Local organization motivates Gen Z to vote despite frustration, overwhelm

CATHY WURZER: The drama surrounding the campaigns of both President Biden and former President Trump for re-election have reached a fever pitch recently, with growing calls for Biden to drop out of the race and former President Trump recovering from an attempted assassination that has caused conspiracy theories to fly in all directions. It can really feel overwhelming.

We talked to some Gen Z voters earlier this week who are ready to make their voice heard amid all the chaos. But for many more people of their generation, the recent drama has led to feelings of helplessness or apathy. Chelsea Sheldon is working this year to combat that. She works for the new organization, Believe in What's Possible. And they are set on getting younger adults to vote. Chelsea, welcome back to the program.

CHELSEA SHELDON: Thank you so much, Cathy, excited to be here.

CATHY WURZER: Gosh, I remember talking to you at the beginning of the year, and I recall that your main goal was to get young people to vote in the election. And obviously, a lot has happened since that, especially when it comes to the presidential race. How are you doing on your goal? What are you hearing from younger people?

CHELSEA SHELDON: Well, you are certainly correct. It has been a busy year since we last spoke, but Believe in What's Possible has been working away at that goal of ours to increase how young people are involved in our political process, increase political belonging, increase political education around all of these systems. So our specific goal actually emphasizes the primary election this summer, which is our local politics, rather than just the federal level, so getting ready for the primary on August 13. Nonetheless, we're still paying attention to all the things that are gearing up for the fall, obviously, with the presidential election coming up. So we're keeping busy, but we're keeping hopeful and excited with all of the young people that we've been able to talk to so far.

CATHY WURZER: So what are young folks saying? I mean, there is so much confusion surrounding whether the current President Biden will continue in the race. And, of course, there's the attempted assassination of former President Trump. There's just so much chaos. What are young folks telling you?

CHELSEA SHELDON: Yeah. I mean, I think you hit the nail on the head. There's a lot of questions. There's a lot of confusion. There's a lot of frustration. And a lot of that trickles down into all the avenues and areas that young people engage with this political process. We're hearing a lot of strong emotions from young leaders and a lot of questions.

And so for us, at least, at Believe in What's Possible, that means we need to invest extra time in creating rooms that increase trust, increase avenues and areas for asking questions, so that we can address some of those things because right now, exactly to your point, people are curious about, why should I be participating, or what is the correct answer to this question that I have? How do I know that I can advocate for this specific issue that's really important to me, when the dominant conversation maybe is steering towards a given political candidate or another, or is raising more questions than answers?

Right now, we know lots of young people don't identify as much with specific political parties or specific political candidates. So when the dominant conversation is emphasizing those things, it can raise a lot of questions for my generation about why or how they should get involved in the process right now.

CATHY WURZER: So you mentioned participation, and there was this recent US News poll that shows 61% of young voters 18 to 34 believe it's going to be an important election. Half say they're going to definitely vote. But a majority of those voters also feel their lives have gotten worse in the past few years, and they're disappointed with both major candidates for president. And there appears to be a little bit of a contradiction there. What's at play?

CHELSEA SHELDON: Great question. I think this highlights one of the big issues that Believe in What's Possible is trying to grapple with, which is that young voters are not apathetic in the fact that they don't care. They're incredibly invested. They're incredibly aware. They have a lot of issues that are really important to them and a lot of things that they see impacting their daily lives that they want to see social change on, they want to see solutions for.

However, young voters don't, for a whole bunch of reasons, then often connect that to necessarily to specific civic actions, either because they're not welcomed into the process in very intentional ways, because political campaigns aren't prioritizing reaching out to them, or because they aren't seeing either themselves or the issues that they care about reflected in the national conversation or even in the local conversation.

And so part of what we have to do is bridge that disconnect by creating rooms and spaces that emphasize local leaders, that are fun, exciting, hopeful, artistic, and expressive, that we want to be in, rather than merely focus on some of the things that are a little more disconnected from young leaders. And that will be what's allowing us to invite people into this room and bridge the challenge that's indicated in that poll there.

CATHY WURZER: How much does disillusionment by political institutions play into all of this? Obviously, young people, as you say, are engaged. They're interested in political action. But I'm sensing a bit of disillusionment. Would that be right?

