Wear Your Politics

by Laura Nahmias and Amy Tennery

Far From the Ivory Tower

By Brent Lang

Allison Lacko, 20, exhaled deeply, checked the address of a bedraggled row house with the one on her sheet, and knocked on the front door.

No answer. She rapped again – more forcefully. Something rustled inside and a chain lock jerked free from its runner. A man peered out and scowled as he glanced at Lacko and her clipboard.

Undeterred, Lacko launched into her trademark opener: “Hi, I’m Allison. I’m a volunteer for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign checking to make sure everyone here is registered to vote on Nov. 4th. Are you registered?”

Over the next seven hours, Lacko worked to get past the same resistance as she knocked on more than 100 doors in south Philadelphia, an overwhelmingly African-American section of the city where crime and drugs are endemic and 30% of the people live below the poverty line. Lacko is a foot soldier in an army of thousands of predominantly white, college-age kids descending on Pennsylvania in a last-ditch effort to register voters and swing the state to the left.  Deployed every weekend by the Obama campaign, the College Democrats of America, and regional chapters of Students for Obama, this massive get-out-the-vote effort has led many experts and historians to compare Obama’s ability to electrify young Americans with that of President John F. Kennedy, who inspired a rising generation of voters with his 1960 run for the White House.

Since Obama announced his candidacy nearly two years ago, Lacko — who had never worked in politics before — has become a seasoned campaign veteran, traveling to Ohio to help with voter drives and going door-to-door in Brooklyn and Manhattan on behalf of the Democratic National Committee. She’s developed a system for fighting off the mixture of fear, fatigue and disappointment brought on by hours of canvassing. Her prescription: a fixed smile, a military adherence to the campaign’s script and a playlist of power ballads by Queen and Van Halen.

“I always keep in mind what I’m fighting for,” said Lacko on a recent Saturday, as she slogged door to door. “I don’t think I could do it otherwise.”

On that day, Lacko and seven fellow Columbia students parachuted into Philadelphia at the behest of the college’s chapter of Students for Obama to sign up new voters before the registration deadline the following Monday. Though varied in their beliefs, socio-economic backgrounds and political experience, what unified the students was a deep concern about the direction of the country.

It is a concern that has been tapped effectively by Obama’s campaign, which has seen its 78 Pennsylvania field offices swell with college volunteers in recent weeks. These students make phone banks calls, distribute literature, arrange rides to the polls, and, like Lacko’s group, press those in heavily African-American and other traditionally Democratic neighborhoods to register to vote.

With Republicans experiencing a net loss of 28,000 registered voters in Pennsylvania over the past year, Obama’s get-out-the-vote effort has bolstered the ranks of registered Democrats in the state by more than 500,000 since last November. Yet Pennsylvania, with its enclaves of blue-collar workers, proved problematic for Obama in its April primary, going to Sen. Hillary Clinton by a margin of 9 percentage points. And despite having landed in Sen. John Kerry’s column in the 2004 presidential election, Pennsylvania remains a battleground state. Campaign analysts contend that Obama’s ability to win this state and its 21 electoral votes hinges on maximizing voter turnout in urban areas where Democratic support is strongest.

And so, under handmade signs that read “Respect,” “Empower,” and “Include,” college students from out of state furiously assembled voter identification packets at Obama’s south Philadelphia campaign headquarters. Others sent out bands of canvassers in staggered shifts to register as many voters as possible. The bulk of the volunteers were under 30 years old and for many, it was their first foray into politics.

This youth infusion isn’t unique to Pennsylvania. Voters aged 18-29 are avidly following the race and are twice as enthusiastic about Obama as McCain, according to Rock the Vote, a non-profit organization that engages younger voters in the electoral process. The group’s’ poll of 500 young people in September found that more than 10% are translating their enthusiasm into volunteer work – activity that’s apparent across the nation, said spokeswoman Stephanie Young.

Residents of south Philadelphia didn’t always echo the students’ passion for the campaign. Many people opened their front door only halfway, responded curtly through cracked windows, or shouted that they weren’t interested. Even those who did support Obama were irritable when pressed about their registration status or their willingness to volunteer.

But others responded enthusiastically, singing out encouragement and thanking volunteers for their hard work. Some expressed dismay that more young African Americans people were not involved. “I seen five white people walking around and no blacks,” Kyle Well, a south Philadelphia resident, said to Aditya Mukerjee, 19, as he canvassed. “Kids here should be helping. How are they gonna get change?’

