Intergenerational activism: bringing civic engagement to life for high school students
Whether you’re a Boomer, Gen X or Millennial, you can welcome Gen Z and Gen Alpha into our democracy by helping them get ready to vote.
One of the great joys of this job is meeting the incredible volunteers who are building our democracy day by day and helping their communities provide meaningful programming to welcome all teens as future voters. So here’s a shout out to Sue Sorensen and the other volunteers at Elders for Sound Voter Democracy.
Sue and the other adults in the Lake Tahoe region of California are working alongside high schoolers in the Tahoe Youth Action Team to register and preregister students at Truckee High School to vote. And they did such a great job at voter registration that they expanded the program this year to include other options for civic engagement.
As Sue wrote to me, “Bottom line - The Civics Center’s student voter registration program is thriving in Truckee!”
This is Sue’s story, lightly edited:
I’ve been active in this movement of elders from its beginnings in 2014. In recent time, The Civics Center is a partner that we have really come to respect and value. John and I live in Truckee, CA, a town of about 20,000 in the Sierra Nevada near Lake Tahoe.
When our Elders for Sound Democracy team first learned about The Civic Center’s high school voter-registration program in 2024, Jeff, a very active member of our team who lives in neighboring Nevada City, decided to speak to school boards in our region about the importance of incorporating voter registration drives in high schools, and how our vetted partners at The Civics Center were ready to facilitate and support a non-partisan, student-led voter registration program.
When Jeff spoke to our Truckee School Board, I followed with a presentation on the specifics of The Civics Center’s program – the free student orientations and training on how to run a voter registration drive and the free materials provided in their “Democracy in a Box” toolkit. We left knowing we had the board’s buy-in for the program.
By that same time, our Truckee ‘Citizens Climate Lobby’ chapter, led by Deirdre Henderson, had sponsored and established the Tahoe Youth Action Team as a Truckee High student club. The club’s formal charter is to “empower students to engage in civic action, community service, and voter registration.” When I told Deirdre about The Civics Center program, she presented it to the club as an opportunity for action - it was an ideal match for their goals, so they signed up and ran with it – with the full support of the school administration.
The team has now held three registration drives and they have registered or pre-registered over 150 students so far. A voter registration drive is now a standard part of their yearly activities. This year, so many students had already registered that the club focused on providing information for college-bound seniors on how to vote when away at school – which I think is a really valuable addition to the program.
The club’s efforts and successes have been written up twice by our local newspaper, and the club has even received invitations to do voter-registration at community events.
Bottom line - The Civics Center’s student voter-registration program is thriving in Truckee!
Courtesy TYAT via Sierra Sun
Thank you Sue. Thank you Truckee High students. Thank you to everyone involved.
I love this intergenerational activism, grounded in a community, brought to life by people who share common experiences and can grow together over time.
It’s this kind of spirit and action that will ensure everyone can participate in US democracy. So whether you’re a Boomer, Gen X like me or a Millennial, you can help Gen Z and Gen Alpha (because even some of them are eligible to pre-register) join our democracy by getting ready to vote.
Here’s a recent column explaining how to go about it – please let me know if you find it helpful, or have suggestions for improvements we could make.
If you still don’t think you can make a difference – check out these stories from Lee and Alise, about the power of reaching out to people you know.
And if you’re moved to action, here’s some inspiration from more real-life heroes doing their damnedest to make voter registration a regular part of high school life. Summer will soon be over and the midterms are looming – together we can make sure that the youngest voters are set to make their voices heard in November.