MLK III Launches Richmond Generation Engage

By Takesha Briggins
June 29, 2005

In a crowd of over 300 persons from Richmond and surrounding areas, coordinators of Generation Engage officially launched Richmond as a participating city. As hundreds of local citizens packed the Hyperlink Café last Thursday waiting for the arrival and words of Coretta Scott King, they were saddened with the news that she was ill but not disappointed when they saw that King's son, Martin Luther King III was sent in her place.

The topic of the evening was the newly found organization, Generation Engage that seeks to increase voter turnout in young voters. "

Any effort that focuses on the underserved vote will have significant results. Generation Engage starts from the bottom and builds up. This organization will teach young people how to get involved," said King, III.

Lifetime Richmond resident, Randy Singleton, brought his three kids ages 9, 14 and 16 to the event to get more information about Generation Engage.

"I always bring my kids to the polls so they can learn about the voting process. This is a good opportunity to get youth involved with the law making process. Youth don't usually pay attention to the laws that are being made for them," said Singleton. Chris Lewis, Regional Coordinator for Generation Engage in Virginia, said that Richmond is a great place to start. "The approach is to invest in young people in their community. We want to recruit volunteers and build a base network so we can go out in communities and do the outreach we want to do."

In addition to the 300 plus persons, double what event organizers expected, the candidate for governor were also in attendance, vying for votes and supporting the cause. Republican candidate Jerry Kilgore was not there but was represented by his wife Marty Kilgore. Democratic candidate Tim Kaine and Independent candidate Russ Potts were also present. Even local elected officials attended.

Generation Engage is a nonprofit voter recruitment organization that was founded by Adrian Talbott after half of the young population did not turn out to vote in the 2004 election. Currently the organization is setting up pilot programs in Virginia and North Carolina. Where some young voter recruitment organizations focus primarily on college campuses, Generation Engage will focus on young voters who are not in college. They are a community based organization that pledges to be present year round, not just election time.

Several weeks ago at the program launch in Washington D.C., Coretta Scott King commented, "Half of America's Youth in the 18-24 age group are not college students. Political scientists call them 'the forgotten half'. These young people very often have an even larger stake in politics than students, and opinion polls indicate that many of them feel that they are being short changed by the political system. Increasing the involvement of America's young workers in the political process could produce a dramatic transformation of the political landscape in America, and very much for the better."