Jalakoi Solomon, NextGen State Director, spoke at our January meeting. NextGen’s focus is on college students, voting, 13-35 age group, and climate change. They have five main issues that the youth themselves have chosen as their top priority and they are located at six college campuses in the valley.
They use texting and social media for communication as traditional methods don’t reach that target audience. They are non-partisan and compare the Republicans and Democrats on the issues and focus on what they find to be most important.
NextGen is working on creating resources for students to help them vote. New groups are Tomorrow We Vote and Inspire for high school students. NextGen expects to be around through 2020.
This year, without many elections, they want to focus on training and organizing, investing in people and advocacy work. Some of the issues will be creating more polling places, getting student IDs with addresses so they are acceptable forms of ID for voting, and changes in the county recorder’s manuals to allow emailing in proof of citizenship.
Thank you, Jalakoi, for meeting with us.