Dario Abramskiehn, 20, who coordinated the trip and has been on past voter drives, winced at the disconnect between the comparatively privileged lives of the Columbia canvassers and the hardscrabble existence of the people they were pressing to vote for Obama.

“It can be hard,” said Abramskiehn. “You have to be sure not to exhibit privilege or condescension. You just accept that you look like an outsider.”

As the canvassers trudged from one door to another, they found a neighborhood pockmarked with abandoned homes, victims of the foreclosure crisis, making it nearly impossible to find current addresses for likely supporters. Even in homes that were occupied, it was often difficult to engage residents long enough to confirm that their names matched those on the Obama campaign’s lists. Others were unsure about whether all eligible voters in the household were registered, and still others slammed the door before providing up-to-date phone numbers.

Yet these difficulties did little to cool the ardor of the members of the Columbia expedition. By 10:30, as the waited for the bus that would ferry them back to New York, many exuberantly vowed to travel to Virginia and Ohio in the days before the election.

Whether they would spend election night south of the Mason-Dixon or west of the Alleghenies, all agreed that this time their generation would make a difference.

Finding Love on the Campaign Trail

By Laura Nahmias

The roof deck of a Lower East Side apartment is swarming with young men and women, alternately eyeing each other and the rowdy line for the kegs. But this is no frat party; this is a Barack Obama fundraiser.

More than 200 Obama related events are slated for the three weeks before Election Day in New York City alone, according to BarackObama.com, the campaign’s official website, and many of them have an electricity that’s not just political. To a large degree, these events have been planned by the under-30 set that forms a substantial bloc of Barack’s most passionate followers. And while the events are nominally devoted to Obama, the combination of youth, fervor (political and otherwise) and alcohol often breeds a passion that isn’t just directed at Barack Obama.

Is Barack the new aphrodisiac?

There are more Obama events scheduled these last few weeks in New York City than there are concert listings and scheduled book readings for the same time frame in The New Yorker, a staple read of the same demographic in this city. If you’re out looking for a place to meet people, chances are, there’s a Barack Obama party near you. The events have names like Beers for Barack or Barack Rocks and their mandatory donations are usually in the small amounts that Obama’s younger supporters can afford.

Nick Earhart, 23, attended such an event six weeks ago. “I went to the fundraiser because it seemed like a good deal,” said Earhart, who describes himself as “politically apathetic” and has never even voted. “It cost $20, local breweries and wine distributors provided booze, there was a DJ, and we all got together and had a pretty good time.” The bonus? He met a woman there whom he is now dating.

Since when did political parties start to look like real parties? Older voters might remember similar boisterousness surrounding Jack Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy but the Obama campaign has a new weapon in its arsenal to transform exuberance into action: the internet. Both Barack’s official site and his membership organization mimic the Facebook.com, a hugely popular social networking site where members exchange information with one another and plan events. The similarities between the two sites are blurring the lines between being social and being political for a new generation.

No wonder. One of Facebook’s founders, 25-year-old Chris Hughes, left that company and signed on to develop Obama’s social networking organization at MyBarackObama.com. The site’s template is similar to Facebook’s, making it easy for Obama supporters who are web-savvy to devise, post, and publicize events from their computers.

At MyBarackObama.com, users can upload profiles and photos of themselves, and look at the profiles of people signed up to attend events in their neighborhood. Users can check out the “hotness” of event attendees in advance, which for some supporters is an added incentive to show up. Whether this is an intentional strategy of the Obama campaign is unclear. The website team could not be reached for comment.

Anna Shechtman, an 18-year-old freshman at Swarthmore and New York City native said she got involved with the Obama campaign through his website. Almost immediately after creating a profile on the campaign’s main website, Obama organizers enlisted her to go to New Hampshire for the primary last winter. There she made a connection that was more Danielle Steele than Jim Lehrer.

Anna went door to door with a small group of strangers, and ended up falling for one college kid in particular. The two one upped each other on Obama knowledge, and bonded through the day as they were rebuffed by some residents and welcomed by others.

“The hardships definitely facilitated flirting,” In the weeks after, “we continued our relationship based on very specific events in the primaries, like when we smoked cigars together when Hillary dropped out of the race.”

