights.

The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU recently put out an extremely helpful guide for Students looking to register and vote. If you want to vote where you go to school in November I highly suggest you refer to this guide. It can be found here www.brennancenter.org/studentvoting

There was a also a very interesting article in the NY Times a few weeks ago about student voters and the great lengths the state of Virginia has gone to in order to discourage them from voting at school. Check it out here http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/08/education/08students.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Virginia%20Student%20Voters&st=cse&oref=slogin.

HeadCount just had one of our biggest weekends yet – we registered over 1,000 people at the All Points West Festival, hundreds more at the Virgin Festival, and our touring teams on the Jack Johnson, O.A.R. and Dave Matthews Band tours all had record setting shows!

It’s really exciting to see the momentum that we’ve been building come to fruition – the weeks ahead will see us register even more and more voters, and we can’t do it without the help of volunteers like yourself! If you haven’t done so yet, be sure to check out upcoming shows for your area – we are still out on the road with bands like Dave Matthews, O.A.R, Jack Johnson, and Ratdog, and are soon to be joining forces with the Music Builds Tour and we need you to join us in making this movement happen!

One of the highlights this past weekend was having Marc from O.A.R. come out and help us register voters in Saratoga Springs:

It’s not often we get a lead singer on the ground with a
clipboard! Below are some more action shots from the past few weeks – and you can check out more photos here.

UPDATE: Shakowsky just announced it on the House Floor in the late night session about 30 minutes ago.

At a time when organizations across the country are focused on increasing voter registration, the Student Association for Voter Empowerment (SAVE) has worked hard to make sure that when those newly registered voters go to the polls, their votes will count.

Today the movement to protect our votes will take a giant leap forward when SAVE teamed up with Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois and Congresswoman Jan Shakowsky of Illinois and Congressman Steve LaTourette of Ohio present the Student VOTER Bill of 2008.

Durbin said on the floor:

“The success of America’s experiment in democracy lies in broad participation and deep civic engagement. From the Reconstruction Amendments, to women’s suffrage, to the abolition of the poll tax, and finally the ratification of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, we have witnessed a steady but difficult march toward a more inclusive nation. To realize the full potential of these great strides, the Student VOTER Act provides a pathway to participation for America’s youth.”

SAVE has worked non-stop for 4 years as a national non-partisan, non-profit with a mission to increase youth voter participation by removing access barriers and promoting stronger civic education. They constantly lobby Congress and the Senate in efforts to ensure that the right to vote is accessible to young people and that those votes are protected.

“Voter protection is personal to me,”said Director and Founder Matt Segal earlier this summer in an interview. He began SAVE after standing in line for more than 12 hours on election day in 2004 to help encourage his fellow students who stood in the cold and rain just to cast a ballot.

“We held umbrellas, we brought them pizza, we got them excused from class so they wouldn’t lose their places in line, we did everything we could to ensure everyone who wanted to vote got to vote. Voting is our right, that should never happen again.”

Segal says he applauds Senator Durbin and Representatives Schakowsky and LaTourette for their leadership and attention to student voter turnout and the barriers students face when voting.

“All the while many congressional members pay lip service to the idea of increasing civic engagement, it is refreshing to see these members act, and call on our education institutions to be more proactive in getting student signed up and aware of the laws in their various states and districts.”

Young voters face some of the most difficult obstacles when it comes to going to the polls.

The Higher Education Act of 1998 was passed in efforts to increase youth participation in elections by requiring that U.S. colleges and universities make a “good faith effort” to register students to vote. This could easily be done at a student orientation or during class registration. But it isn’t.

Durbin continued to say on the Senate floor

“Several obstacles stand in the way of youth voting. Because so many students are first time voters, they often are unfamiliar with how to register. In some states, first time voters must register in person in order to cast an absentee ballot. For students who attend college outside of their home state or who do not have access to transportation, these requirements can be cumbersome, confusing, and insurmountable.”

Many schools forget about that civic duty. When that happens the partisan groups move in to fill the gap, fighting it out between College Republicans and Young Democrats the groups debate and register students off campus and on. But the result is that some students who remain undecided and independent can become alienated by the partisanship.

The bill would amend existing laws that say colleges would have to be like the Department of Motor Vehicles, which is supposed to ask folks if they want to register or re-register to vote when they get their driver’s license or public assistance benefits. The new law would make state colleges and universities abide by that rule. So now, new students would be asked if they wanted to register when they sign up for classes, or get a new student ID for example.

The Student VOTER Bill of 2008 seeks to institutionalize the distribution of voting procedure and register more young people. SAVE’s bill will apply a much more up to date standard to the existing 1994 “Motor Voter Act.” This can help state colleges and universities, and ensure that all students will have their votes counted.

Forty-four million young people (ages 18-29) will be eligible to vote this November and with the help of the House and Senate, we can move forward to stop disenfranchisement this election year.

The Center for Community Change’s Sally Kohn has a piece today about the passionate Millennial activism that is taking place online and the extent to which it happens off line.

