The news outlets are all reporting that the youth vote didn't turnout.

This is dead wrong.

The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement is reporting that Young Voter turnout increased by 4.6 million over 2000 levels.  Turnout for young voters topped 50% for the first time since 1972, when 18 year olds first gained the right to vote.  In battleground states, turnout among 18-29 year olds was at an unprecedented 64.4%.

Even more incredible - young voters broke 54%-44% in favor of John Kerry.  Young voters spoke out this year, and they chose a progressive future by a 10 point margin.  This is a huge improvement from 2000, when Bush and Gore split the vote.

Democrats are going to need those voters to turn out again in 2006 and 2008.  I'd ask everyone to take that into consideration and do what you can to make sure the media reports this accurately.

In the last decade, tuition at college has jumped more than 40%.  Pell Grants, which help low-income families afford college - used to cover 84% of a student's tuition.  Now they cover less than 40%.  The average student finishes her education with $16k in debt.  This fact alone will price hundreds of thousands of students out of college in the next decade.

Higher education is a right, not a privilege for the wealthy few.  Without it, you'll make less money per year and be less likely to have health insurance.  That is, if you are lucky enough to find a job in today's market.

Here's a look at John Kerry and George Bush's plans for higher education and my own personal rundown on how it all shakes out:

Welcome to the special Republican National Convention Edition" of Music for America's Partisan Jab!

Those of us living in New York are by now in the throws of the madness, excitement, confusion and dread surrounding the 2004 RNC.  But luckily, our Mayor Bloomberg has had the foresight and compassion to translate any ill-will toward the hordes of invading Republicans into gratitude - in the form of great discounts!

This Jab has three (count 'em 3) parts, so be sure to check them all. It gets funnier as you go.

Last week, the Mayor's office announced a program to provide special deals to activists and protesters in town for the convention.  Partisan Jab's own Jason Woliner was given the honor of shooting three promotional spots for the program. While they never wound up making it to the airwaves, we're proud to showcase them here.

To find out more about the Peaceful Political Activist Discounts, click here!

Also, Partisan Jab firmly endorses the Pleasure Boat Captains For Truth.  Check it out, it's a great site. And it's important.

Here is the official announcement of Music for America's plans for the RNC and the Fall.  If any of you bloggers will be in New York, myself (Mike Connery) and Josh (Outlandish) Koenig will be haning around the Tank where we will be teaching classes on Internet Activism and grassroots media campaigns.  If y'all want to chat, don't be shy.

MUSIC FOR AMERICA LAUNCHES "VOTER X" AT THE REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION

70 Organizer Trainings During the Day and 12 Concerts at Night Will Transform Protestors into Organizers and Activate the Youth Vote for November and Beyond

NEW YORK, NY - The mainstream media is fixated on the dispute between protestors and New York City, but the real response to the Republican National Convention (RNC) won't be found out on the streets or in the Park.  It will be in clubs and theater spaces where Music for America will launch "Voter X" (www.voterx.com) - a campaign to spread the word to young voters that we are the only X factor capable of tipping this election. Voter X also includes the information, training, and tools we need to organize through social networks and communities.

Voter X is an unprecedented coalition of young, independent political groups and cultural communities who are serious about moving beyond protest and giving our combined membership of 500,000 progressives the means to organize their communities for the 2004 election and beyond. Voter X kicks off in New York City during the Republican National Convention with 70 training workshops, run by groups such as Music for America, Billionaires for Bush, Indy Voter, People for the American Way, Students for a Sensible Drug Policy and more, designed to turn protestors into swing state organizers.  <!--break-->

Voter X trainings will teach the protestors how to organize media campaigns, coordinate online activism, and administer traditional get out the vote and grassroots efforts.  The Voter X coalition will publicize these trainings to protestors by distributing over 100,000 "training menus" at protests throughout the week.  The menus (attached) will list all Voter X events during the RNC.  If only 15 people attend each training session, Voter X will successfully transform more than 1000 protestors into local organizers.

While trainings take place during the day, Music for America, Involver, Def Jux Records and the Imagine Festival will orchestrate the cultural response to the RNC's radical agenda at night. Involver will host a series of shows at the Knitting Factory - with performances by The Nightwatchman (Tom Morello), Spearhead, OK Go, Trans Am and more.  Def Jux will hold a benefit for Music for America titled "Who's America", Air America host and Public Enemy founder Chuck D will emcee the event, which features El-P, Aesop Rock, The Perceptionists, Hanger, Dieselboy and Junior Sanchez on September 1st. The Imagine Festival will present over 200 cultural events in the course of 6 days, including concerts, performances, forums, town meetings, exhibits, screenings, and other issue-based artworks (see attachment for details).

Music for America will be registering and educating voters at Def Jux and all Involver events, as well as a significant portion of Imagine events.  Throughout the week, MfA staffers and participating artists, as well as select clips from the Def Jux Benefit will appear on Fuse TV, a cable music television station.

Summing up Voter X activities during the RNC, Music for America co-founder Franz Hartl said:

"This isn't just about disputes between the protestors and the city - this is about the future of America. The real swing vote this year is the 17 million 18-24 year olds who are voting for the first time.  In a 50/50 nation, we're the only X factor that can tip this election.  We're telling our generation that they can't just get pissed.  They have to get involved.  Protest is important, but it is not enough.  We have to move beyond protest and get active.  That means organizing our communities and our social networks, and above all - showing up at the polls.  If that happens, this election is ours for the taking."

