I saw a poster hanging up the other day that said, "What about the Muslim voter?" When we break down our voting trends in women, men, catholic, christian, jewish, latin-american, black, and white...we leave out Muslim voters. I had never thought of that before seeing that poster. I had never even considered the Muslim vote. This post reminded me again of this poster.
Now...
My only primary source for Civil Society Actors roles in government and in democratization is from our talk with Professor Hardig's friends in Lebanon. They seemed to have the same frustrations as CSA's in the US, though I think they are in two completely different categories of frustration. On the Lebanon side, they can't do anything and on the US side, they aren't doing as much as they'd like. Other than this observation there is not much more I know.
Our CSA's roles in the election are heavily youth based with campaigns like Rock the Vote that play to the majority of our youth being Democrats and yet a majority of those Democrats not voting in the elections. We could make this parallel to the youth driven social movements in the MENA. Throughout all of history, the youth have been a keystone in our social movements. From this we can make a rough prediction of what the future holds for both the US and the MENA. In the US, our youth have become lazy and apathetic when it comes to politics--they have allowed it to become a popularity game. Until our youth regains its passion for the future of this country then our country will continue to be in a stalemate of progress. When we switch over the the countries in the MENA, their youth is excited and passionate about progress--so I believe they will obtain it. In history, the youth have always achieved what they sought out for. With persistence-- all things will be possible in the MENA as long as it maintains it's youth base. In fact, our youth could learn a little something from them.
I think it is interesting that you bring up the importance of youth in elections. In Egypt, it was the 20-somethings who could not find jobs who started a social movement. I also agree that participation by young adults in civil society in America is lacking. Young adults like the idea of activism and "standing up to the man", but when it comes time to voting, many use the excuse of being lazy to avoid voting. This needs the change. It is fairly easy to get an absentee vote; one registers, then one applies for the absentee ballot, then one gets it in the mail and sends it back! What should be fairly simple for many young voters is an excuse to ignore the right that many don't have.
ReplyDeleteI find the same thing frustrating! I saw an SNL skit this weekend where someone played a girl telling other young adults that they needed to vote and that politics are fun. At the same time being tickled by her boyfriend. At the end of the segment, when the 'news guy' asks her who she is voting for, she says she is only 17. The skit was funny...because it was true. Being 'into politics' has become a fad, and that would be totally awesome if those same people posting millions of Facebook statuses were informed beyond what there favorite news station is saying and took some time away from Facebook to go register.
ReplyDeleteAhh you would have really enjoyed an event I went to a few weeks ago or something about the Muslim swing vote in this presidential election! There were representatives from each party who talked about the importance of the Muslim swing vote especially in this presidential election because there are large populations of Muslims especially in the swing states. The speakers were really interesting but there were only like 20 or so people there which was too bad. They basically talked about the Muslim vote in the past and how a majority of Muslims voted for Bush in 2000 - they think it was because he discussed the problem of racial profiling of Muslims in airports. Then in 2004 very few Muslims voted for Bush and in 2008 a majority voted for Obama. The Republican party representative said that she thinks a majority of Muslims would be voting for Romney in this election because they are fed up with Obama's policies in the MENA region and his response to the Middle East but I guess we'll have to see if that's the case. Either way, the event really showed me that the Muslim vote is under appreciated and not focused on enough by campaigns, which is strange since candidates spend so much time talking about foreign policy in the Middle East.
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