Comfort in Division

Despite the chants of “Victory” and the illusion that the battle for America is over with Barack Obama clinching the Democratic presidential nomination, a man whose message is one of change, hope, and unification for a better America, we remain divided on many fronts. Yes, I have stated the obvious.

What remains concealed though, at times, is our comfort in division. Any time we can find a way to create an “Us v. Them” dichotomy, we seize the opportunity. Unfortunately, on the heels of what has been a remarkable primary season, a new division is being created: the Millennial Generation v. the Baby Boomers. Let’s get ready to rumble?

Yesterday, in the Huffington Post, Elizabeth Cermak implored Baby Boomers to “let go of the torch.” In the end of her piece discussing the impacts of the Millennial Generation in this election cycle (synonymous with Generation Y depending on who you get your age demographics from), she wrote,

“We Millennials have gotten our way in this primary, and Barack Obama's nomination is contagiously exciting to the vast majority of us. So I beg you, if you ever really believed that this country should pay more attention to the future desired and fought for by its young generation, support Barack Obama just out of your old respect for that idea regardless of your personal beliefs. Let go of your anger and the idea that a protest vote for John McCain in November would be better than voting for Obama just because you're frustrated you didn't get your way. That is a completely selfish and self-centered idea based only on the notion that this is still your country to steer. It isn't, so get down off the soapbox and hand over the torch. You may think that we're wrong, but what my generation wants is clear and we deserve our parent's respect just as much as your beliefs did.”

What she did, whether she realized it or not, is lay down the gauntlet in a battle that has been raging behind the scenes in American politics, the mounting tension between the Baby Boomers and the Millennials.

Baby Boomers have stereotyped Millennials as lazy and entitled. Their researchers, scholars, and media take every chance they can to explain to America what the Millennials are about. Millennials feel it is their time to step into the spotlight, in both the private and public sector, as well as on the political scene. The Boomers are recalcitrant to let the proverbial reigns completely go; Millennials have little patience.

Millennials cannot create Port Huron. We cannot relive the Free Speech movement at Berkeley. We cannot retool the Civil Rights Movement. We cannot recreate the culture of the 1960’s. We cannot replicate the same conditions, especially when the environment we have come to age in has been so entirely different from that of the Baby Boomers.

I have not seen the great political leaders of my time brutally assassinated in front of my eyes. I do not know what it is like to see thousands and thousands of young men come back in body bags or to pray their draft number was not called. I did not live 25 or more years of my life under the specter of the Cold War. So admittedly, there are some things I just do not know or do not understand. But as is evidenced by the growing division between the generations, ignorance, on either end, will not be bliss.

Whether anyone acknowledges it or Millennials themselves recognize it, we have our own set of experiences, ones that share some commonalities with that of the Baby Boomers. They experienced communism; we sat in front of the TV as people tore down the Berlin Wall. We saw the later chapters of our relations with the Middle East unfold. We saw the blowback of Cold War maneuvers in a post Cold War world. We have seen genocides, and the advent of terrorism in our backyard. We have grown up in a world of new wars: The War on Drugs, The War on Terror, The War on Poverty, and the newest of these, the War Against Global Warming. These are all experiences to which we ourselves will cling 25 years from now. It is hard to believe that we cannot find some way to bring the experiences of both generations together to move forward.

Running track in my youth, I remember the importance of passing the baton on to a teammate who was responsible for running the next leg of the race. As I approached the person who, outside of my control, would determine a piece of my future, I had to be sure they knew I was coming with that baton and that they had a firm grip on it before I let go.

Millennials have the baton at the tip of their fingers. Individuals like Cermak want the Baby Boomers to open their clenched fist on the baton that is 21st century America. Many Millennials feel they will have to run the next leg of this political and cultural race ever so much faster. This is not a feeling that I can disagree with, as many members of my generation, including myself, believe there is so much more to be done to bring about change in America. But, it will take both generations to pass the baton to move forward. The comfort in generational division brings with it the inherent risk that the baton will be dropped. And together, we will have to watch our common future, real change, whiz by as we fumble to pick it up.

The Pizza Generation

So I came across this today... http://www.thenation.com/blogs/passingthrough/325740.

It talks about the continual bad "rap," or portrayal, if you will, of youth and the youth vote.

