The Democracy Summer Program

By Tara Purohit

"It's great to see young people like you out there doing this!"

That's a comment I often heard when I was out canvassing or talking to people about campaign finance reform this summer. I suspect people say that because they think my generation is politically apathetic. Well, we're not; at least many of us are not.

Along with 10 others, ages 20 to 24, I took part in a project called "Democracy Summer." Hosted by Democracy North Carolina, the program seeks to educate and organize communities about voting rights and campaign finance reform.

Democracy Summer has strong historical connections to Freedom Summer of 1964, when students spread across the Deep South to register African Americans to vote. That was part of an effort to make the U.S. political system fair and just, at a time when our government exhibited neither one of those virtues in regards to treatment of African Americans in the South.

Both Democracy Summer and Freedom Summer combat the notion of apathetic youth and promote the belief that every person's voice should be heard in our political system.

Today many overt deterrents to democracy, such as the poll tax, are gone, yet money drowns out the voices of the majority. Too many people are shut out of the political process, and qualified candidates who are not wealthy or who don't have wealthy contributors have little chance of winning office.

Our goals for the summer included educating North Carolina communities about the corrosive influence of money in political campaigns, and involving voters in the effort to improve our elections.

In the summer of 2001, three teams of students across North Carolina spoke with community leaders, made presentations to local organizations, published letters in newspapers, canvassed neighborhoods with information, hosted forums and festivals, and phoned voters to talk about cleaning up elections through comprehensive campaign finance reform.

The Democracy Summer program exposed us to new ideas and movements, engaging us in continuing involvement for positive change in our communities. I was always curious about what an "organizer" actually does. Who do you organize? How do you get people to take action? In Democracy Summer we learned how to bring about real change. We discovered that individuals, and more importantly, organized and mobilized groups, can positively affect their communities.

Yes, progress has been made for civil rights in the South, but there is still so much work to be done. I am learning to organize people around a shared vision for a better democracy. If this vision is to become a reality, then everyone, and young people in particular, must commit to creating a political system that works the way it should. Then we can truly enjoy a system of "one person, one vote."

Tara Purohit participated in the 2001 Democracy Summer program. A version of this article appeared in http://www.tompaine.com/ .