Organize for Democracy Reflection: Caroline Welch
Blue Future teamed up with Grassroots Democrats HQ to create a compensated program to train young people in virtual organizing, which we called Organize for Democracy. At the conclusion of the program, we asked our wonderful participants to write a reflection on their time in the program.
For the past eight weeks, I partook in Blue Future’s Organize for Democracy Leadership Program, where I had the opportunity to work on key Congressional races across the country. I entered the program with some prior field organizing experience, as I interned for Democrats during the 2020 election cycle, and during Georgia’s runoff election in 2021. I am very happy with my decision to continue working on campaigns during this 2022 election cycle, and I thoroughly enjoyed the structure of Blue Future’s program. As a college student, the balance of working for 5 hours each week, with an additional 1-hour meeting worked perfectly with my schedule. The program asked participants to make calls based on their own individual schedules– a flexibility that enabled me to do this program while also attending school. Furthermore, the opportunity to receive compensation for my work was critical in making the program more accessible for me.
I appreciate how the Organize for Democracy Leadership Program is targeted specifically towards young people, which is a demographic that is severely underrepresented in government, and often ignored by major political parties. While I have long understood the power of Gen Z to make lasting change in this country, this is something that older generations are just now coming to terms with after young people were instrumental in Democrat’s 2022 successes. I am thankful that I worked to mobilize young people this cycle and I felt that I could relate very well with them over the phone. This is particularly true for the young women that I spoke with, many of whom share my concerns about protecting and advancing reproductive rights in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision. I talked to a number of young women who had never voted before, and got them to commit to voting in order to defend reproductive rights. As I watched the returns come in, these young women were at the top of my mind. I will continue to carry these conversations with me, long after every ballot has been counted, and will keep them in mind as I continue to do other political organizing work.
