I attended the Delco Courthouse protest and while there I came to the same conclusion. The majority were older Americans. The only younger were children who attended with parents. I think one of the best ways to begin involving younger adults is through nationwide boycotts but in order for them to participate, we would need young Democratic leaders to reach out and educate them about how the corporations being targeted are greedy, corrupt and hurt them as a consumer.
This could be done through social media. The Democrats chosen though should not have taken any $$ from corporate lobbyists Young adults also need to realize that with all Trump's/Vance's aggression towards other countries, wars they will have to fight in, will break out! Think back to how many were involved in protests against the Vietnam War.
I WAS one of those Vietnam protesters. THANK YOU for protesting yesterday!
I wish I knew how to engage young people. I am truly at a loss -- always looking for a solution. I think that if we knew WHY they were disengaged, that might help, but I've been told that the whole problem is the messaging, and the method of messaging.
What I've heard is that kids have such short attention spans that you have to put something in a song-and-dance routine. That they will not read beyond 100 characters. That the answer is TikTok videos. Since I don't do TikTok (nor Instagram, Snapchat, or any of the video-based media) I have no framework to even understand this.
My sister-in-law says to find a poli sci professor who can get some of his/her students to produce something, and then figure out how to make it go viral.
It's not going to take that long. I've been reading anecdotally that there are a lot of voters who NEVER expected what the new regime hath wrought -- especially since members of their families are losing their government jobs, and them some benefits. But yeah - once stagflation hits, it will be a sea change.
Totally agree that today's kids haven't experienced some of the drama we grew up -- dads who fought a World War, relatives who perished in the Holocaust, friends dying in Vietnam, seeing people in braces from polio. Many schools and helicopter parents seem to protect them from these historical horrors -- I wonder how much is taught about these topics today, and cancel culture is working on eradicating a lot of it, I'm sure.
Of course, kids today do have to cope with school shootings, which they sometimes turn out to protest (if you can call cutting school for a day an effective form of protest). Most of them essentially have short attention spans (a.k.a. won't read anything longer than two sentences) and little perceived power to change things. We need people who can communicate to them in sound bites about the dreadful path we're headed down, and what they -- as the future of America -- can do to fight back. Because Mommy and Daddy's helicoptering won't sugarcoat things for them forever.
I agree with almost everything you said. The ONE thing I take slight issue with is about "if can call cutting school for a day an effective form of protest." I was told that I wasn't allowed to work on Earth Day projects for the first Earth Day, and I better not miss a minute of school for anything about Earth Day. You can guess.... I cut school to go to an Earth Day event. I ended up with a week of suspension, which I spent mostly at a table collecting signatures to lower the voting age to 18, when I was supposed to be home working on my schoolwork. I thought it was effective...but seriously, I agree wholeheartedly that not enough history is taught in school, and I think the people who are parents now didn't live through what we did, and didn't expose their kids to it because a lot of them don't know anything about WW2, Korea, McCarthy and HUAC, civil rights marches, Vietnam -- and everything WE lived through -- including seeing the voting age lowered ("Old enough to die in Vietnam, old enough to vote against it) - and being foot soldiers in the war to get women accepted as professionals, and being able to get a credit card under our own names AND ALL THE REST. Kids today have SO MUCH and it was a lot of us who really worked for it.
I attended the Delco Courthouse protest and while there I came to the same conclusion. The majority were older Americans. The only younger were children who attended with parents. I think one of the best ways to begin involving younger adults is through nationwide boycotts but in order for them to participate, we would need young Democratic leaders to reach out and educate them about how the corporations being targeted are greedy, corrupt and hurt them as a consumer.
This could be done through social media. The Democrats chosen though should not have taken any $$ from corporate lobbyists Young adults also need to realize that with all Trump's/Vance's aggression towards other countries, wars they will have to fight in, will break out! Think back to how many were involved in protests against the Vietnam War.
I WAS one of those Vietnam protesters. THANK YOU for protesting yesterday!
I wish I knew how to engage young people. I am truly at a loss -- always looking for a solution. I think that if we knew WHY they were disengaged, that might help, but I've been told that the whole problem is the messaging, and the method of messaging.
What I've heard is that kids have such short attention spans that you have to put something in a song-and-dance routine. That they will not read beyond 100 characters. That the answer is TikTok videos. Since I don't do TikTok (nor Instagram, Snapchat, or any of the video-based media) I have no framework to even understand this.
My sister-in-law says to find a poli sci professor who can get some of his/her students to produce something, and then figure out how to make it go viral.
I fear it will take the soon to come stagflation and unemployment to awaken all too many of them.
It's not going to take that long. I've been reading anecdotally that there are a lot of voters who NEVER expected what the new regime hath wrought -- especially since members of their families are losing their government jobs, and them some benefits. But yeah - once stagflation hits, it will be a sea change.
Totally agree that today's kids haven't experienced some of the drama we grew up -- dads who fought a World War, relatives who perished in the Holocaust, friends dying in Vietnam, seeing people in braces from polio. Many schools and helicopter parents seem to protect them from these historical horrors -- I wonder how much is taught about these topics today, and cancel culture is working on eradicating a lot of it, I'm sure.
Of course, kids today do have to cope with school shootings, which they sometimes turn out to protest (if you can call cutting school for a day an effective form of protest). Most of them essentially have short attention spans (a.k.a. won't read anything longer than two sentences) and little perceived power to change things. We need people who can communicate to them in sound bites about the dreadful path we're headed down, and what they -- as the future of America -- can do to fight back. Because Mommy and Daddy's helicoptering won't sugarcoat things for them forever.
I agree with almost everything you said. The ONE thing I take slight issue with is about "if can call cutting school for a day an effective form of protest." I was told that I wasn't allowed to work on Earth Day projects for the first Earth Day, and I better not miss a minute of school for anything about Earth Day. You can guess.... I cut school to go to an Earth Day event. I ended up with a week of suspension, which I spent mostly at a table collecting signatures to lower the voting age to 18, when I was supposed to be home working on my schoolwork. I thought it was effective...but seriously, I agree wholeheartedly that not enough history is taught in school, and I think the people who are parents now didn't live through what we did, and didn't expose their kids to it because a lot of them don't know anything about WW2, Korea, McCarthy and HUAC, civil rights marches, Vietnam -- and everything WE lived through -- including seeing the voting age lowered ("Old enough to die in Vietnam, old enough to vote against it) - and being foot soldiers in the war to get women accepted as professionals, and being able to get a credit card under our own names AND ALL THE REST. Kids today have SO MUCH and it was a lot of us who really worked for it.