Campus Camp at the Campus Progress 2009 National Conference

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AUTHOR PROFILE

Mattie Weiss
The child of political activists, Mattie has been doing direct action, community organizing and campaign work her entire life (including as an 11 year old doorknocker on Paul Wellstone's first Senate campaign). A 2001 graduate of Swarthmore College, she studied political science and organized students and staff around issues of global economic justice, local race politics, and a campus-based living wage campaign.

Involved in:
Camp Wellstone, Campus Camp Wellstone and Movement Building Project

Earlier this month, Campus Progress (part of the Center for American Progress-read more here) held their annual National Conference in Washington DC. At the conference were tons of big name progressives like President Clinton, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, John Oliver from the Daily Show, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, John Podesta--even celebrities like Joel and Benji Madden from Good Charlotte came to this year's National Conference. But Campus Progress does more than just hear from cool politicos.

They work to empower young people across the country and build new progressive leaders by developing fresh ideas, coming up with new ways to communicate, and by pushing a policy agenda that supports young people and strengthens the progressive movement. So, when Campus Progress needed a partner to help train this next generation of youth and student leaders, they came to Wellstone Action.

On July 7^th, Campus Camp Wellstone partnered with Campus Progress on a Grassroots Training Day where we trained more than 100 students and youth activists how to organize their campuses and communities and to build movements around issues they care about.

After a session on understanding and building power, our trainers taught power mapping and strategic campaign planning using a fictional campaign about passing a green jobs initiative through a local city council. Then participants broke into small groups to practice planning campaigns on the specific issues that are important to them, including reproductive choice and access to contraceptives and medicine, climate change and carbon emissions, and the rising costs of tuition and availability of financial aid.