Hit the ground swinging: with the highest disapproval rating of the president and the lowest voting averages, young people have the potential to swing this election--and organizers are tapping into them with campaigns high on energy and low on cynicism.(Cover)

Every step out of the New York subway is "bombed" with the name of a swing state. "Ohio ... Wisconsin ... Florida ..." take you up into the sunshine. At the top, scrawled in graffiti script is the message: "Have you called your friends in these states? ... Brooklyn can swing Florida." Sweaty from dancing, newly-birthdayed 18-year-olds in Selma, Alabama register to vote and get hooked up with weekend political education classes at monthly "Superbirthday Tuesdays" parties. A 26-year-old waitress in New Orleans passes out 3,000 multicolored fliers in cafes and on street corners--a love letter to her city on one side, a progressive voter guide for the upcoming election on the back.

This is voter organizing for my generation--a generation raised on hip-hop, Reaganomics and the Internet. This is electoral politics by a generation that cut its organizing teeth on battles against local toxic plants, school privatization plans, sweatshops, the WTO, the School of the Americas, and ultra-punitive juvenile justice measures. Well aware that we have been--and will continue to be--sold out by both political parties, and with no love for John Kerry, we have nonetheless arrived at a reality politics approach that says that Bush, as our worst imperialist nightmare, must be ousted first and foremost.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Political analysts across the board insist that this election will be won on the ground, by whoever can turn out the "unlikely" voters. With the highest disapproval rating of the president and, simultaneously, the lowest voting averages, young people have the potential to swing this election. But only with serious, strategic and concerted efforts by us, for us. We are certainly not leaving this to the Democratic Party--whose African American turn-out strategy usually consists of late-in-the-game meetings with church leaders, and whose campus outreach efforts tend to be headed up by a few suit-wearing, resume-padding, political science majors.

New to electoral politics, activists from the worlds of youth, student, community and labor organizing are feverishly learning the ins and outs of voter registration, districting, voter turnout and poll monitoring. They are redefining the entrenched, bureaucratic and boring electoral arena through arts, culture, creativity and grass-roots organizing.

Among the better-known players in mobilizing young voters through arts and culture is the National Hip Hop Political Convention, Russell Simmons' Hip Hop Summit, Black Youth Vote, Punk Voter, Music for America, Head Count and The Next Wave of Women in Power, with their "We Got Issues" CD.

In addition to arts-based organizing efforts, transportation-themed projects abound. The Oregon Bus Project drives hundreds of volunteers to register voters in critical districts--throwing parties for them in the exhausted aftermath. Swing State Summer Break, run by an undergraduate and modeled after the Freedom Rides of the 1950s and 60s, is busing several hundred college students into on-the-ground campaigns in critical states. Smaller, more local groups of young people are taking voter registration cross-country, with bike trips from one coast to the other, canoe trips down the Mississippi, hip-hop artist-filled bus caravans and road trips to swing states.