From 9 to 10 am Central Time today, I’ll be on Minnesota Public Radio’s show called Midmorning with Kerri Miller. It’s a call-in show, so call in. My fellow guest will be Morley Winograd, co-author of Millenial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics. The topic is young people and politics.
Category Archives: audio and video
the Tea Party Movement and youth
On NPR’s Morning Edition, Don Gonyea reports on the efforts of the Tea Party conservative movement to recruit young voters and activists. He quotes me to the effect that young people much preferred Barack Obama in 2008, but they are still forming their opinions about government. They are suffering badly from the economic crisis, and–rightly or not–could decide that their hopes for a Democratic administration were misplaced. Especially if the Tea Party right seems libertarian rather than authoritarian and intolerant, it has a lot of potential to draw young voters. Young conservatives almost certainly stayed home in 2008, contributing to Obama’s 2:1 margin among people under 30. It would not be surprising if that ratio shifted a great deal in 2010 and beyond.
C-SPAN broadcasts our panel on the Obama Civic Agenda
Our Institute of Civic Studies last summer ended with a very spirited public debate about the Obama Administration’s Civic Agenda. Our “text” was candidate Barack Obama’s promise: “I will ask for your service and your active citizenship when I am President of the United States. This will not be a call issued in one speech or program; this will be a central cause of my presidency.” The questions we addressed included: What did Barack Obama mean? What should he have meant? What has the Administration done so far on this issue? What should it do? And what should we do? The speakers were:
- Alan D. Solomont (keynote), Chair, Corporation for National and Community Service
- Harry Boyte, University of Minnesota
- Archon Fung, Harvard University
- Marshall Ganz, Harvard University
- Carolyn J. Lukensmeyer, President and Founder, AmericaSpeaks
- Xolela Mangcu, University of Johannesburg
- Carmen Sirianni, Brandeis UniversityC-SPAN (a US cable channel) recorded the event and aired it this morning. The full video and some transcribed text is here. (Unfortunately, C-SPAN’s video is not embeddable on my blog.) We hope to create a short, edited version of this program, which is more than two hours long.
song of the citizen
(Move cursor after clicking play, and the tool bar will disappear.)
This video is provided courtesy of documentary filmmaker Jeffrey Abelson. It’s part of his “Song Of Citizen” project — a series of innovative Video Op-Eds for the internet exploring what it really means to be an engaged and effective citizen in modern times — how we-the-people are measuring up — how we can do better — and why we must.
For more information about the series, please visit http://www.songofacitizen.com, or Jeffrey’s blog at http://songofacitizen.blogspot.com
on the radio, talking about the Kennedy-Hatch Serve America Act
I was a guest this morning on WNPR, public radio in Connecticut. The hour-long call-in show is archived here. The topic was national and community service, and specifically the Kennedy-Hatch Serve America Act, on which I have blogged before. There were some good questions about whether paying for service cheapens it, whether AmeriCorps volunteers replace regular employees, and whether taxpayers should be required to fund service. There were also many supportive callers, and apparently more were on the line when we ended. My co-panelists were Chris Meyers Asch, proponent of a US Public Service Academy, and Gina McCarthy, Connecticut’s Commissioner of Environmental Protection (which is considering a state conservation corps).