Watch the live debate on the House floor here. There is no better way to get truly non-partisan visibility into the process than watching this debate.

Take two minutes and contact your Rep. through the YDA form here.

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November 2, 2009

The Honorable Nancy Pelosi
H‐232, US Capitol
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Madame Speaker:

We are writing on behalf of organizations representing millions of young people to urge the swift passage of H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act.

As you know, young people are the most uninsured age group in America and have been vocal about the need to change the system. This legislation will help make health insurance affordable, competitive, continuous, comprehensive and fair for young Americans.

We support several key elements of the bill, including: the creation of the Health Insurance Exchange marketplace with a public option; efforts to contain costs through caps on deductibles, out‐of‐pocket expenses and co‐pays; reform of the insurance industry by ending discriminatory and abusive practices, especially pre‐existing conditions and gender discrimination; better employer‐based coverage; and the focus on preventive care. These elements and subsidies that provide access to quality, affordable health care for all Americans – are essential to comprehensive reform.

We are particularly grateful for the inclusion of a critical provision to allow young adults to remain on their parents’ insurance policy until the age of 27. This could provide coverage for millions of uninsured young Americans.

As the Congress continues to craft final health care reform legislation, we are eager to work with you to ensure that it is a good deal for young Americans. Young people are counting on you to deliver on the promise of reform and a better future for our generation. Thank you for your continued leadership on this issue.

Sincerely,

Advocates for Youth
Black Youth Vote
Choice USA
Campus Progress
Center for Community Change
Demos
Forward Montana
Generational Alliance
Rock the Vote
Young Democrats of America
Young Invincibles
Voto Latino
18 in ‘08

If you live in Virginia, find out where to vote by clicking here. If you live in New Jersey, check here. Polls are open until 7 in VA and 8 in NJ.

If you don’t live in an area with an election today, you still have one small job to do. Email, text, call and Facebook every single friend or family member that lives in a voting district today. We must turn out today in order to win any of these elections.

Once you’ve voted, let us know on our Facebook page!

VOTE VOTE VOTE!

Contact: Kurt Watkins
Press Secretary, YDA
(214) 923 – 6903
communications@yda.org

Contact: Eric Jotkoff
Communications Director, FDP
(850) 222-3411
press@fladems.com

Florida Democratic Party Chair Karen Thurman Welcomes Young Democrats of America (YDA) to Orlando

YDA Fall Conference set for Nov. 20 – 22

Washington, D.C. (October 21) – Congresswoman Karen Thurman, Chair of the Florida Democratic Party, welcomes the Young Democrats of America to Orlando for their annual fall conference. The YDA fall conference, hosted by the Florida Young Democrats (FYD), will be held at the Doubletree Hotel, located at 5780 Major Blvd, November 20 – 22.

“The Florida Democratic Party is excited YDA has chosen Orlando for their conference,” Thurman said.  “It is a great opportunity for the next generation of Democratic leaders to prepare for the 2010 elections, as we work to bring change to Florida and as Young Democrats fight to elect strong Democratic leaders across the nation.”

Alexander Lewy, Florida Young Democrats President, remarked “The Young Democrats who helped elect President Obama and so many young leaders across Florida can’t wait to bring home another victory in 2010.”

The conference will gather the organization’s leadership, which represents 2,400 chapters and over 300,000 members nationwide. During the 3-day conference, members will attend planning sessions for the upcoming 2010 election cycle, training workshops focused on producing results, and various caucuses representing the diverse interest of the group; such as Women, Rural, Minority, GLBT, Veteran, Labor and Disability issues caucuses.

The conference will be the first meeting officiated by YDAs recently elected president, Crystal Strait.  President Strait, from California, is the organization’s first Asian American president.  Strait was elected at the biennial national convention in Chicago this past August.

“The Young Democrats of America are positioned to engage thousands of young people to vote in upcoming elections. Young workers and young families, along with college and high school students, will be the margin of victory in ensuring Congress passes the incredibly important legislation facing them today, as well as turning red America blue in 2010″, Strait added.

Speakers and events will be announced soon. For more information about YDA or the fall conference, please visit www.yda.org.

About the Young Democrats of America (YDA)

The Young Democrats of America is the largest youth-led partisan political organization in the country and represents Democratic youth under the age of 36. With 300,000+ members – including middle school, high school and college students as well as young workers, young professionals and young families – YDA reflects the broad diversity of our nation and the Democratic Party. The Young Democrats of America has been the official youth arm of the Democratic Party since 1932. For more information, please visit www.yda.org.

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What’s different about this YDA campaign invasion is that we’ve scheduled some “fall fun” activities for Saturday night in Virginia and neighboring West Virginia. After canvassing and phone banking throughout the day, we will head over to a corn maze, ghost tour and bonfire to round out the night. Overnight accommodations for volunteers are available. We will resume canvassing in Virginia on Sunday.

To RSVP for this event, please visit the following link and respond to which activities during the weekend you plan to attend:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dERHeG0wQlRCdHFuak9vaERHcTBnT1E6MA

If you can’t make the trip to Virginia but would like to phone bank remotely, we are also making that option available. Please visit the RSVP link and indicate your willingness to phone bank from the comfort of your own home, and we will send you a voter contact list with instructions.

Wed. October 21, 8 pm CENTRAL
Number: 712-432-0850
passcode: 274582#

The GOP took notice over the Internet’s fury concerning their lack of leaders – they put the page back up. Oh, it’s up alright. Only now it is a page asking for people to email them if you know of any Republican future leaders! For real! Quote from the newly updated page, which still includes no leaders:

“There’s no form for this. Send us an email.”

