The Article was published in 1970- checkout how young people responded then:
Campus Ritual. Expectedly, youth predominated at most of the ecological happenings and teach-ins across the U.S. At 1,500 campuses and 10,000 schools, students, teachers—and sometimes parents—observed Earth Day by studying such previously recondite subjects as hydrocarbons and acid drainage from coal mines. Much of the day was given to theater and ritual. At the University of Wisconsin, 58 separate programs were staged, including a dawn “earth service” of Sanskrit incantations.
Car wreckings—followed by interment of the beasts—were a common protest against the internal-combustion engine. Some students at Florida Technological University held a trial to condemn a Chevrolet for poisoning the air; they tried to demolish it with a sledgehammer, but the car resisted so sturdily that the students finally shrugged and offered it to an art class for a sculpture project.
Some 1,000 students at Ohio’s Cleveland State University worked throughout the city gathering litter and loading it into garbage trucks. They ended the day by marching to the almost pestilentially polluted Cuyahoga River. Standing at the spot where Founding Father Moses Cleaveland allegedly landed in 1796, a student held aloft a plastic bag full of garbage and intoned: “This is my bag.” Another student, dressed as Cleaveland, rowed up, declared: “This place is too dirty to build a colony,” and double-timed back down the river to the almost equally scabrous Lake Erie. In Letcher County, Ky., part of the most ravaged section of Appalachia, 1,200 students buried a trash-filled casket. A young Denver group called CARP (Citizens Concerned About Radiation Pollution) gave the Colorado Environmental Rapist of the Year Award to the Atomic Energy Commission.
“Some of us who fought for this country’s first environmental protections make the mistake of assuming that because young people today are less likely to be found marching down the National Mall as the shopping mall, that they must not care as deeply as we did when we were young. But apathy has not replaced idealism. Idealism just looks a little different these days.”
Was the 2008 Presidential Election a sign of a long term political realignment? Larry Sabato’s thinks so elaborating in his new book, The Year of Obama.
“The big idea of this book is that 2008 looks to be a realigning election — a very rare event in American history. The previous three were 1896, 1932, and 1980. Translation: The Democratic majority is going to last for a while. There have been 38 presidential elections since 1860, and Obama received the 6th highest share of the vote for a Democrat. Only FDR (four times) and LBJ (once) exceeded Obama’s percentage. There were three giant demographic shifts that powered this:
“— The young broke more than 2-1 Democratic, and it was an intense preference unlikely to fade quickly. As this group ages and replaces older voters, Democrats will benefit even more since this group’s turnout will go up.
“— The proportion of minority voters (black, Hispanic, and Asian) shot up and is likely to climb consistently every four years (mainly because of Hispanics). Democrats get about three-quarters of the votes of minorities, taken as a collective group.
“— Americans with post-graduate educations have begun to move firmly to the Democrats, not just because of Bush and the economy but also because of the GOP’s conservative stance on social issues (abortion, gay rights, etc.)
If Sabato’s analysis holds steadfast, and I do think it will, then perhaps it’s time to rethink the sixties, often argued as a decade that solidified the defeat of the left. The issues of the sixties are still be debated today (racism, sexism, homophobia, peace, environmental efficiency) but over the last four decades, the country has moved to the left on all of those issues. As much as the Right insists that we remain a “center-right” country, I think we’re arriving at a point where that no longer proves true- left has become mainstream, and President Obama has helped this dynamic along. He’s been able to insert a sensibility into political discourse that makes progressive principles, make sense. Now a realignment isn’t guaranteed, I’ve heard a number of young people in particular refer to themselves as “Obama Democrats”- meaning that they align with the individual and not necessarily the party. However if the GOP, well, keeps doing what they’re doing (pretending that nothing has changed), and if more Conservative Dems can refrain from taking conservative positions simply to prove that they’re independent minded (I’m looking at you Bayh) then I think we’re bound to see some really interesting developments over the next 10 years.
An excerpt from Meghan McCain’s speech before the Log Cabin Republicans:
“I am concerned about the environment. I love to wear black. I think government is best when it stays out of people’s lives and business as much as possible. I love punk rock. I believe in a strong national defense. I have a tattoo. I believe government should always be efficient and accountable. I have lots of gay friends. And yes, I am a Republican.”
While I don’t ascribe to the same political ideology as Meghan, I wanted to take a moment to wish her luck. The party leadership would be wise to listen to her; young people are diverse, politically complicated, and still up for grabs. The Republican party as it stands right now has no chance of winning them over with teabagging and cries of socialism. Those tactics represent politics at its worse and are incredibly damaging for a party that’s already perceived as being divisive and exclusive.
Young people responded to an inclusive message in 2008 and Meghan is right to want to tap into that. After the images that resulted from last weeks protests, I can’t help but feel relieved to hear an inclusive voice on the right. We should be able to have a politics that while comprised of competing viewpoints operates within a respectful climate.
I wish her, and RINOS like her, nothing but luck as they fight for the future of the Republican party.
There are a number of reasons to read Kert Andersen’s latest piece in Time Magazine. The entire piece is really insightful but the quote below in particular grabbed my attention for it’s relevance as well as, I think, it’s accuracy.
“The so-called millennials, on the other hand, have come of age during a period defined by the digital revolution, 9/11, financial bubbles bursting, a possible depression and the election — possibly their election — of an African-American President: the makings, frankly, of a healthier, more useful generational creation myth than assassinations, antiwar protests and countercultural bacchanalia (which, by the way, enabled the risk-taking, party-hearty, quasi-utopian paradigm of the past quarter-century). In other words, the kids are all right.”
Understanding the effects of the period in which millennials are coming of age is the key to understanding how to market to them (or I should say us) in a political sense.
More after the jump… Continue reading
“So to those GOP “communicators”, I have a very simple message to relay to you. One that I’ve heard articulated by members of my own generation, particularly those who supported Barack Obama. To be clear, as you aim to inject some “hip-hop” into you’re party, we didn’t support him because he asked us to stand up and make some noise, we supported him because he asked the Democratic party to stand up for the next generation, and he asked us to stand up for our own futures.”
I’m preparing for a speaking gig at Rufus Wainwright’s Blackout Sabbath later this week- I’ll post details later but blogging will probably be light the next few days.
This past weekend over 10,000 young people stormed Washington DC on behalf of an organized act of civil disobedience to promote clean energy practices. Led by Billy Pharish, a former Yale student who felt so compelled to do something about global warming that he dropped out of school, these students engaged in a weekend of seminars, trainings and a march to the White House.
All of their activities were part of a larger “climate movement”- you can read more about it here, here and here.
In addition to raising awareness, these protesters were also specifically taking on a coal run power plant located near the capital. The thinking goes; if Congress can’t clean up it’s own act, or address the lack of energy efficiency in it’s own neighborhood, then how seriously can we take them?
Here’s a video from one of the protests this weekend:
