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Youth Training and the Strategy of the Right
by Rich Cowan
Buoyed by the Republican victory in Congress, young conservative organizers gathered in July 1995 at George Washington University to celebrate at the National Conservative Student Conference. “The revolution is about you,” enthused keynote speaker Newt Gingrich to a cheering crowd of over 300. These students attended workshops and nightly dinner banquets where they met peers sharing similar views and mingled with conservative luminaries, including Ralph Reed, Oliver North, Jack Kemp, Dinesh D’Souza, and Sonny Bono. The Young Americas Foundation heavily subsidized the $1,000-per-person cost of this event.
This event demonstrated the high priority the Right gives to young activists. The success of the 17th annual National Conservative Student Conference was the culmination of a long-term investment in conservative student organizing which began even before the election of Ronald Reagan. A chief architect of this strategy was Reagan advisor Morton Blackwell, who wrote in Conservative Digest (1/85):
Success in the political process is very largely determined by the number and effectiveness of the respective sides. After 25 years... I have learned that while it’s possible to take a competent opportunist and make that person philosophically sound, it’s far easier to take people who are committed philosophically and make them technically proficient... We are convinced that the conservative movement will increase its success in direct proportion to the number of new activists we create.
Blackwell’s deeds followed his words. He founded the Virginia-based Leadership Institute in 1986, which has since provided free training on basic journalism and organizing skills to over 10,000 young conservatives. As Executive Director of the Council for National Policy (whose 400+ members include Reed, Richard Viguerie, Howard Phillips, Ed Meese, Pierre DuPont, and Pat Robertson), he formed a Youth Council of 84 young people who now participate in the council’s annual strategy retreat.
When I was a student activist at MIT in the mid-1980s, our counterparts on the Right received political training. I now realize that its purpose was not only to counter our anti-apartheid and anti-SDI activism. The larger motive was to groom young people for future leadership positions. Ralph Reed’s “stealth tactics” did not start with his Christian Coalition efforts to take over school boards; they started years earlier with College Republicans President Ralph Reed’s campaign to take over liberal student governments.
The Opportunity for Tomorrow
We are fortunate today that as soon as the Right gained power in Congress, they ended their stealth tactics and revealed their agenda. The outcry against the budget cuts of the “Contract on America” restored a much-needed sense of unity and camraderie among progressive organizers, especially on college campuses. It defeated the Istook proposals to restrict student and nonprofit political activity. It bought us some time to increase our capacity to develop new organizers, in an environment where religious and economic conservative groups continue to invest at least $20 million annually for this purpose.
The silver lining in the black cloud of the “Republican Revolution” is that progressive politics — which only two years ago were stigmatized as “politically correct” — are respectable again. This year, the AFL-CIO’s 1996 “Union Summer” campaign further popularized progressive politics on campus by providing paid training to 1,000 young activists. Many students who formed campus coalitions in 1995 are now forging linkages with community groups. Attacks on the social safety net and affirmative action have narrowed the gulf between community service and political action groups, and increased the involvement of students of color and low income students.
This increased participation can last beyond the 1996 election, if progressive organizations and foundations can take a cue from the Right, and develop a comprehensive and coordinated strategy to foster long-term political commitment among young high school and college activists. Here is the Right’s strategy:
• Funding for youth activism and journalism is an investment to sustain the life of a movement. It develops future members and organizers and affects the intellectual discourse on campus — even though it may not quickly lead to electoral involvement or measurable policy changes at the national level.
• Grassroots training programs can be developed as long-term institutions serving and sustaining many groups, so that they will be less vulnerable to the funding fluctuations and shifting priorities of parent or single-issue groups.
• Students on different campuses need opportunities to come together regionally or nationally to develop the sense of participation in a national movement.
• Administrative and fundraising skills for maintaining membership organizations can be introduced to students while still in school. This can help campus organizations sustain themselves after individual members graduate and equip students to contribute to the stability of grassroots non-profit groups after they graduate.
• Paid internships, apprenticeships, and entry-level jobs that provide liveable wages can develop young talent and commitment, reducing burnout.
• Students need opportunities to interact with professors and organizer/ mentors who have been successful at maintaining their commitment to activism or journalism.
• Youth training, electoral efforts and community groups can be linked so that the energy expended to train a volunteer base for a political campaign can be used between elections, and so that electoral campaigns do not have to start from scratch.
• “Activism” is an ordinary part of democratic participation — not just for “policy wonks” or those on the ideological fringe.
Greater civic participation is needed to counter the antidemocratic trends toward corporate financing of the media and the exploitation by religious conservatives of low voter turnout. The linkage of thousands of student groups to community and labor groups can increase political fervent both on and off campus. The democracy movement of the 21st Century will increase its success in direct proportion to the number of new activists we can sustain.
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