The word spread around the picnic table where Dan Schwartz’s campaign volunteers were mapping out the day’s voter canvass in Easton.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, a popular Democrat in Maryland and beyond, was bringing his Democracy Summer kids to knock on doors to help Schwartz beat Republican Rep. Andy Harris in November.
They were coming by the busload.
“Eighty?” one volunteer said. “Wow.”
Eighty teenagers from Rockville, White Marsh and even Pennsylvania and New York were about to descend on Idlewild Park, a quiet triangle of grass and shade trees on the south side of this Eastern Shore town.
They were coming to make a difference.
“On any weekend in the summer,” Raskin said, “we are the single biggest organizational force in the Democratic Party across the country.”
I’ve covered the reaction to President Donald Trump’s second term in Maryland, and a big part of that has been seniors.
Gray heads have largely populated the rallies and pickets, shouting down mass deportations, slashed federal jobs and programs, cuts to everything from science to public broadcasting to food stamps.
At these rallies, I’ve heard the same question again and again: Where are all the young people?
I found 80 of them on a Sunday in Easton after they traveled by bus across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. They said they wanted to make a difference.
“There’s such pessimism and darkness in the country about politics and government, and this is one antidote to it,” Raskin said. “The young people feel they can actually have an impact, and so they learn about the districts where we’re going.”
Raskin started working with kids interested in Democratic politics in 2006. He was campaigning for the Maryland state Senate and wanted to get his three children and his nieces and nephews involved.
“My niece Maggie said, ‘Well, what are we going to do? Put on our résumé that we worked for our uncle’s losing state Senate campaign?’
“And I said, ‘Maggie, hey, we’re not going to lose, No. 1, and No. 2 is you’re part of Democracy Summer. It’s not just an internship.’”
Except Democracy Summer didn’t exist. So after Raskin beat powerful incumbent Ida Ruben, he had to go and build it.
Since that first campaign, the program has grown to 1,800 participants in all 50 states. Every March, applications open to high school students interested in the democratic process from a Democratic perspective.
Over seven weeks, the kids who get the fellowships take part in workshops on the history of social movements and how they inform political organizing today. They discuss threats to democracy.
The two-hour sessions are supplemented with video appearances by people doing interesting things in politics.
This week, progressive podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen was the scheduled guest. Last week, it was Heather Cox Richardson, historian and author of “Letters from an American” on Substack. Sen. Elizabeth Warren spoke this summer.
And they knock on doors for Democrats.
“I’ve been a part of the campaigns of local politicians, and I’ve always been a very big advocate of on-the-ground, like boots-on-the-ground, grassroots organizing,” said Naomi Tirat-Gefen of Rockville.
“We would have things like phone banking and canvassing, and I realized how much I really like to connect with people on that kind of political, like socio-political level.”
For others, it’s a dawning realization that this moment may actually be important to the sweep of history.
“I just really wanted to be more, like, aware, and I feel like these next elections are, like, so important,” Ella Sohn of Rosedale said. “So just being out here getting voters is, it’s more important than ever.”
Tirat-Gefen, Sohn and the others in Easton were from the Democracy Summer program run by Raskin’s campaign, so most of the students were from his home base in Montgomery County and Maryland.
They’ve bused to Virginia’s 7th District, where Republicans will pick a candidate this week to challenge Rep. Eugene Vindman.
The former National Security Council legal adviser’s testimony led to Trump’s first impeachment, and he won two years ago by just three points. The winner in November could decide who holds a majority in Congress.
So could the 7th District in Pennsylvania, considered a toss-up between Republican incumbent Scott Perry and Democratic challenger Janelle Stelson.
Democracy Summer worked that district, too, calling voters by the thousands.
The students arrived at Idlewild Park and piled off the buses, a steady line of blue T-shirts flowing into the green park.
Eventually, Schwartz and Raskin called them together and thanked them for coming. They told them this was an important effort.
Schwartz is running against Harris, a well-funded, powerful far-right conservative who’s beaten Democratic contenders eight times in a row. In a heavily Republican district that stretches from Harford to Somerset County, it’s never been close.
“We win by connecting with, listening to, and convincing independent voters that I’m more of a reasonable option than Congressman Harris,” Schwartz told them beneath a spreading shade tree. “That I’ll actually show up and that I will represent everyone — Democrats, independents, Republicans — not just the folks on the extremes.”
Harris, who also faces an effort by Democrats in Annapolis to change the district and make it more competitive in 2028, did not respond to a request for comment.
As I watched the teenagers line up for maps and itineraries and, where needed, escorts, I thought of other young people I’ve seen this summer making a political statement.
I thought of those masked neo-fascist idiots who marched in Washington on Independence Day, shouting “Reclaim America” and “Life, Liberty, Victory.”
Yeah, maybe the youthful enthusiasm on display that morning in Easton felt a little kumbaya partisan. Maybe naive.
Or maybe Raskin was right when he told them this moment calls for that.
“When your children or your grandchildren one day ask what you did when our government was overrun by corruption, authoritarianism and subversion of the Constitution, you could say, ‘I was in Democracy Summer,’” he said.
“I was one of the original young people who went out to knock on doors to win back the Congress of the United States in 2026.”
Comments
Welcome to The Banner's subscriber-only commenting community. Please review our community guidelines.