This shows one of two things (perhaps both?):

1. Extreme sadness that the Republican party has no future leaders.

2. The party is so out of touch with the youth movement, they are asking for people to identify themselves and email them to tell the party they are a future leader!

ORIGINAL POST:
If you have not had a chance to check out the brand spanking new GOP.com website, please, by all means, do so. Of all the amazing failures delivered by this fresh new site, the biggest by far is the “New Leaders” page. Twitter is all abuzz about the new website; but not necessarily because they think the mini walking and talking Michael Steele is awesome. It’s because of stuff like this:

You see, the GOP launched their new site today with a page called “Future Leaders”. Originally, when you clicked to see all of the future leaders of the Republican party, it showed a blank page with a “Future Leaders” title. Then, the sad reality of the situation hit the interwebs, spurred Twitter craziness and a blog post from Politico. Now? The GOP completely pulled the link off the site and the subsequent page. What is left might be even better. The Future Leaders of the GOP? Yah, those can’t be found.

Michael Steele’s own blog is called “What Up”. Seriously. Seriously! Obviously the web devs over at GOP.com are working feverishly right now to rectify a web disaster. This one is going to take some time.

I encourage you to browse around, learn about how the GOP is an incredibly diverse party that formed because they didn’t believe slavery was fair. The party that really believes in equal rights for all. This info on their site is especially interesting, considering the leader of the Young Republicans has been caught enjoying several racial slurs herself.

It’s clear where the young leaders are in this country. It’s clear where the future is. It’s clear that the Democratic Party and the Young Democrats of America make up the bright and exciting future; one where equal rights isn’t just something we put up on our website – it’s something we fight for and celebrate every day.

If you are under 36 and believe in moving America forward with progressive, Democratic ideas, we are here for you! YDA understands that we all receive information in many different ways these days and there is no one sure bet means of communication. That’s why we are reaching out through every medium possible! The first step to getting informed and helping move our country forward is to get connected with YDA; here’s how you can do it:

Twitter:
Follow us on Twitter, retweet when you can and give us your feedback with replies: @youngdems

Facebook:
Become a Facebook Fan of YDA and make sure to “like” any updates of ours you agree with. Give us your feedback with comments on our updates too and share our links, events and updates with your Facebook friends.

E-mail:
Make sure you are on our e-mail list to get updates directly from our President and several other key leaders in YDA. Click here and fill out your e-mail address in the “Stay Informed” box.

Blog/RSS:
If you are reading this, chances are you’ve already found our blog or found a page that aggregates our posts from our RSS feed. If you use a feed reader to stay on top of your favorite blogs, make sure to add our RSS feed to your list: http://feeds.feedburner.com/the-pace

Word of Mouth:
Even in our ultra-fast paced world where information flows all around us at all times, the best way to get a message across to millions of people is still word of mouth. Help us help you by telling your friends about our blog, Facebook page and Twitter account and make sure they tell their friends too. And when YDA calls upon you to take action on an issue you care about, get your friends involved too!

Once you’ve joined us through all of the means above, make sure to share this post with the “ShareThis” button below!

For all the details and to apply, check out the DCCC Fellows program here. You can also contact Jason Collins at collins@dccc.org with any questions or to get started on your application.

No experience necessary to get started, this is your way to get your foot in the campaign door!

Creigh Deeds is a fellow rural American and Virginia needs his strong leadership in Richmond for the next two years. With his rural background, Creigh is familiar with the many issues rural Virginians face. Deeds made the courageous and significant vote to include hunting and fishing as a right in Virginia’s constitution. His opponent, Bob McDonnell,couldn’t muster the courage and voted against the bill. Deeds has the experience and knowhow to lead Virginia in the right direction.

I am asking for your help today to help Creigh Deeds and beat Bob McDonnell in November. The Virginia Young Democrats (VAYD) have been on the forefront of this election and are hosting campaign events October 17th and October 24th (Details below).

If you can make it to Virginia, together we could make a difference in this election. If you can’t make it to Virginia, you can also make calls and encourage voters to vote for Creigh. Please email trent.armitage@gmail.com and he can get you set-up on virtual phonebank that you can do from wherever you may be.

If you can’t do either – please consider contributing to the VAYD’s efforts to elect Creigh Deeds the next governor of Virginia. Click here to contribute.

I sincerely hope you will stand with the YDA Rural Caucus as we do everything we can to elect Creigh Deeds. I can say with confidence that Creigh Deeds will stand up for rural Virginia.

Sincerely,
Cassi Peters
Chair
YDA Rural Caucus

While the YDA Women’s Caucus supports comprehensive health insurance reform, the Women’s Caucus opposes the following:

• The rejected Hatch Amendment and any amendment that seeks to eliminate public or private plans that cover abortion care
• Any plan for reform that does not provide women with satisfactory maternity care
• Discriminatory provisions that seek to charge women who are 40 to 64 years old five times the average premium charged to younger women

In addition to ensuring that women have fair and equal access to health care, the YDA Women’s Caucus supports a health care bill that will no longer allow insurance companies to discriminate against women for “pre-existing conditions” such as C-sections and domestic violence.

“The only pre-existing condition here is the health insurance industry’s self-prescribed policy of discriminating against women,” said Rachel Farris, spokeswoman for the YDA Women’s Caucus. “But Young Democratic women are the children of baby boomers. We’re not afraid to burn our bras to influence change.”

“Equal health care rights for women are the torches that this generation has been passed from the pioneers of Roe v. Wade, and we’re prepared for the battle.”

Members of the YDA Women’s Caucus will be participating across the country in the YDA’s National Day of Service on October 20th in support of a health care reform bill that promotes women’s health.