Students Are Voting Again to Build a Movement

Students are voting again in 2010 because we're building a movement. This movement did not begin with the 2008 vote campaign and it certainly did not end with the election of Barack Obama. It is a movement to make education a right and has been a driving force behind social progress for decades. We are fortunate enough to be organizing in a time of great opportunity and have capitalized on the leadership of President Obama and members of Congress. The passage of student financial aid reform, the biggest investment in higher education since the GI bill, is a testament to this. However, we are simply passing through one era of this movement and have a responsibility as organizers to build upon past victories. We are voting again, not just to elect members of Congress who will champion higher education causes, but also to construct a more perfect framework of student activism that will lead to students winning on issues directly affecting young people.

This is no lofty goal born of soaring but empty rhetoric. The 2010 election provides us with a strategic moment to make vast strides in the student movement. A strong foundation of grassroots organizing was laid during the 2008 election which was then utilized to mobilize young people around student aid reform, protesting budget cuts and tuition hikes, and making huge advancements for the Development, Relief and Education, for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act. These efforts amplified the student voice worldwide and won some key victories in college affordability. The momentum from those campaigns must now be carried forward to the 2010 election so that additional victories will be won in 112th Congress.

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