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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsOpen Letter to Democrats on Young Voter Dissillusion
from my email ...
26-Year Old Founder of U.S. UnCut Sends Open Letter To Democrats On Young Voter Disillusion
Open Letter to Democrats From a Disillusioned Young Voter
By Carl Gibson, Reader Supported News
07 November 14
Dear Democrats,
Are you listening? President Obama says he hears us. He says that people dont have a reason to show up to vote if the politicians they have to choose from dont motivate them. Hes partially right. But thats only part of a much larger problem. To all you would-be elected officials looking for my generations support at the polls, listen closely get populist or get ready to lose bad.
2014s low voter turnout was historic. Voter turnout actually hasnt been this low since the 1940s. As Mother Jones pointed out, voter turnout for people under 30 was dismal. In this election, people like me only made up 12 percent of those who voted, while people aged 60 and older made up almost 40 percent of total voters. In 2012, when President Obama was re-elected and Congressional Democrats made gains in the House and Senate, millennials made up almost one-fifth of all voters, and voters 60 and older made up just 25 percent of the electorate, bringing us a little closer to a tie. It isnt hard to see the difference this year, Republicans steamrolled you, Democrats, because most of us stayed home and let our Fox-watching uncles and grandparents decide on who was going to represent everyone else.
So how do older people pick who runs Congress? Like every other voting bloc, they pick the ones who run on issues most important to them. And as Vox reported, data consistently shows that younger people want their tax dollars spent on education and job creation. Older voters want their money spent on Social Security and war. The Republicans who swept the U.S. Senate ran largely on fear campaigns over ISIS, promising to be more hawkish than their opponents in an eagerness to pour money and troops into Iraq and Syria to snuff out Americas newest boogeyman.
Contrast the unified Republican message with the profound silence from you Democrats on addressing the trillion-dollar student debt crisis, rampant inequality and underemployment, and your collective fear of openly embracing economic populism, and you cook up what we saw on Tuesday night. Older people showed up, highly motivated to elect war hawks. Younger people mostly stayed home, disillusioned with the only alternative on the ballot who didnt even talk about the issues affecting our lives every day.
The few of us who did show up to vote largely did it to support state ballot initiatives that actually mattered in our daily lives. We still voted to raise the minimum wage in 4 states to a slightly more respectable amount, and to $15 an hour in San Francisco. We voted for a week of paid sick days in Massachusetts, and for marijuana legalization in three more states (okay, well, DC isnt a state yet, but it definitely will be by the time were grandparents). We voted to turn nonviolent drug offenses from felonies into misdemeanors in California. We even boosted high voter turnout in Michigan for Gary Peters, a Democrat who made climate change something well have to confront long after the boomers are gone his top issue. We just didnt vote for Democrats who havent done anything for us since we voted for them in 2012, and who brazenly took our votes for granted this year.
Even though the Republicans have made it clear they wont raise the minimum wage, legalize marijuana, or address climate change as long as theyre in power, they at least have a unified message that appeals to enough people who share their values. They can also communicate that message in a confident way. The Republican platform comes in easy-to-remember, tweet-sized sentences. We all know their buzzwords national security, family values, free markets. That may translate to endless war, homophobia, and corporate feudalism for the better-informed, but for most people, those are catch phrases they can get behind.
You Democrats, on the other hand, looked pitiful in the year leading up to the midterms. You didnt seem to stand for anything in particular, you just pointed the finger at the other guy, told us they were bad, and that you werent like them. Thats not enough. Take a risk, be bold. Get behind Elizabeth Warrens 0.75 percent interest rate for student loans. Allow student debt to be abolished with bankruptcy. Push for single-payer healthcare, or at the very least a public health insurance option. Need some catchy buzzwords? Try affordable education, good jobs, and healthy families.
President Obama hit the nail on the head we wont show up and vote for you if you arent offering us anything real. If Democrats want to stay relevant, theyll have to learn to stop taking us for granted and actually make an effort to get our votes. Simply banking on being the lesser evil and having that be enough wont cut it any longer.
_____
Carl Gibson, 26, is co-founder of US Uncut, a nationwide creative direct-action movement that mobilized tens of thousands of activists against corporate tax avoidance and budget cuts in the months leading up to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Carl and other US Uncut activists are featured in the documentary "We're Not Broke," which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. He currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin. You can contact him at carl@rsnorg.org, and follow him on twitter at @uncutCG.