A few months ago, an ad was released by Pizza Hut, which fuels the impression the media advances about Millennials. This impression is part of a continued strategy to discredit our generation before we even get our foot in the door. Since the youth vote will be "coveted" this fall, maybe the powers that be will get a clue.

The Pizza Hut-ization of Youth Electoral Politics

Recently, political “hub” Pizza Hut released an ad on YouTube encouraging youth to vote in the upcoming election. With the tagline, “It’s your choice. Please vote,” Pizza Hut likely feels it has done its civic duty to encourage the "lazy, sofa-lounging, pizza-eating" members of the Millennial Generation to get up off the couch and go vote.

This is the Pizza Hut-ization of youth voter politics. The message: You are incapable of even listening to a normal election ad telling you to go vote.

Let’s give Pizza Hut a little credit and assume for the sake of argument that its portrayal is accurate. If this is the case, then youth, after viewing the commercial, will likely just call their local Pizza Hut or place an order for a pie online. If youth really are this stupid and lazy, it will not cause them to go vote.

Yet, if we take a second view of the Millennial Generation, as a generation with many questions and a critical eye, they will react to the commercial as I did, wondering whose idea that commercial was and why they were ever put in charge of developing a piece to target youth voters. Slapping something on YouTube does not give you instant “street cred.” (Caveat Emptor Corporate America)

This is but one example of the “dumbing” down of the American polis. Have we lost so much so much faith in young America that we have resorted to such amateur methods to reach out to a group that by other measures, education, technology, and networking, is an advanced generation?

What would help is if Pizza Hut would instead of creating ads for their pizza, donate pizza to all the young poll workers, precinct walkers, campaign staffers, and youth voter groups around the country, comprised of driven and capable members of the Millennial Generation. I may be nearing the tail end of our Generation and often wonder “why” at some of things we do, but give us some credit.

Even more dangerous is the prospect that this is just one example of the wave of corporate-sponsored political ads to come. It somehow cheapens the electoral process when marketers invade the political market using the same tactics they use to sell pizza to sell politics.

The ironic part of this ad to me is the fact that in college, I constantly had debates within student government with my colleagues about giving out pizza to get students to participate in campus politics. If I had known that five years later this would become a national trend, perhaps it would have been prudent to pitch this tactic.

Damn pizza.

Please Stop Talking About Me..

Here's my blog post for the Social Citizens post (on the Case Foundation)...

I’ve come up with one definition for my generation, the infamous Millennials: we don’t like being defined. We especially don’t like being defined by people who don’t have Facebook accounts, don’t know that RSS feeds are a legitimate way to get your news, have never used Twitter, don’t understand that we can text and listen and jokingly tell us that we must be “itching to go to the bar” after a well-delivered power point presentation at a conference at which I’m the youngest one, by years … so, please stop talking about me.

It’s a simple definition, but also intricate and powerful. Probably also scary for those that study our habits and analyze our trends. Although I’ve enjoyed the attention this election cycle has brought, the Millennials are here to stay. And yes, we’ll vote, and yes, technology is here to stay, and yes, democracy will be ok – better, even.

Along with the 4,641 Make It Your Own proposals (an impressive 27% of which were submitted by individuals under 35 years old to the Case Foundation), Mobilize.org is doing our part. Mobilize.org is an all-partisan youth civic engagement organization dedicated to educating, empowering, and energizing young people to increase our civic engagement and political participation. We work to show young people how public policy impacts our lives, and more importantly – how we can impact public policy.

We are a youth-led, youth-run organization that models both the good and the bad of all you’ve been discussing. We’ve engaged thousands of young people from all side(s) of the aisle(s) in a collaborative, technologically savvy process called Democracy 2.0 – our quest to not just define, but to build the democracy that I (and my millions and millions of Millennial friends) will be inheriting and leading. I should note, though, I can only account for 936 of them, as that is how many Facebook friends I have. :-)

Mobilize.org is part of a huge coalition of organizations, funders, advisors and institutions that recognize that millennials are the experts on the millennial generation. So, learn from me, and I’ll learn from you, but please … stop talking about me, and start doing with me.

Don't Tell Us, We'll Tell You

Welcome to Leadership (Re)Defined, a blog about Millennials...to inform everyone else.