CHELSEA SHELDON: Yeah. I think that's correct. Right now, young leaders often get their information or talk about politics in ways that are different from traditional avenues of communication. They're talking to peers. They're getting information from social media or from trusted sources or influencers. They're talking to community leaders, whether that's pastors, or leaders of organizations and nonprofits, or their neighbors. Those are not some of the traditional avenues of political communication, such as news outlets, or elected officials, or party officials.

And so if we want to understand where the disillusionment is coming from, we need to understand where young people are having this conversation and why they're not engaging in some of those other rooms and spaces because right now, young people are expressing frustration. You're exactly correct about what does it mean to be in some of the more traditional rooms? And why are they not serving or advocating on behalf of the issues that are important to Gen Z right now?

CATHY WURZER: Why do you think traditional avenues of political communication don't seem to be engaging these young voters? Just a misunderstanding as to who these folks are? Not paying attention? I don't know. What do you think is happening there?

CHELSEA SHELDON: I think it's a combination of things, first, the question of where are young voices present? When we're looking at social media users or the people that are sometimes in either these decision making rooms, these political rooms, these rooms of public information, that's not always young leaders. Sometimes it is. But when young people are looking to see themselves reflected in the conversation, if they don't see a young person on the leadership team or being interviewed or present in that room, they're going to have questions about whether or not the issues that are important to them are going to be part of the conversation.

Similarly, I think that looking at these strategies and topics more broadly and linking them to the issues that are important to young people, both through young voices, like I said, but through organizations, through art, through untraditional avenues of communication are really crucial. And young people are inspired by artistic action, by untraditional methods and approaches that sometimes aren't as equally validated by more traditional avenues and so making sure that we're being creative in our avenues of expression and being deeply hopeful as a result as well.

CATHY WURZER: Often when you think of political campaigns, you don't think creativity. So that would be something different for a traditional political campaign, obviously. You've pinpointed a lot of different, as you call them, rooms. Who are younger people looking to as role models about how to make political decisions? Is it more of a peer thing, as you mentioned? Who-- is there anyone older than them that they look to? You mentioned pastors and members of the clergy, but anybody at all in the national level that they might look to?

CHELSEA SHELDON: Great question. Data definitely indicates that right now, for a lot of young people, it is that peer-to-peer organizing or that community level organizing. So when I highlight community leaders, pastors are one example. We're also talking leaders of, like, librarians or teachers or other community leaders that young people have had one-on-one conversations with and been able to build a relationship. If we're going to invite people into this political process, we need to have had that one-on-one communication. It links back to your earlier question of avenues of conversation and welcoming and belonging.

If we're going to invite young people into this conversation, into this process, we need to be speaking to them face-to-face, hosting events that reimagine what this look like. And I think lots of the traditional avenues of outreach use either lists of data or lists of voters that they're going to contact that have voted before or that are-- they know they can count on to turn out. Inherently, that misses young people.

And so when we're talking about rooms, it's what are the spaces that are not often viewed as political? That can look like young arts collectives. That can look like performance groups. That can look like libraries, classrooms, sports teams, all of the above, where we know young people are gathering and having conversations, but may or may not then be linking that to, cool, what additional action could we take as a team, as a collective, as a group, even if that's just asking each other questions that links to a larger action plan.

CATHY WURZER: Chelsea, you're having an event tonight. It's a community conversation, speaking of in community and face-to-face conversation. It's in Brooklyn Park, I believe. What conversations are you hoping to have there tonight?

CHELSEA SHELDON: Yeah, we are having an event tonight. We're super excited to be hosting it with the Black Community Board over in Brooklyn Center. And this is one of our primary tactics for talking to and engaging young leaders, is how can we be hosting really fun, easily accessible spaces with food, fun conversations, games, and then dominant political topics, such as why should we participate in primary elections, or what is the political impact-- what is the political world talking to us about right now? What does it mean to be a young person in politics right now?

So we're hoping to raise these conversations with the young leaders that will be in the room tonight and then also at future events, so not only are we having those conversations that we call scheme spaces throughout the month, throughout the rest of the year, but we're hosting a larger scale event on August 10 that will specifically have opportunities for voting that inspire action ahead of the primary. We call it Turn Up to Turn Out. So we'd encourage people to be paying attention to that as well, either by checking out our website at believeinwhatspossible.com, or our Instagram at @believeinwhatspossible.

CATHY WURZER: All right. Chelsea, it was good to get back in touch with you. Thank you so much. Best of luck.

CHELSEA SHELDON: Appreciate it. Thank you.

CATHY WURZER: Chelsea Sheldon is the co-founder and programming director at Believe in What is Possible.