The relationship has since ended, says Shechtman, though it’s not Obama’s fault. In fact, the Obama campaign turned out to be the only thing the two had in common.

It’s no wonder that politically passionate romances fall closely along party lines, said Regina Barreca, a professor of English and Feminist Studies at the University of Connecticut, noting that one’s political affiliation often says a great deal about ones values, beliefs and emotional sensibilities.

She gave the example of her graduate student, who has said she could never date a Republican. “She said it in the same tone of voice that she might have used to say, ‘I could never date someone who never brushes his teeth,’ or ‘I could never date someone who kicks puppies,’ ” Barreca said.

Young people dedicated to Obama’s politics are likely to view his fundraisers as plausibly productive singles events because most people they meet there share a baseline set of Democratic values.

However, campaign-bred romance is not an Obama-specific phenomenon, said Barreca:

“The hothouse atmosphere of a campaign where ideas, emotions, hopes, and strategies are all compressed by the idea of a deadline — I don’t think it surprises anybody to find that passionate discussions lead to other kinds of passionate expression.”

What is new is the unprecedented number of young people participating in this year’s campaign, and the level of their enthusiasm: Youth voter turnout in this year’s primaries doubled that of four years ago, indicating the largest youth involvement in an election in recent history, according to a recent Rock The Vote poll.

In January of 2008, Playboy Magazine conducted a Politics of Sex poll of 900 registered voters and concluded “more people under 40 have sex at least once a week than vote for president once every four years.”

This November, that statistic just might change, as more young New Yorkers discover that they can accomplish the former simply by demonstrating their intention to do the latter.

Barack-’n-Roll: Pro-Obama Musicians Reach out to Youth in Unprecedented Ways

By Zahra Hankir

Sign up for Music for Democracy and you might get a call on Election Day from Barbara Streisand or Chingy, telling you why Barack Obama should be the next president of the United States.

That is just one of many unusual efforts linking musicians and the web in unprecedented ways to influence the youth vote. Unlike past presidential races, musicians and their followers are now engaging in the political process, mostly to promote Barack Obama. This goes beyond mere endorsements, like those of high-profile stars like Alicia Keys, Justin Timberlake and Sean ‘P. Diddy’ Combs, and it goes beyond music-related organizing by the Obama campaign itself.

Indeed, most of the impetus has come from artists themselves. Scores of musicians have held Obama fundraising concerts in New York City, from big name, big-ticket Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel, to $15-a-head concerts at tiny venues in the outer boroughs. And all of them have used the Internet to fuse together their music and Obama’s politics.

“The sense of urgency, and on the flip side, opportunity, is even greater now for musicians and audiences hoping to see a change that goes beyond style,” said Mark Pedelty, a professor at the University of Minnesota who has studied the relationship between music and politics. “Some of Obama’s strongest supporters also have a strong interest in popular music, and have that youthful belief that the music means something bigger than themselves.”

Among those pushing this message is a small group of young activists in New York who created an online initiative they call Music for Democracy, which aims to bridge the gap between politicians, musicians and youth. “Music for Democracy gives musicians the tools and the pedestal to say that we need to vote for Obama, that we want change,” said 23-year-old Bear Kittay, a musician and founder of the effort.

Thirty-four-year-old jazz pianist Aaron Goldberg is one of the artists who wants that change. He produced and performed in “Jazz for Obama,” a concert in Manhattan in early October, raising $60,500 for the campaign. “Pretty much everywhere we would tour, we were looked at as representatives of America, and it’s pretty clear to me that George Bush doesn’t represent me or America,” said Goldberg. “I felt that I had to do something… to create a sense of unity and activism behind a man and a party to give us hope.”

Adrienne Landry, a 28-year-old New Yorker, organized “Disc-O-bama,” a fundraising disco event in Kansas, a swing state, in September. It was, she said, a “way for young adults to get their groove on while becoming more politically involved by registering to vote and financially contribute to the Obama campaign.” The event raised $1,100 and registered 30 new voters.

The Obama campaign itself is also using music to reach potential supporters. His Facebook page lists his favorite artists (Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Bach and The Fugees), and he’s also worked in numerous references to pop music in interviews, even telling the press that his top iPod picks include Jay-Z and Beyonce songs. The campaign has an official soundtrack featuring hot, young artists like Kanye West and John Mayer. And the official Obama website has links to 60 music groups such as “New York Musicians for Obama” and “Classical musicians for Obama.”

