Editorial: Young people can change the world, but it takes effort
Iowa State students and community members listen to a speaker outside of Parks Library during a rally on Thursday afternoon protesting President Trump’s executive orders. The march, dubbed Hoodies and Hijabs Solidarity March, began at the Memorial Union and ended just outside Parks Library.
March 19, 2018
In the wake of the tragic shooting in Parkland, Florida, conversation is happening. More importantly, calls for change are happening.
We wouldn’t have asked the high school students, survivors of the shooting, to do anything after the horrible experience they’d been through. But they decided to do something anyway. And by doing so, they are inspiring a movement.
New York Times op-ed contributor Tim Kreider said it best.
“As with all historic tipping points, it seems inevitable in retrospect: Of course it was the young people, the actual victims of the slaughter, who have finally begun to turn the tide against guns in this country,” Kreider wrote. “Kids don’t have money and can’t vote, and until now burying a few dozen a year has apparently been a price that lots of Americans were willing to pay to hold onto the props of their pathetic role-playing fantasies. But they forgot what adults always forget: that our children grow up, and remember everything, and forgive nothing.”
Young people have the power to make change. And as much as some may want to use millennials as the scapegoat for all of our problems, this upcoming generation has the potential to change the world just as the generations before it did. Of course, that change may come in a different form, but it is still progress nonetheless.
Millennials are consistently stereotyped as lazy. But that’s missing the point. This generation has different values and a different way of life, but is certainly not lazy.
The way millennials are civically engaged is vastly different.
Millennial and Generation X voting turnout increased in 2016 from the 2012 elections, according to Pew Research. But still, only half of millennials voted in 2016 when it was a presidential election. We can do better than that.
Being civically engaged requires exposing ourselves to new ideas and actively participating in our communities. We can do better than posting our opinions on social media, but not actually talking to lawmakers or participating in community conversations. And we can do better than voting in presidential elections, but not caring about local elections that make more of a difference in our daily lives.
Young people can change the world, but not without effort and not without civic engagement. Let the Parkland teens be an inspiration to us to strive for change and progress at all levels of government.
