By Scott Warren
On June 5, San Diego became a focal point for our nation’s current political obsession. Competitive candidates running for seats in everything from Congress to District Attorney to the Board of Supervisors tested the thesis on whether the city’s rapidly changing demographics is actually leading to new representation and ideological preferences.
The uncertainty did lead to unprecedented interest: my parents, Del Mar residents, received at least three campaign fliers in the mailbox every single day. Commercials inundated the airwaves. You couldn’t get away from politics.
But the attention did not translate into boots on the ground. We talked politics. We didn’t act politically. The lesson? A better democracy in San Diego cannot rely on elections. Instead, it needs to start with our young people.
The primaries occurred in the backdrop of a moment in which democracy itself may be at a precipice. The statistics backing up the fragility of the historical moment are endless. Only 18 percent of Americans trust their government, an all-time low. Partisanship is at an all-time high — a recent poll demonstrated that 77 percent of Americans consider their opposite party rivals to be less evolved humans than members of their own side.
In the midst of these facts, there is hope. It has become cliche to say that the era of Donald Trump has ushered an unprecedented era of civic engagement. Marches and rallies have become commonplace. Young people and women are running for office at a historic pace. We seemingly never stop talking about politics. That our collective attention has turned towards politics is objectively a positive development — our democracy works better the more people participate.
But despite all this political attention, when Election Day came and went, only an estimated only approximately 37 percent of registered San Diegans came to the polls.
What happened to the wave of civic engagement? How do we make sense of the discrepancy between the passion of politics of the moment and the reality of a less than stellar voter turnout?
The hypotheses for the deviation are endless. But, indisputably, despite our wishes, one election cannot break a democracy, and one election cannot make a democracy. Our tendency to focus on the immediacy may undercut the potential of the moment to lead to the foundational change needed to improve our body politic.
Political change is necessarily slow: our institutions were established to avoid shocks to the system by rapid changes in power, be it through the ascendancy to power of individuals or changes in political parties. This thesis is being tested at the moment: Donald Trump’s election is without parallel in modern politics. But his unorthodox ideas have not been implemented without resistance, both because of citizen activism, and the strength of our institutions.
In our current times, however, we want change right away. Democrats want to elect their tribe to govern the House, and immediately transform Congress (including consideration of impeachment). Republicans want to immediately change our immigration and tax laws — two issues that have galvanized the party in San Diego. But neither party will see these reforms right away.
Rather than a focus on singular elections, a return to building the foundations of our democracy is necessary. San Diego’s students might provide the answer.
Three weeks before Election Day, I was at the Logan Heights Library in San Diego, joined by students from Hoover, Clairemont, and Lincoln High Schools for an event called Civics Day. Over the course of the semester, these students had participated in Action Civics, a process in which they had learned politics through doing politics — researching, and subsequently taking action on local issues. This was not an after-school program: students took this class just like they would take math, science, or English — the premise being that every young person should learn how to participate in our democracy. Today, like a science fair, students would present on their issues.
Clairemont students, some of whom had personally experienced homelessness, described their push for SB 918, a bill that would create an Office of Homeless Youth, directing $60 million in funding to address the rise of youth homelessness in the state.
Hoover students spoke passionately about their burgeoning campaign to obtain free bus passes for San Diego students in Title 1 schools.
Lincoln students wanted to do their part to curb climate change through a city bill that would ban plastic straws.
These students were getting political in a real, visceral way. Not through tweets, or political ads, or even just through voting, but through taking substantive, sustainable action. As one student from Claremont explained, “Action Civics shows that young people are not oblivious to the issues in their community and politics, but that we, as young individuals, are involved and willing to spark change.”
This attention to San Diego’s electoral politics will only increase in the months to come, as races like the 49th Congressional district will help to determine which party holds control in Congress. The ads will continue unabated. Political flyers will pile up in mailboxes.
But a focus on elections won’t solve the problems that plague our democracy. We can’t just focus on the immediacy. Instead, investing in the future of our politics, through our young people, is a better way forward. We should listen to our young people. And then we should get out of the way, and let them lead.
Scott Warren is co-founder and CEO of a national civics education nonprofit called Generation Citizen and a Democracy Fellow at Brown University in Rhode Island.