Voter X does not end once all the delegates go home.  The RNC is just the kick-off that Music for America and the Voter X coalition will use to activate our communities and channel our efforts into the swing states this fall.  In September, Voter X will hold a series of Get Out The Vote / Voter Education concerts organized by Music for America and partnering record labels.  Concertgoers and visitors to the Voter X website (URL?)  will be given the opportunity to hook up with members of the Voter X coalition and pick from 15 different direct-action opportunities that will help them make an impact on the November election.  Action items will range from simple, online activities to large-scale, self-organized projects in the field, and will vary in style from the highly political to the cultural.

I thought you all might be interested in this event we are sponsoring at Music for America:

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Music for America and the 2020 Democrats present a Q&A with culture war veteran, Danny Goldberg, author of Dispatches from the Culture Wars: How the Left Lost Teen Spirit.

When: Wednesday, August 25th, 3pm
Where: www.musicforamerica.org

This is pretty cool. Danny has been in the trenches fighting for artists and progressive values during almost every collision of politics and music in the last 30 years.

During his career in the music businees, he has worked with some amazing artists - Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Led Zeppelin and the Beastie Boys to name a few.  He is currently President of Artemis Records and the Southern California chapter of the ACLU, and has been a board member of both Rock the Vote and the Creative Coalition.

Join us as we wax philosophic with Danny about the role of music and culture in progressive politics and talk about the current state of the culture war, as well as the grassroots efforts of Music for
America, Punk Voter and the Vote for Change Tour to create a new cultural/political movement.  If we're lucky, maybe we can get Danny to tell some bad-ass stories about working with Zeppelin. We hear there is a really good one about a fish.

To help set the agenda for the Q&A, contribute questions for Danny to answer in the MfA Bookclub forum.

The interview will be in streaming audio format with Danny answering questions we submit to him prior to the interview, as well as answering follow-up qustions. We'll announce more details about how follow-ups will work before the interview begins.

This week's edition is a fake "biography" advertisment rebranding Dick Cheney's cantankerous image.  Enjoy:

http://www.musicforamerica.org/jab

Music for America is a 527 GOTV organization.  We hook up with bands and large music tours and do voter registration and education.  We take a number of issues that affect young people (18-30) such as unemployment, higher education costs, the Iraq War, media reform, etc. and show our generation how these issues relate to our lives, and how getting involved in politics can help change these things for the better.  We've also got a pretty kick-ass website running off the brand-spanking new CivicSpace software (Deanspace version 2.0 for those not in the know).

Right now, Music for America needs your help.  We're trying to raise $15,000 dollars to help us fund 15 1000+ person concerts in the swing states during the final days of voter registration.  So far we've raised about $3000, but we need the the help of the entire progressive community if we're going to reach our goal.

For those of you who are skeptical re: the power of the youth vote, or the success of a concert-based model for GOTV, we have a saying at MfA: Remember Florida: A Concert can make a difference.  

537 votes is smaller than the average concert size and it will cerainly be smaller than the size of the conerts we throw (two of which will be in Florida).  

So if you can, help us out - $5, $10, every bit helps.

--Smiley

Every movie critic, political pundit, news anchor, talk show host, and lunch-line joker has spent the last weeks pontificating to the masses about Michael Moore's new documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11.  They are all dazzled by the amount of money the film has made (after Disney predicted politics would be a loser at the box office).  Some are scandalized by Moore's speculations and rumor-mongering (even though there has been no serious challenge to the facts of the film).  They are all proclaiming Moore a partisan hack (as if this is news), and questioning the movie's status as a documentary.  And guess what?  Most are completely missing the point.

Moore's film engages politics using a pop-culture medium that is embraced by the American people.  Films like Super Size Me and Capturing the Freidmans, or subcultural hits like Scratch and Dog Town and Z Boys have made documentaries a trendy piece of America culture. As a part of that trend, F 9/11 captures the attention of voters in a way that neither mainstream media nor a political campaign can.  This is the reason Moore's film is important.

Like Harry Potter, which inspired 8 year-olds (and 30 year olds who wouldn't read the TV Guide) to line up at midnight for an 800-page novel, Fahrenheit 9/11 is a cultural phenomenon that has transformed apolitical people into amateur policy wonks.  As a Music for America artist recently said, "you don't have to know what you're talking about when you're with your friends in the bar, but you've got to talk politics." Moore's film is furthering this transformation, and in the process, it is taking enormous strides to reinvigorate our body politic.

Moore's film is successful because it fills a void left by a national media that cannot be relied upon to present a fair and balanced - or even relevant -view of events, and a two party system that cannot communicate effectively with average Americans.  Fahrenheit 9/11 shatters the Bush Administration's myth of 9/11 and the "War on Terror," delivering a barrage of facts that were either underreported, or not reported at all.   The film is far more successful than the candidates or parties at getting Americans to engage in politics, and has bridged the gap between the unbridgeable Red State/Blue State divide.  (Even Dale Earnhardt Jr., a cultural icon of the "Red States," has taken his pit crew to see the movie and recommended it to his fans.)

This is not politics exploiting culture for its own gain, as we are used to. This is greater than Michael Moore's personal partisanship.  This is not Clinton on the Arsenio Hall Show.  This is our culture flexing its power to reshape politics.

The parties and partisans are taking notice. The FEC is seeking to regulate Fahrenheit 9/11 as "electioneering." Conservative groups set to release their own movie discrediting Moore.  President Bush recently declared to the press that it was his job to change culture.  Culture is waking up to its power and they are afraid.

They are afraid because Moore's film is one piece of a larger cultural movement. From organization like Music for America and Punk Voter, to amateur remixes and film shorts on the Net and professional works like Fahrenheit 9/11, the culture is realizing that it has the power to control politics in America.  It is realizing that it has a responsibility to fill the void left by a political process that encourages apathy and a news media that ensures the public knows more about Mary-Kate Olsen than the reasons we went to war.  This realization is a powerful thing, and it is the true story behind Fahrenheit 9/11.