After my recent move to a new state, I of course wanted to continue with my political involvement. In Florida, I volunteered at my local GOP office two days a week and thought I would be able to do the same thing after I moved to Alabama. I emailed the Alabama GOP office, filled out the volunteer form, and in the several months since then I have not gotten a response. I’ve gone to my county GOP website and found no contact information. Although I found two young republican organizations (one of them did kindly invite me to sit-in on their meetings), I have not found any teenage republican organizations or any other GOP organizations for a teen to volunteer for. Not finding anything to be involved in, I contacted the National TARS club and am currently organizing a new TARS club for my county.

   This made me think; why are there no organizations for teens? Why has the GOP not done anything for teenage outreach? And who is going to be the political future of the United States of America?

   Is it a lack of awareness? Are teens aware of what’s going on in our country? And if not, where’s the communication?

   The Republican party often gets branded as the party of “rich, white old men”. Unfortunately, that’s true in a way. When I first started volunteering at my county GOP office, one of the first things that one of the nice ladies said to me was, “You’re only how old? That’s great! We are always needing young people to help and get involved.” But also, the GOP never came to me and said, “Hey! We need you to come volunteer, you’d be a great help!” or “We’re always looking for young people!” But I was interested in learning more about politics, so I was looking for ways to do that. They took me in, they taught me a lot of patience and took me out of my comfort zone to do even the simple things like phone calls. They even let me go to a fancy dinner and meet Marco Rubio!

   The Democratic party is another story. They’re kind of known for being the “cool” party. Especially in the 2008 and 2012 elections, they were often known for their “handouts”. The “We’ll do this, this and that if we get elected.” Which is great, but it never gets done (or turns out worse than we ever thought…).

  It seems as if the generations from about 1970 down like handouts. If it isn’t given to them or if there’s nothing in it for them, they don’t like it. They also like to take the easiest path sometimes, which I am definitely guilty of. But sometimes you have to take the higher road, because in the long run it’ll most likely work out better.

 The Republican Party needs more outreach to teens. They need to go to more schools and suggest making TARS clubs, that way teens can get involved in a way other than just watching the usually biased news before elections to see who to vote for.

  I never really had a big interest in politics until about a year ago. Though I was interested in knowing of current events going on in America, I never really “cared” about who was getting elected, or what the nominees had to say. My whole family never really talks much about politics. I hadn’t ever heard my parents talk much about politics until last year, when I got an interest in it!

  This brings me to another question, is it the parent’s faults?

  Like I said above, my mom and dad never said much about it (my mom told me the other day that if I wouldn’t have told her about Benghazi, she wouldn’t have even known about it!). They never sat me down and said “Hey, this is how politics work. You need to think for yourself and vote for who YOU think has the best interest for the people.” Truth is, they haven’t voted since Reagan…(Sorry, Mom and Dad, I ratted you out!). But we also can’t make it mandatory for parents to sit their kids down and tell them about this stuff, so what is it that we can do?

 

  Since we can’t make it mandatory for parents to teach their kids about politics, who can we make mandatorily do this? School systems. Yeah, they teach government and U.S. history, but do they teach it in a fair way from both views (Conservative and Liberal)? No. Most of the time, they teach from the far left. Students know how the government system works, they know when Columbus discovered America, but they don’t get taught how to vote. They get told who to vote for sometimes, but never how to vote for who they think is morally right. When it comes election time, what do they do? They go to the usually biased media.

  This is something we all need more awareness about. You don’t need to make politics your whole life, but you really should be taught to think for yourself.