Philadelphia’s young voters are tired of being ‘overlooked’

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Philadelphia Youth Poet Laureate Malaya Ulan, a junior at Science Leadership Academy at Beeber, knows what it feels like to be young and overlooked in 2024.

With the upcoming election dominating conversations in Pennsylvania — a swing state that could play a pivotal role in deciding the presidential race — Ulan and her peers are being inundated with questions from adults about whether they’ll show up at the polls on Nov. 5 and why it’s so hard to get young people to turn out for elections.

“Who are we to them? Are we young minds to be cared for? Or statistics to be counted and ignored? ‘Cause they treat us like a chore,” Ulan intoned, sharing one of her poems with a room full of her peers gathered at City Hall on Wednesday for a “Vote That Jawn” event to talk about the importance of showing up to the polls.

“What about the students tossed into schools that make our minds bleed. What about the students who don’t get a good education?” asked Ulan, 16.

Indeed, young people in Philadelphia told Chalkbeat they do keep up with the news and care passionately about political issues like access to health care, raising the minimum wage, stopping the ongoing violence in the Middle East, and making Philadelphia a safer city.

With the Oct. 21 voter registration deadline days away, 54.6% of 18-year-olds are registered to vote in Pennsylvania. It’s roughly the same in Philly, where nearly 55% of the city’s more than 57,900 18-year-olds are registered to vote, according to data compiled by The Civics Center , a nonpartisan organization focused on increasing the number of high school students registered to vote.

By comparison, 78% of Pennsylvanians 45 and older are registered to vote.

Vivek Babu, former president of Drexel University’s undergraduate student government association, said the reason why so many young people may not engage with politics or voting is because they are overloaded with commitments.

“We are bombarded with exams, with homework, with student government associations, with clubs, with sports, with jobs. That is why we don’t vote,” Babu said.

Cecilia Schleinitz, 20, a junior at Temple University studying political science and economics, has been doing youth organizing work in Philly with PA Youth Vote as a student ambassador. Schleinitz said before Vice President Kamala Harris was named the Democratic nominee for president, young people in the city would tell her they didn’t feel connected to the political process.

“There was a lot of talk about, ‘we’re not going to participate in this election because these candidates don’t represent us,’” Schleinitz said.

But once Harris, who is 59, was chosen as the candidate over 81-year-old President Joe Biden, “there was a complete energy shift,” she said.

“Older people think because younger generations are not interacting in the same way with politicians as they are, that young people don’t care and they’re not educated. That’s not true,” she said.

Schleinitz said teenagers and college students are acutely aware of the local issues that affect their lives.

“Young people know that their schools are underfunded in Philadelphia. They experience it every day,” she said. “Young people are experiencing all the issues that we’re talking about in politics, but they’re talking about them in a different way. So I think they’re overlooked and labeled as miseducated.”

Rowan Arthur, 17, a student at Philadelphia High School for Girls and youth organizer in the city, said she’s working to get her peers to the polls this year.

The issues that she feels most passionate about in this election are health care — specifically maintaining access to abortion services — safe and clean streets, decriminalizing homelessness, and improving the lives of people with marginalized identities.

While she sees plenty of youth organizing being led by college students, Arthur said often those college students are from other states and may not share the same perspective of native Philadelphians.

“It can feel like a lot of people are being dismissive of the fact that they are living in a space where local politics is important,” Arthur said. That’s why, she said, it’s important for high schoolers to participate as well and for young people to learn more about down-ballot races that may have more of a direct impact on their lives, she said.

Oliver Jackson, 18, started to explore politics, political activism, and civic issues during the 2020 election cycle when he entered high school at William Penn Charter School. He joined his Black Student Union — which he now leads — and his school’s Young Democrats Club, searching for spaces where he could connect with other civic-minded peers and focus on economic and social issues that impact the Black community.

But he’s also demonstrating a bipartisan spirit. He’s been working with his school’s Young Republicans Club to host meetings to discuss policy and the importance of voting.

To Jackson, the act of voting is a culmination of generations of civil rights fights.

“Throughout American history, voting really became grounded in the fact that you were a person, you were an American, and to me, voting just makes me feel like I’m helping to shape the future of my country,” Jackson said.

Not all the work should be borne by the youngest voters. Angelique Hinton, executive director of PA Youth Vote, said knowing they have a lot on their plates, it’s important for politicians and voting advocates to make an effort to reach out to young people, listen to them, and meet them where they’re at.

It’s why her organization held a student voter field day this summer that included mock elections and voting resources, as well as tug-of-war and other outdoor games.

“As we engage with them and they’re really understanding the importance of this process, they become more and more excited about participating in every election,” Hinton said. “People continue to say they want to figure out how to engage youth, but they continue to invite youth into a space where they’re talking at youth and not really listening.”

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org .