Winning in 2012 and an online organizing manual

This is an older manual by Youth Liberation about organizing. First couple of pages are pretty grungy, but when you get to the text it's very readable.

http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetai...

Anyway, I was thinking that youth are a huge potential swing vote group, but they usually don't vote. YAL is mainly organizing college students, but most there now will have graduated by 2012. Now, 10th, 11th and 12th graders are going to be in college in 2012 and old enough to vote... so how to reach these people, what with a police state like lock down on high school?

In my mis-spent youth, I was one of a core group of conspirators that started a HS underground paper called the East Infection, because it started out of East HS. We had some policies - no censorship, it was free, but ask for donations, material (content) was to be solicited from those that read it. It was a huge success! The first issue was a single piece of paper printed on both sides and folded lengthwise up the middle, forming 4 pages. We wrote all the content for that one. With each issue, more donations came in and more submitted material, so we increased the size of it and the size of the print run. Then something unexpected happened. Students from different schools started contacting us asking if they could distribute it at their schools too... Our last issues was 6 sheets, iirc, printed double sided and folded in the middle, making it 24 pages long. We were also distributing it to 11 schools! - in all of which it was banned and considered contraband, which contributed greatly to it's popularity. In fairness, I should mention that we did have free access to a print shop and just had to pay for materials.

What we printed - articles bitching at the school administration, reviewing and praising alternative schools, a lot of short stories, art, tutorials on making alcohol, criticizing the schools censorship policies and control of the HS press, and so on.

Now, we have supporters all over the country, some of which have high school aged kids who could form the core of the production and distribution network. As they are kids of our supporters, they are more likely to be a bit more politically aware and could write to that end. Basically, float the idea, put together something like an abbreviated how to "start an underground newspaper" or "you and aunt arie"

http://www.oblivion.net/~isabel/why.html

http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordD...

Then encourage supporters to get their kids together, get them the how to guide and pass a hat to pay for the first issue. If done well, it should take off and mostly pay for itself.

While ours was regional, covering a city, if a web site were set up, the different groups doing this could communicate, share issues and borrow materials from other papers. It would also allow a national news or articles page, if desired.

Yes, I know we have the web now and could just put it all online, but attracting an audience that way is difficult and it's a single point that could be shut down. Better to do it locally and in person. Also, remember that this is directly in competition with the HS's censored papers - so I think hard copy would work better.

Thoughts anyone?

-t