Tag Archives: Democrat Party

To what extents young people are involved in community works and politics in the birthplace of American public education? And how they mobilize the organizational process? These are the questions which took me to the ‘Young Democrats of UGA’s weekly meeting in Athens yesterday. To explore about people’s participation in public policy I’ve met and talked with many people in last few months, but this was the first time I was in a kind of totally political meeting.

Of course, I did not participate in the meeting, but I ‘observed’ the meeting as a foreign scholar working with a Public Outreach unit at the university, did not say a single world or contributed to anything. Around 30 students participated in the meeting titled ‘Spooky Politics’. Trendy name it is! After all, this is the Halloween week.

It was a classroom, number 348, in the Miller Learning Center. When I arrived on time at 6.30 in the evening, the Pizza time was almost over, so the discussion began. Scheduled for one hour the meeting went to super overtime, ended around 8.

My top takeaway from this meeting of Democrat Party’s young supporters is that they conducted the session in a very effectively minimalist way. There was an exclusively fun part, a Costume Contest where only the guy with ‘Richard Nixon’ mask failed to win a prize. And there were no ceremonial or ‘motivational’ fiery speeches in the meeting like we see in Asian countries. It was something between a responsive Briefing Session about recent political developments and a kind of a moderated ‘Talking Point’.

There was an MS PowerPoint presentation for the whole program divided into some categories; local and national news, weekly actions, forthcoming local and national legislative agendas, and the ways students can contribute in taking actions about those agendas. Almost, every discussion came with some recommendations about how the students can engage themselves in the process.

Secondly, the students seemed to have a strong and sincere conviction to their liberal cause. When discussing recent political news and forthcoming agendas, topics related to public infrastructure, and environmental sustainability got more importance. And when discussing the latest ‘Terror Attack’ in New York, the presenter Ruth Pannill was careful about the contents. The reason there was no visuals on the slide probably was not a technical glitch, but a conscious decision. ‘It’s important that this kind of terror attack is not being exploited to spread Islamophobia’, she said.

Thirdly, the student politics are heavily partisan too. A lot of discussions was about the forthcoming Georgia state legislative special elections. It seemed the students are seriously taking part in the campaign because if the Republican party wins they will retain their ‘Supermajority’ which gives them the power to change the state constitution.

The local Democrat candidate is Deborah Gonzalez. Ms. Gonzalez is a Latina who raised her two children as a single mom. The meeting was apparently happy about the fact that in contrast to the Republicans, their candidate is not a white male.

The Republican candidate 22-year-old Houston Gaines was heavily criticized at the meeting for his alleged failure to elaborate on important public issues. One of the presenters mentioned that in an electoral forum Mr. Gaines who is a former student body president at UGA, even failed to elaborate on what ‘unique perspective’ he will bring to the state legislature. At a point in that forum, the UGA graduate said, ‘It’s obvious just by looking at us that we have a different perspective’. Young Democrats also made fun of Mr. Gaines for this. Terming him a ‘man-child’, one of the student leaders said, as if being white and man is a perspective.

And another important note; the participants were most responsive when the discussion entered into ‘crazy things’ the current Republican president is doing. Almost everyone has something to say about it.

Lastly, the students seemed very engaged about any discussion on ‘legislative’ process. After discussing recent and forthcoming legislative agendas at both state and federal level, the students were asked to reach out their representatives with feedback and demands. Texting, calling and attending town halls, ‘make them scared for the midterms if they are doing shitty things’, one of the leaders said.

Also, turns out, the students think it is really difficult to find out important decisions and processes from House and Senate website, mostly because of acronym-infested and jargon-filled language.

So, of course, it was only a single meeting, which I decided not to ‘participate’. One can’t possibly know much more as an observer. Probably, at the meeting, I’ve got some ideas about how politically active young people see their potentials to shape public policies in the USA.

But I look forward to more one to one and group conversations with the southern youth. In a country where most college graduates are deep in the financial crisis with all the loans and so on, there should be more intriguing perspectives from the youth to find out.

I’m looking forward to exploring more about their thoughts about policies which oftentimes negatively impact the access to natural resources by families which eventually leads to more fiscal spending and debt.