She Said: Young Politicos To Change Future

By Connect Mason News Director Elizabeth Stern

We could hear the rallying shouts far from where we could see them. Striding up to West Broad Street in Richmond at 4 p.m., we discovered a core of maybe forty or fifty people brandishing signs boasting Hillary Clinton’s name in front of the Siegel Center at VCU before the Jefferson-Jackson dinner on Saturday night. Over the next few hours, toddlers, teenagers and the elderly canvassed the entire street in droves, shouting chants and desperate cries for change. Though several policemen were on call outside the venue, no fighting seemed to occur between the two, rather obvious allegiances.

Amidst the countless shirts bearing the candidates’ names, 10-foot-high cut-out letters spelling O-B-A-M-A, droves of people flashing color-coded passes and bracelets to get inside, as well as jackets shining with buttons—not to mention pants, hats, purses and even shoes—one thing was unmistakable: young people proved to be a formidable presence at a usually grown-ups-only event. When I found myself actually looking for parents, I noticed that, upon inspection, they had not come to be chaperones on a Saturday night, but to join alongside their clan of children and excitedly wave the same signs at passersby and traffic.

As I stood on the sidelines, intermittently snapping photographs and holding recorders up to people’s faces, I recalled my dallying role in politics as a high school student and native Washingtonian. I remembered, with great vividness, the grave discussions that overtook classrooms throughout the building as we dropped everything we were doing to watch our country go to war, to see little flashes of light across the TV screen and understand that they were bombs, to bemoan our city’s lack of congressional voting rights and to understand, firsthand, what political unrest might actually look like. References from the ‘60s became as common as MP3 players.

Teachers and administrators from my high school encouraged us to fling open the front doors in the late morning to trek downtown even in rain, snow and sleet to participate in city-wide and national protests. Hundreds and sometimes thousands marched, shouted, crafted signs, created organizations and orchestrated sit-ins. Sometimes these protests were led specifically by high school students themselves.

And yet, it came as a surprise to see what appeared to be, not just middle school students, but plenty of attendees who were probably still in the process of counting their age on two hands outside the doors of the Siegel Center.

“This isn’t just a protest,” Whitney Rhodes, Connect Mason director said, standing beside me, “These kids are actually paying 50 bucks to get in here.”

While voting has, traditionally, been something that younger Americans left to their parents to figure out for them even long after they’d emptied out of the nest, youth voters increased with the elections of 2000 and onward. Younger people are showing an astounding amount of proactivity not just in the general election, but the primaries, as well. Voters aged 18-29 accounted for nearly half the overall turn-out rate in the New Hampshire primary, while almost 300,000 young voters added themselves to the mix in Florida’s demographic pie.

In one survey, a third of students reported discussing politics at least once a day, while 40 percent claimed to talk about politics at least once a week.

Not only are young people realizing how much influence they are starting to have, but they are doing their homework, too. Young voters in NH, MI, NV, SC and FL all listed the economy as their highest concern, largely surpassing the issues of the war in Iraq, health care, illegal immigration and terrorism.

With November hovering on the horizon, it goes without saying that our power to affect change in the political climate, as young individuals as well as student organizations, is palpable. Polls are showing that, not only can we sway the election in our favor in terms of which candidate rises or falls, but we can enact a sense of equilibrium, in beliefs and representation, across the demographic lines. As this presidential race continues to amplify its mark on history, it is becoming clearer and clearer what our role is in writing, creating, chanting, wearing, pursuing and being that history.