CURRENT AGE: 17
YOUNG POLITICAL ACTIVIST: PORTLAND, ORE.
Jennifer Jones has been politically active since she was a high school freshman. Since then, she has worked passionately for the Democratic Party. She sees no problem with continuing her activism after high school, as she will be attending American University in Washington, D.C., in the fall.
Jennifer also has been active in The Bus Project, a student-run group that works for a hands-on democracy by organizing events (such as forums, voter-registration drives and bar crawls) to rally volunteers and voters ( www.busproject.org ).
Where did you get the idea to join the Bus Project? It’s a very interesting story for me. Usually I think people just find it through their friends. I stumbled on it on the Internet. It was after the 2004 election and I was bored and I was like, “Well, I need to find something,” and I just was on a list that connected me to the Bus Project Web site, and I stumbled over “youth caucus” and saw high school and thought, “Cool,” so I got in contact with them. I was just looking for something to do politically because I knew I wanted to get involved that way.
What has been your best experience politically?
I got the white T-shirt award from the Bus Project, which is kind of cool. It’s like their special volunteer T-shirt and it’s kind of for star volunteers.
Do you plan to continue volunteering as the country gets closer to the November election?
I’m going to continue working at the Democratic Party, and what’s nice about that is that I don’t have to support one candidate, so I’m not in the middle of that. I try to think of myself as not having to choose. And I’ll be working with them through the summer and building up a base, and of course when we have our nominee, we’ll be switching for advocating for him or her. And then I’ll go to D.C. and hopefully do something either with the DNC or with the local presidential candidate or local candidate in the D.C. area.
What advice would you give to other kids who want to get politically involved?
Phone banking gets better after the first three times you call.