At the same time, Obama has distanced himself from some of the music that swirls around him, publicly criticizing the glorification of materialism, casual sex and bling in rap lyrics. When he accepted his nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, his campaign played a country anthem, “Only in America” in the background.

Of course, John McCain has his music backers too, such as country singers Gretchen Wilson and John Rich. But artists have tended to sing most loudly for Obama, said Pedelty, adding, “Pop, rock and hip hop videos look a lot more like an Obama rally than a McCain-Palin event.” The entertainment and music industry donated $24 million to the Democrats in 2008, but only $8 million to Republicans, according to opensecrets.org.

The connection between pop culture, music and politics is propelled by a technological leap, with blogs, social networks and YouTube all being tapped by artists wanting to participate in the political process. Examples abound: The popular “Yes We Can” and “We are the ones” music videos launched on YouTube by artist will.i.am feature a number of pop, hip hop stars and even actors.

Music for Democracy has organized concerts in swing states, such as “Rock for Barack” in New Mexico, and encourages even little known artists to use a widget on their own websites to send their small cadre of fans to the Music for Democracy site. On Election Day, Music for Democracy will also send voice mails – both pre-recorded messages and live phone calls from musicians – to people registered on the site, reminding them to vote for Obama.

The group’s members hope this year’s efforts foreshadow an even bigger presence in the 2010 congressional race. “By that time, we hope to be well entrenched so that politicians will be thinking they really need to plan for the youth vote with the help of music,” said Executive Director Mitch Manzella. “Music is our church. The days of the fat guy smoking a cigar who is the head of the Democratic Party in each state are gone,” Kittay said. “We’re talking about a Facebook society and in this society, we win.”

Who R U Vting 4?

By Sarah Breger

Last Wednesday, Jonathan Wachter received a text message reminding him to watch the presidential debate.

It wasn’t from a friend or relative but from Barack Obama himself.

Wachter is one of millions of people who have signed up to receive text messages from the Obama campaign, a sign of the 21^st century twist on yard signs and bumper stickers. Supporters today use text messages, iPhone applications and Facebook pages as a means to show support for their favorite candidates.

More than any other recent campaign, Barack Obama’s organizers have embraced the technology that has so engrossed and transformed America’s youth. His campaign is exploiting its odd blend of novelty, instant intimacy and vast reach, in order to mobilize the youth vote on Nov. 4.

“Mobile phones in general are changing the way candidates interact with voters and the way the public interacts with candidates and elected officials,” said Katrin Verclas, a mobile technology expert and the co-founder and coordinator of www.mobileactive.org. “The Obama campaign has most impressively figured that out and has a solid mobile program that is integrated in their overall campaign.”

Obama’s organizers recently introduced an iPhone application that can turn a “Joe-six-pack” into a grassroots campaigner. The main feature of the application is the “Call Your Friends” tool that prioritizes the phone’s contact list by battleground states, encouraging the phone owner to call friends in those states to remind them to vote — presumably for Obama.

A day after the application was released, 1,063 people had used it to make 21,460 calls, according the application’s home page. While there is no way to trace the effect of these calls, the very existence of the tool has reinforced Obama’s image as hip and current.

John McCain’s campaign has not created a text messaging option for supporters.

But voters between the ages of 18-29 are more likely to vote if they are reminded via text message to do so, according to a study of 4,000 voters during the 2006 election. The study, conducted Princeton University and the University of Michigan, found those who received a reminder text were 4 percent more likely to vote than those who did not. And though the percent is small, both nominees are fighting hard for every extra vote.

“Text messaging is a great way to reach young, mobile populations, to reach people who aren’t at their doors, aren’t available via landline phone and don’t really read their mail,” said Aaron Strauss, co-author of the study, in a phone interview.

The Obama campaign has aggressively courted voters to sign up to receive text messages. At rallies and at the Obama website, they are encouraged to send the message GO to OBAMA (62262) to receive updates.

Obama generated a huge buzz when he announced he would first publicize his pick for vice president via text message. Over 2.9 million people received the VP text, according to a report by the mobile division of the Neilson company.

While some may dismiss Obama’s actions as gimmicks, they allow the campaign to collect a huge database of potential voters’ phone numbers who can be prodded to vote come election day.

And for those Luddites in the electorate, there is still hope. Obama just bought a 30-minute ad during prime time television for Oct. 29.