Slurping hot ramen noodles at legendary DC eating establishment Pete’s Diner, a crowd of young activists gathered for a different kind of political fundraiser.  Dubbed a “time-raiser” by organizers, the event was designed to recruit more young people to press the Presidential candidates to outline their plans to address key youth issues.

“Anyone who is young or knows young people knows that we can’t afford the big $2,500 per plate fundraisers,” said Gabe Elsner with the Student Public Interest Research Groups (Student PIRGs).  “That’s why we are at Pete’s today, pledging to spend time in the coming months as the candidates are on the campaign trail, asking them about their plans on issues that are important to young people.  If we do this enough, the candidates will take notice and begin to engage more young people in the political process.”

The event was part of What’s Your Plan?, a new national campaign that calls upon the Presidential candidates to pay attention to young people and to address key youth issues such as global warming, college affordability, health care and financial security. 

In between servings of specialties dubbed “hot earth ramen”, “debt plate special” and “penny-pincher noodles”, speakers outlined statistics showing the remarkable increases in youth voter turnout since 2004, and the evidence that young people vote even more when paid attention to.

“Increased participation among young people can dramatically change the way politicians of all parties look at our generation,” said Pedro de la Torre with Campus Progress Action.  “So my question to all the candidates is—What’s your plan to make college more affordable?”

In exchange for dinner, participants were asked to pledge to spend at least 10 hours during the primary election season attending Presidential candidate events and asking the candidates to outline their plans on one or more of the targeted issues.

” As America’s youth, and as voters, we have the duty, to make sure that our next president is ready to take the necessary steps to combat global warming,” said Courtney Fryxell with the Student Conservation Voters. “If candidates spend time focusing on their plans to address global warming, I’m pretty sure young people will sit up and listen, and become more engaged in the election.”

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What’s Your Plan? is a project of The Student PIRGs and allied youth organizations.  The Student PIRGs’ New Voters Project is the nation’s largest youth voter registration and mobilization campaign.  The goal of the project is to highlight the issues that are important to young people and to persuade candidates to target youth and use these issues as they campaign.  Since 2003, the project registered more than 600,000 young voters and made more than 650,000 personalized Get Out the Vote contacts leading up to Election Day to turn out young voters.  

www.whats-your-plan.org

From left to right: Student leaders recruit event attendees to volunteer, attendees completing volunteer pledge forms, eating Ramen noodles, CALPIRG’s Gabe Eisner briefs the crowd on the campaign.