One by one, carrying different cardboard cups of coffee, members of the C3 Youth Vote Table strolled into the library at Planned Parenthood’s national headquarters in DC. They were so friendly with each other you might have thought they were colleagues, but that’s not the case. At least not in a conventional, office setting kind-of-way.

Instead, these young professionals represent the headquarters for dozens of leading youth advocacy groups. The groups range from Democracy Matters to the U.S. Student Association, and all meet on a central theme: to collaborate with other members at the table. The goal? Simple. To send a unified message from a coalition of prominent youth advocacy groups that their time, and issues, have arrived. So everyone better start listening.

The group formed after the 2004 election. During the meetings, they engage each other about their individual organization’s issues, while looking for the intersection that makes them all interdependent. Global warming? How about Green Jobs? Poverty in the country? How about public education equality?

The young leaders also download about recent developments in the media and how they, the youth vote, have been characterized. They also bring into the dialogue how increased cases of civic engagement in the group is on the up, and how they can all share resources, like lawyers, bodies and staff org charts, to coordinate events with local chapters. To witness it, I drifted back and imagined, is like a live demonstration of how to organize a grassroots movement -- from the nation’s Capital.

 The Youth Vote

 Early in this primary season, the Millennial Generation, or the Y Generation, earned several top fold placements. Headlines like “Youth Vote Real Force in 2008,”“Where the Youth Vote is: MySpace and Facebook” and “Candidates Facing up to Youth on the Internet,” indicated how critical the youth vote is to the 2008 Election. According to the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE), the movement has been gaining momentum over the past eight years.

 In the CIRCLE study, the youth turnout rate was on the decline for nearly thirty years until 2004 when it rebounded big time -- increasing by nearly eleven percentage points. In the lead up to the 2008 election, leaders at the table talk about how to ensure their progress isn’t lost by the excitement of a long primary, other demographic turn out rates and the rock star status of any particular candidate.

“Today's young adults are engaged and powerful,” said Kat Bar, Deputy Political Director at Rock the Vote.

 “We started it back in 2004, we kept it going, we organized ourselves, we're empowering each other to make changes -- and now, finally, the cynics have started to pay attention. It's ground up and real."

The Table Roll Call