We’ve kinda heard this complaint before with Thomas Friedman’s Generation Q piece that slammed the Millennial Generation for not being disgusted enough by our contemporary world to take to the streets. In Mike’s rebuttal of the piece and indeed many of us who spoke out against Friedman’s uneducated assumptions, it isn’t that Millennials aren’t taking to the streets, indeed they are, they are just virtual streets

Kohn is bothered by the virtual part. She agrees that young people feel “deeply connected” with causes - things going on in Darfur, Tibet, you name it…. Bus she fears the online activism will “erode the community values [Millennials] seek”

“On the one hand, they have grown up with new technologies that have helped the world connect more easily; on the other hand, they have been raised alongside the rise of hyperindividualism in American culture that has isolated us from each other and the world around us…

But social movements are based on collective action. The American Revolution, the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, and every significant social change movement in between and since has relied on community organizing, building mutually responsible communities to challenge the status quo.”

Kohn says that the internets are very individualistic. Seems Kohn hasn’t heard of Web 2.0. I don’t know about ya’ll but we are collectively communicating right here on the tubes. And this blog is fed into facebook - which if you haven’t seen it is this SOCIAL networking site where all these people who went to school together, work together, or associate in the same causes collectively chill together on line.

For example, Invisible Children started out just on MySpace and Facebook, living through social networking sites, this organization brought awareness and action to a cause among an age specific group of people. Now, young people are serving to help walk these children to safe houses daily, people are donating online, showing the film, and raising awareness about something no one was talking about a few years ago.

IC isn’t the only one. Save Darfur is another cause that I hardly think would have the passion and power that it does today without a mobilized group of people online. If you look at online donations on Change.org or the FB Causes application you see that Save Darfur has raised $2,657 on Change with 1997 actions and $24,000 on the Causes Application on Facebook.

Young people have a lot of power and that power can take place on-line or off, each action is just as valid and just as powerful and appreciated. No one should be allowed to get away with diminishing that.

Time has indeed been flying by here at HeadCount - we are a month into our touring season, but it feels like we’ve been on the road forever!

Over the past month, we’ve had teams on the ground and on the road with the Dave Matthews Band, Jack Johnson, Pearl Jam, and Ratdog. We are about to hit the road with John Mayer, O.A.R. and STS9 in the upcoming weeks as well - there will be plenty of opportunities to volunteer, so do be sure to sign up to do so! It’s the work of the amazing volunteers who come out to see us night after night that has helped us register thousands of fans over the past month!

Our first leg of Jack Johnson wrapped up in Minneapolis about a week ago. We came just shy of getting 1,000 people registered to vote over our first five dates, and recruited several hundred new volunteers as well - we hope to see you all out at a show soon! Jack himself has been super supportive - coming out to greet our volunteers on a few occasions, and even giving us a shout out from stage in Minneapolis! We’re pretty eager to get back out on the road with the All At Once Tour once it comes back to the US in August.

Our Dave Matthews team is still braving scary weather, but they are pulling through - we haven’t even hit the halfway point of the tour and have already gotten over 3,000 DMB fans registered to vote! Our touring crew even got a chance to meet Dave, and were pretty pumped by his support and interest in our work.

Pearl Jam is wrapping up their tour tonight in Boston - Amanda, our HeadCount touring rep is tired, but still sad to see the tour end! We are wrapping up with close to 1,200 Pearl Jam fans registered to vote and committed to hitting up the polls this November. Shout outs from Eddie have also been a nice bonus along the way!

Our Ratdog team of Sara and Lizzy got started in Oregon last week. They are on a west coast run, having already hit up Eugene, Seattle, Boise, Salt Lake City, Sacramento and Los Angeles. They have a few more stops before their tour wraps up in Northern California next week, and have gotten several hundred Ratdog fans registered to vote along the way!

Be sure to check back for more updates from our on the road teams, and you can check out more tour photos here. And don’t forget, we need you to VOLUNTEER! Sign up today!

Beginning July 1st, the first phase of largest college aid expansion in six decades kicks in, according to a release sent out from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office. This was part of the number of bills pushed through Congress in 2006 when the New Direction Congress rolled into town.

In efforts to help middle class families live more affordable, the House passed, among other things, a minimum wage increase as well as the the expansion in college aid which includes an expansion of Pell Grants as well as this reduction in interest rates which will cut in half by 2011 and will begin with a drop from 6.8% to 6.0%.

According to the release

“This cutting of the interest rate will benefit the 6.8 million students who borrow need-based federal student loans each year. Once fully phased in, this interest rate cut will save the typical student borrower – with $13,800 in need-based student loan debt – an average of $4,400 over the life of the loan.”

Thanks to the College Cost Reduction and Access Act, which provides more than $20 billion in federal student aid over the next five years, interest rates on need-based (subsidized) federal student loans will drop from 6.8 percent to 6.0 percent on July 1st – making these loans more affordable for millions of low- and middle-income students. This is the first of step towards halving these interest rates – over the next few years these rates will continue to decrease until they reach 3.4 percent.

Low and middle income students and families benefit most form this plan as 6.8 million students borrow need-based federal student loans each year.

other benefits they can begin receiving this fall. For the 2008-2009 school year, the College Cost Reduction and Access Act will also increase the Pell Grant scholarship by $490 (raising the maximum award to $4,731) an provide up-front tuition assistance of $4,000 each year for students who commit to teaching high-need subjects in high-need public schools.