I live in a rural part of New York State that is close enough to NYC and the Hudson Valley that it does vote Democratic, though we are in a swing Congressional District that voted Republican in November. I am also, essentially by default, the Chairperson of our Town's Democratic Committee. There are a good number of social activists in our Town, but very few of them actively identify with the Democratic Party though many no doubt register Democratic.
On our 8 person committee anyone under 60 is considered "young". We now have good folks but it took a year of painstaking outreach to recruit a full committee. We've struck out at enlisting anyone under 45. We are networking with activist groups now and are about to host a free spaghetti dinner and discussion night for local Democrats. If we don't go out of our way to engage with folks who have political sensibilities they would never think of connecting with the official Democratic Parry on their own. We would be the last people they think of except perhaps when local elections roll around and they expect us magically to organize a slate of candidates and promote them.
To be honest there is a fair amount of tedious drudgery involved in complying with election laws to get candidates onto the ballot. It's not glamorous and very few people want to do it unless they are running for office themselves and then they just expect that there will be a local party apparatus to steer them through the process. But we are all just volunteers. We almost crashed and burned at the local Democratic Party level a couple of years back and came close to legally blowing our ability to run candidates. That's when I got involved.
I don't think a lot of folks realize how hollowed out much of the Democratic Party is becoming. Increasingly younger people don't think of themselves as Democrats. Honestly our Party needs a revolution from below or it might wither away and die like the Leninists once thought the State would. Either that or it will revert to being a machine controlled by people with money to further their own ends.
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