Hey everyone,

I know many of you have already had this invitation passed on in some variety, but I wanted to extend it to the whole Green Mountain Daily community. Tomorrow (Thursday) evening in Essex Junction, Rep. Kesha Ram and I are hosting a reception for Students for a New American Politics, the political action committee where I currently serve as Executive Director. I’d love to get the chance to see some of you all in person while I am still in state.

While I’ve talked about SNAP briefly with some of you, I wanted to take a little time to talk about to explain exactly what it is that I’ve been putting all my political energy into for now just over a year, and why now is the time to invest in shaping the direction of our party – if you’ll join me below the fold.

There are major problems with the ways that we engage young people in politics. Campaigns depend on them – young people knock on doors, they work jobs the make up for what they lack in pay with ridiculously long hours. It’s not all bad work though – the people who get into the game when they’re young are more likely to stick with it. They become the activists, organizers, even politicians themselves of the next generation.

If that’s the reality we live in – and my experience both here in Vermont and elsewhere in the country as I’ve travelled with SNAP tells me that it is – then it is not just in our interests, but it’s our responsibility to make sure that those young people reflect the same diversity of our movement.

Unfortunately, campaigns aren’t always the most meritocratic organizations. I was fortunate enough to find people that trusted me when I was way too young to be working on campaigns – but I think I’m an exception rather than the rule – usually it takes connections to get your foot in the door, and even if you have an opportunity, you can only take it if you have the financial security to work full time for almost nothing.

At SNAP, we care about electing progressive leaders to Congress. We’re proud to have helped great candidates win in some of the closest races in the country – Al Franken, Tom Periello, and Joe Courtney by less than 100 votes in 2006. But we also want to make sure that we are making a last impact on the future of the Democratic Party. That is why we spend our money through our fellowship program.

Rather than make donations to our candidates, we pay college students to work as full time field organizers on their campaigns for 10-12 weeks during the spring, summer, or fall. Our fellows are incredible campus organizers who have never gotten the door opened for them into professional politics, and the 55 fellows who have came through our program have now gone on to tremendous success as professional campaign staff, local government officials, union organizers, and professional advocates and activists.

We’ve found such great success with the program that this year we plan to fun 40 fellowships. We’ve received hundreds of applications for these positions, and have had to make incredibly difficult choices about hiring our organizers, but the people we have are truly some of the best the nation has to offer. 70% of our applicants attend state universities, and a similar number are eligible for federal financial aide. They each have incredible stories of how they got their start in politics, and it is those stories and more that I hope to share with some of you tomorrow evening.

The event will run from 8-9:30pm at my house (9 Wilkinson Drive, Essex Junction), though of course if you have other time constraints you are free to arrive and exit as you please. I’m just tremendously excited to share these stories with the people that helped give me my start, because there is nothing that makes me feel better about our politics today than being able to give the same opportunity I was granted to another wave of incredibly talented young people. Our program offers a unique opportunity, and it excites me that the best organizers in country aren’t just getting opportunities to work in politics, they are getting those opportunities solely on incredibly progressive campaigns, working for people who will be actual leaders in Washington.

Please don’t hesitate to bother me with questions!