Open Letter to Democrats From a Disillusioned Young Voter
By Carl Gibson, Reader Supported News
07 November 14
Dear Democrats,
Are you listening? President Obama says he hears us. He says that people dont have a reason to show up to vote if the politicians they have to choose from dont motivate them. Hes partially right. But thats only part of a much larger problem. To all you would-be elected officials looking for my generations support at the polls, listen closely get populist or get ready to lose bad.
2014s low voter turnout was historic. Voter turnout actually hasnt been this low since the 1940s. As Mother Jones pointed out, voter turnout for people under 30 was dismal. In this election, people like me only made up 12 percent of those who voted, while people aged 60 and older made up almost 40 percent of total voters. In 2012, when President Obama was re-elected and Congressional Democrats made gains in the House and Senate, millennials made up almost one-fifth of all voters, and voters 60 and older made up just 25 percent of the electorate, bringing us a little closer to a tie. It isnt hard to see the difference this year, Republicans steamrolled you, Democrats, because most of us stayed home and let our Fox-watching uncles and grandparents decide on who was going to represent everyone else.
So how do older people pick who runs Congress? Like every other voting bloc, they pick the ones who run on issues most important to them. And as Vox reported, data consistently shows that younger people want their tax dollars spent on education and job creation. Older voters want their money spent on Social Security and war. The Republicans who swept the U.S. Senate ran largely on fear campaigns over ISIS, promising to be more hawkish than their opponents in an eagerness to pour money and troops into Iraq and Syria to snuff out Americas newest boogeyman.
Contrast the unified Republican message with the profound silence from you Democrats on addressing the trillion-dollar student debt crisis, rampant inequality and underemployment, and your collective fear of openly embracing economic populism, and you cook up what we saw on Tuesday night. Older people showed up, highly motivated to elect war hawks. Younger people mostly stayed home, disillusioned with the only alternative on the ballot who didnt even talk about the issues affecting our lives every day.
The few of us who did show up to vote largely did it to support state ballot initiatives that actually mattered in our daily lives. We still voted to raise the minimum wage in 4 states to a slightly more respectable amount, and to $15 an hour in San Francisco. We voted for a week of paid sick days in Massachusetts, and for marijuana legalization in three more states (okay, well, DC isnt a state yet, but it definitely will be by the time were grandparents). We voted to turn nonviolent drug offenses from felonies into misdemeanors in California. We even boosted high voter turnout in Michigan for Gary Peters, a Democrat who made climate change something well have to confront long after the boomers are gone his top issue. We just didnt vote for Democrats who havent done anything for us since we voted for them in 2012, and who brazenly took our votes for granted this year.
Even though the Republicans have made it clear they wont raise the minimum wage, legalize marijuana, or address climate change as long as theyre in power, they at least have a unified message that appeals to enough people who share their values. They can also communicate that message in a confident way. The Republican platform comes in easy-to-remember, tweet-sized sentences. We all know their buzzwords national security, family values, free markets. That may translate to endless war, homophobia, and corporate feudalism for the better-informed, but for most people, those are catch phrases they can get behind.
You Democrats, on the other hand, looked pitiful in the year leading up to the midterms. You didnt seem to stand for anything in particular, you just pointed the finger at the other guy, told us they were bad, and that you werent like them. Thats not enough. Take a risk, be bold. Get behind Elizabeth Warrens 0.75 percent interest rate for student loans. Allow student debt to be abolished with bankruptcy. Push for single-payer healthcare, or at the very least a public health insurance option. Need some catchy buzzwords? Try affordable education, good jobs, and healthy families.
President Obama hit the nail on the head we wont show up and vote for you if you arent offering us anything real. If Democrats want to stay relevant, theyll have to learn to stop taking us for granted and actually make an effort to get our votes. Simply banking on being the lesser evil and having that be enough wont cut it any longer.
_____
Carl Gibson, 26, is co-founder of US Uncut, a nationwide creative direct-action movement that mobilized tens of thousands of activists against corporate tax avoidance and budget cuts in the months leading up to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Carl and other US Uncut activists are featured in the documentary "We're Not Broke," which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. He currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin. You can contact him at carl@rsnorg.org, and follow him on twitter at @uncutCG.
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