Youth Organizing for Accountability
By Lauren Ballesteros-Watanabe, Oʻahu Group Program Manager
The Oʻahu Group launched the Youth Public Policy & Advocacy program in February in partnership with Hawaiʻi Youth Climate Coalition, Aikea: Working People's Movement, SuMoLab and HawaiiKidsCAN. After many discussions with youth throughout Oʻahu, the program is pivoting to be more focused civic engagement. Why? This election cycle is a major opportunity to change the political landscape at Honolulu City Council. By the end of the year, Oʻahu will have a new mayor and five new council members. At such a critical crossroads in moving into our “new normal,” it is critical to ensure youth and other community voices are heard by the next crop of city leaders.
As 2020 political campaigns continue to be heavily impacted by social distancing guidelines, youth leaders are using their social media and tech savviness to target their peers and promote voting with values, not political parties. We are living in a moment of transformation and youth are creating fun, intergenerational ways to create a more inclusive and active civic society. The goal of this phase of the program is finding ways to change the culture of politics in Hawaiʻi and increase voter turnout.
The Accountability Summit initiatives include the creation of a brand new open-source project where volunteer industry professionals, teachers and students can work together to help write the software needed. Our goal is to provide a Hawaiʻi-specific civic engagement platform for students and voters to better know their candidates.
This program is a true collaboration amongst organizations and progressive young minds that are united to strengthen our democracy, fix our economy and promote an equitable recovery to COVID-19. At this moment, the youth are researching history of moku and districts, connecting policy to key areas of change, creating candidate accountability frameworks, translating issues into accountability metrics, negotiating and fine tuning metrics and evaluating plans and advocating for a county youth commission for future involvement that supports equity and social justice.
Originally from East L.A., Lauren is an artist and proud third generation working class Mexican-American. Her identity informs her passion for justice and she channels it into her work and art. After graduating from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, she was a community/political organizer with UNITE HERE Local 5 and discovered her profound sense of purpose in connecting deeply rooted values to movement building. Throughout her time at Local 5, Lauren worked on several campaigns in alliance with diverse community leaders, students, and organizations, as well as created art based protests for actions and rallies.