Hi everyone,

Happy new year! I hope the next year and decade are great for you all!

I wanted to briefly lay out what I'm trying to do to get OTY up and running for the 2020 election season.

The Website

First thing is the website. I've gone ahead and purchased organizetheyouth.org . Right now, it just redirects to vote.gov while we work on setting it all up. It will be pretty bare-bones when we launch it. The idea is just to have resources to get people registered, a way for people to get reminded to register if they are not old enough, and information on other social media accounts and our Reddit community. The idea here is basically to get a landing page for people who are not Redditors so that they can find all of our information.

The secondary reason for having the site is that I'd like to attend some youth movements and pass out our information on stickers and/or posters with QR codes. (Anyone else at these events could also do that) The code will take people to the website, and then they'll have everything they need right there. I'm not sure how expensive it is to print stickers and posters, but we'll see. Surely I could make at least one with a QR code for people to scan.

Social Media

I've created social media accounts on Twitter (@OrganizeYouth) and Instagram (@OrganizeTheYouth). I'm still not really sure what to do with them, and this is an area where your ideas would be greatly appreciated. Beyond retweeting articles and telling people to register, I'm not sure what to use them for. I don't want them to just be bot-like, because no one wants to see that. No matter what direction they end up going, I think they need a decent (more than 0) follower count before content and comments would start being seen high up on larger threads with more interaction, so if you can give them a follow, that'd be awesome!

Original Content

This is another area that is very open. Beyond registering to vote, there is not a lot of incentive for people to stick around and participate in the community. After the election as well, I would imagine there would be a pretty big drop in interaction. I want to avoid that because I think maintaining high levels of young voter turnout is and will always be an important task in American political life.

That all being said, I think a good way to encourage people to stick around would be via creating original content. I'm thinking short blog-type posts, maybe longer form deep-drive type of content, maybe even video content. This is very early in the idea phase, but I think it's good to have the idea floating around in case anyone has some inspiration.

I would really love to feature content created by people in high school and college. Do you feel strongly about a particular topic? Tell us about it. Want to sharpen your research or writing skills a bit by contributing to something larger? Write about it. Interested in making content for YouTube, or learning how to edit video? Create a video. I think featuring work by a lot of people would be awesome; I don't want OTY to stay a one-man operation forever. I think that everyone working together would bring great strength to everything we're trying to accomplish. Plus, there's the added benefit of having a place for budding creatives to share their work.

Conclusion

In conclusion then, 2020 is going to be busy and important for OTY. If you want to help out in any way, be it something mentioned above or something else entirely that you want to do, it is strongly encouraged and appreciated! As young people, we know the direction we want to take the world, and our opinions are as valid as anyone else's. Let's make our voices heard, get registered, get our friends registered, and vote!

Happy new year, everyone :)

Hi everyone! I'm very happy you're all here.

I just quickly wanted to say that OrganizeTheYouth is in its infancy. It's basically just me working on all of the content, outreach, management, and all that good stuff. Then it's basically one other person working on the website. We're working very hard, but expect it to be slow-going. We really want this to work out and we won't be giving up on it any time soon.

That being said, if you feel inspired to help out our little movement, that would be awesome! Whether it's artwork, content-writing, suggestions for the site or community, or even just spreading the word that we exist, OTY would certainly be better off for having your help. I'm really hoping a community can take root here.

That's all I have to say for now. I'm thinking this subreddit should be our main hub, but if you want, follow the other socials. Twitter: @OrganizeYouth and Instagram: @OrganizeTheYouth. They are currently content-less, but eventually I'll start posting on them as well.

Thanks! :)

One of the main reasons I started Organize The Youth as an online community with little obligation was because I wanted to reach out to people like myself: introverts. I am very introverted. Interacting with people in any way is usually fills me with dread. Even sharing this little bit about myself makes me uncomfortable. With that said, civic activities like knocking on doors, phone banking, talking to my representatives, joining civic organizations, or whatever else, all make me anxious and I don’t feel like I can do any of them.

But I see young activists like Greta Thunberg and Joshua Wong getting up and fighting for what they believe in, up in front of everyone. That inspires me to no end. But, being as introverted as I am, I still feel like I can’t do much. I don’t feel like I can take to the streets or even talk to strangers about a particular cause.

This gets at the heart of why I started Organize The Youth. You don’t have to be an activist to participate. You don’t have to talk to strangers about a cause. You don’t need to contact your representatives. Voting can be done virtually all on your own. You can get registered online in just a few minutes. On voting day, the only interaction you must have is showing someone your voting card and signing your name. It takes a few minutes to wait in line and vote, even less if you do early voting, and then it’s all over for two years.

It feels like a small thing, but it truly does make a big impact. Maybe your vote won’t decide an election, but you, combined with every other young person who made the effort to vote when they otherwise wouldn’t have, make the voice of every youth all around the country louder. This is how change happens. This is how we can support the groundwork of others. You vote really does matter and it really is important.

TL;DR: By voting, you can make your voice heard and help fellow young people without having to take to the streets, talk to strangers, or talk to your representatives. All you have to do is register and vote. Vote.gov

Hi all,

To help grow this community, please consider sharing it. Just linking to it in comment sections to provide it with more visibility would be a great help. I typically post about it in major news stories, but I don't want to become a spam bot. Having others occasionally share would help tremendously.

This movement can't happen unless we work together. People need to know about it so we can connect them with the resources they'll need to register to vote. Thanks for your contribution :)

The 18-29 age group has consistently had the lowest voter turnout of any age group for decades. Turnout is getting better, but we are still the least-active voters of any age demographic.

Politicians tend to appeal to the groups who wield the power to vote them out of office. If older generations consistently vote and younger generations consistently do not vote, then politicians will spend most of their time appealing to the older generations and will spend far less time worrying about what the younger generations think. We see this happening all the time and it leaves the youth feeling ignored, looked down on, and powerless.

With that said, the youth are not inherently powerless. We have power, we just have to show up and use it. The goal is therefore to make the youth voice a powerful force in American life through our votes. We have the power to make this change, but we have to take initiative, register to vote, and show up to vote. Please take 5 minutes and register to vote if you haven't already. Set an election day reminder in your phone for November 3rd, 2020.

This is the easiest part. You don't have to take to the streets. You don't have to donate money. You don't really have to spend any time beyond a few minutes. Just get yourself registered in advance of your state's registration deadlines. The easiest way is to just spend a few minutes and do it right now, then go back to scrolling the front page :)

TL;DR: We as young people have political power, we just need to use it. To use it, we need to vote. You may as well register to vote right now while you're thinking about it.

This subreddit is a place to organize the political power held by youth around the world. No matter where you are from, you deserve to be listened to and understood. We are loud when we are together. We are strong when we vote. It's time to organize ourselves and be heard.