Beyond the ballot
If you want intelligent information about the election, ask a kid
By Liz Hedrick 09/25/2008
“Please excuse my daughter from last night’s algebra homework. She was working for the future of our country,” is a variation on a note that some local parents have had to write in the months preceding the 2008 presidential election.
Despite their own ineligibility to vote, throngs of high school and even junior high school students are choosing to spend their free time as volunteers for political campaigns — and not because their schools require it, or because they were coerced by their parents or are padding college applications. Rather, it appears these kids truly care.
On Sunday afternoon, the Pasadena Area United Democratic Party Headquarters on South Lake Avenue was bustling with young volunteers meeting to discuss this week’s list of projects and to exchange information about the campaign.
Some 20 chairs arranged in a close circle were filled by a racially diverse group of students ranging in age from 13 to 17. In the center of the circle sat Martin Medrano, who was awarded the Judy Boggs Memorial Internship earlier this year by the local Democratic group ACT (which Boggs, who volunteered for numerous local Democratic campaigns until her death in 2002, helped form).
Medrano asked the students to raise their hands if they had been to the Obama campaign’s Web site. Not surprisingly, nearly every student raised a hand, but most of those hands stayed up when he asked if they’d visited the McCain campaign’s site.
“There are a lot of conservatives at my school, and some of them are even my closest friends,” said 17-year-old Alex Malton of Flintridge Preparatory School in La Cañada Flintridge. “Since they argue their position articulately, I feel the need to be just as knowledgeable about Obama’s platform.”
But for all the politicking that afternoon, learning came first.
“The main purpose of our weekly youth meetings is to educate. We want to make sure that the kids who are phone-banking or even selling buttons understand the issues, and why they support Barak Obama. We try to give them basic talking points so that they can articulate their political positions,” said Lonee Hamilton, volunteer coordinator for the Pasadena Democrats.
“Even though these kids can’t vote now,” added Medrano, “they represent the voting population of tomorrow.”
Not being able to vote for another two years isn’t going to stop Aydin Salek, a junior at South Pasadena High School, from trying to make a difference.
“I moved here from Iran three years ago,” he said, “but my father is still there. For me, it is important to fight for the candidate who is least likely to attack my country. But, besides that, I am in America now and everything that faces Americans also directly affects me.”
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