Students Demand Action volunteers on the 2020 election and staying motivated in the new year

Volunteers with Students Demand Action, a grassroots arm of Everytown for Gun Safety, spoke to Mashable about their tireless work to register voters and get out the vote ahead of the 2020 election. This cycle, Students Demand Action volunteers helped over 100,000 young voters register to vote ahead of Election Day. 

In the piece, Catie Jacobson, a volunteer leader with Students Demand Action in Pennsylvania, and Megan Dombrowski, a member of the Students Demand Action National Advisory Board in Michigan, talk about their election work and the power of youth activism. 

“[Catie] Jacobson plans to continue fighting for issues that affect members of her community, like common sense gun policy. ‘The question everyone’s thinking about right now: We did all this work, there was all this energy and momentum, and we had a lot of really big successes… How can we keep that momentum up and what are we going to do?’

Megan Dombrowski, a Students Demand Action National Advisory Board Member who voted for the first time in November, says her experiences volunteering in this year’s election proved that the fight for more progressive policies will be ongoing. ‘We’re really starting to recognize that politics affects us — affects us personally and affects our communities,’ the 19-year-old explains. ‘Even though the elections are over, there’s more lessons to come… We can always do better than where we are right now.’
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‘I feel like there’s a lot of talk about how the youth are inheriting the world, but I tell my parents all the time… you guys aren’t going anywhere tomorrow. We are all going to live with the consequences of our actions,’ Jacobson explained
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Jacobson, for her part, says she’ll continue phone banking and engaging in peer-to-peer education to ensure accountability among the politicians she helped get elected. ‘We took a great first step in electing a bunch of gun sense candidates that are willing to support legislation that has been proven to reduce gun violence,’ she says. ‘But, you know, our work is not remotely close to done… We’re going to see Students Demand Action volunteers and myself showing up — phone banking, lobbying, advocating for legislation that will protect us.’”

Students Demand Action volunteers are available for interviews to discuss their work electing gun sense candidates up and down the ballot and how they will continue to fight for common-sense gun safety legislation in the new year. If you are interested, please do not hesitate to reach out.