There is a folding table outside the DeKalb County library every Saturday. Behind it, usually, is a sixteen-year-old girl named Kenya. She has a clipboard, three pens, a stack of forms, and the kind of eye contact that makes grown men reach for their wallets and their ID at the same time.
She is one of maybe forty of us. We are not an organization. We do not have a name. We do not have a 501(c)(3). We have a group chat, a shared Google Doc of shift signups, and a rule that whoever brings snacks doesn't have to break down the table.
Nobody hired us. Nobody paid us. Nobody could stop us either. That last part matters more than the first two. When you are a Black teenage girl in Georgia, adults sometimes ask you whose permission you have. The honest answer, most days, is: our own.
Nobody hired us. Nobody paid us. Nobody could stop us either.
We registered 812 people between January and June. I know because I keep the spreadsheet. I am telling you this not because you should be impressed. I am telling you this because every article about young voters gets it slightly wrong. We are not apathetic. We are not disengaged. We are already doing it. You just weren't invited.
The girls are talking. Get in the conversation.