youth

President Barack Obama has told his supporters that the 2012 presidential election will be about two contrasting visions of the nation's future. In his vision, "everyone pays their fair share," so that there is "shared sacrifice and shared opportunities" and the government plays a big part in helping the private sector prosper.

By contrast, the newest Republican candidate, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, pledged to those listening to his announcement speech to free the nation from "the grips of central planners who would control our healthcare, who would spend our treasure, who downgrade our future and micromanage our lives" and to "make Washington, D.C., as inconsequential as possible."

These starkly different messages make it clear that America is now engaged in the fourth debate in its history about the size and scope of government and doing it with all the rancor and heated rhetoric that have characterized each of the previous debates.

The issue was at the heart of the debate over the ratification of the U.S. Constitution when newspaper printing presses were destroyed by those who disagreed with editorials on the issue. Eighty years later, it caused the nation to be torn apart during the Civil War. And 80 years after that, the Supreme Court declared minimum wage laws unconstitutional until a political consensus was framed around FDR's New Deal that not even the court could resist.

Each time the issue of what the nation's civic ethos should be has exposed vast differences in beliefs between generations. And, each time the country experienced a long period of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt before the debate was resolved in favor of a new generation's ideas and beliefs. This historical pattern suggests that the best way to predict the outcome of today's debate is to examine the beliefs and attitudes of America's newest generation of young adults, millennials, born 1982-2003.

In 2012, one out of every four eligible voters will be members of this generation. More than 40 percent of millennials are nonwhite, creating the greatest racial and ethnic diversity in the nation's history. Twenty-five percent of them have an immigrant parent.

The generation was raised on messages of inclusion and equity and has translated those teachings into their political beliefs. A majority of millennials (54 percent) favor bigger government with more services, over a smaller government with fewer services (39 percent), almost the exact opposite of older generations' opinions on that choice. Sixty-nine percent of the generation is accepting of homosexuality and believe that a growing number of immigrants strengthen American society, in stark contrast to the beliefs of their elders.

While older generations are split on the question of government regulation of business, millennials come down squarely on the side of regulation by 51 percent to 43 percent.

While these attitudes suggest which way the debate over the country's civic ethos will ultimately turn out, it is the millennial generation's belief in consensus decision-making and pragmatic solutions to problems that hold out the most hope that the tone of today's political rhetoric will also change.

Millennials believe that collective action at the local level is the best way to solve national problems. Just as their parents set the rules within which millennials were free to exercise their creative energies, millennials look to the federal government to set national goals, even to establish mandates for required behavior. However, in the millennial era, the choice of how to comply with these requirements will not be determined in remote bureaucracies, but by individuals in local communities throughout the country.

In the middle of the vitriol of the current debate, it is easy to lose sight of the possibility of the dispute being resolved in favor of some larger and different national consensus. The millennial generation offers the country that hope. If America is to emerge from its current period of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, it will have to look to its newest generation, for both the behavior and the ideas that can bring the debate to a conclusion that the country can support.

Follow Michael Hais and Morley Winograd on Twitter here.

Editor's Note: This piece originally appeared in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram on August 29.

Yesterday, Kevin wrote a post that carefully and thoroughly proved that Generation Opportunity--at first glance, a non-partisan, non-threatening organization targeting youth to engage in positive change--is a sham.

To summarize, Generation Opportunity created a Facebook page titled "Being American" complete with random, non-descript photographs, encouraging young people to like the page just like they'd like apple pie, and then once it reached about 600,000 likes, they began to introduce their "non-partisan" organization.

I think the thing that strikes me the most about Kevin's post after some reflection is that Generation Opportunity--and by association, conservatives/Republicans--is admitting that it can't attract young people to its movement on its own merits. Basically, this means that The Right acknowledges that it needs to hide in the American flag like a Trojan horse in order to build any momentum among young people.

All the research that supposedly signals a conservative swing within the Millennial generation? It's misleading. And the very act of hiding behind "being American" and the "non-partisan" label to keep young people from knowing what your organization actually advocates points to an admission that youth aren't buying what you're actually selling.

As a reminder, Kevin, in beating back some of Generation Opportunity's claims (that Millennials are big on tax cuts, hate government spending, are American exceptionalists, believe the national debt is the most severe national security concern, and support expanding domestic coal and oil), puts forth the more credible research from Millennial Makeover and Pew; it happens to show a different picture.

Millennials, also to a greater degree than members of older generations, have confidence in the federal government and are more likely to favor a clear, rather than ancillary role for it in American life. A decisive majority (64%) of Millennials disagrees with the statement, 'When the federal government runs something it is usually inefficient and wasteful,' while 58 percent of older generations agree with that harsh appraisal. Millennials are also substantially less likely to believe that the federal government should run only those things that can't be run at the local level (63% vs. 71%).

These more favorable Millennial Generation attitudes toward the federal government are not simply a matter of 'normal' youthful liberalism. Millennials today are far less likely than Gen-Xers were in the late 1980s to believe that the federal government is usually wasteful and inefficient (32% for Millennials, 47% for young Gen-Xers) and that it should do only what can't be done at the local level (63% vs. 76%) (Pew Research Center 2007a).

And when these patriotic Millennials, who like "being American" but predictably don't enjoy having conservative talking points shoved down their throats, begin to resist on that Facebook page, what happens? They are silenced, of course. How American is that?

Before 2004/8, Republicans believed--with some Democrats--that the youth vote didn't exist and wasn't worth worrying about. However, as the first Millennials began to vote for Kerry in 2004, overwhelmingly supported Democrats in their 2006 midterm takeover of Congress, and showed up to the polls en masse in 2008 to vote for Obama, the Right took note and understood the youth vote is indeed a force to be reckoned with.

Instead of pursuing honest, genuine efforts to engage young people in the process and persuade them to think about moving to the right, however, they are apparently embracing cynicism, holding to stances and values that Millennials view as toxic according to the credible research. They hope that if they dress up these views a little bit, throw the American flag, apple pie--hell, maybe even some BBQ, fireworks, and a Main Street parade--at them, Millennials will bite.

What's that saying about pigs and lipstick again?

On the heels of my post yesterday asking if younger Millennials were "lost" amid economic turmoil, here's one proposed solution: embrace Millennial entrepreneurship.

"You have 77 million Gen Y-ers out there," said 27-year-old Scott Gerber, the founder of The Young Entrepreneur Council. "The reality is if you don't want a lost generation, you need to start thinking about the future."

[...]

Gerber and others like him think the traditional route to employment has failed their generation. "It's a scary moment we're in, but entrepreneurship can get us out," he said.

Forty percent of those in Generation Y, roughly defined as Americans born from the mid-1970s to mid-1990s, envision starting their own business, and about 20 percent already have, according to a report published last month by The Affluence Collaborative, a research partnership.

"This is a generation of serial entrepreneurs," said Donna Fenn, a journalist who wrote "Upstarts!," one of the first books identifying the Gen Y entrepreneur trend. "A lot of them start businesses in their 20s and many of them don't think that their first business will be their last. They're addicted to creating things, to the startup phase. By the time they reach their 40s, they will have started three, four or five companies."

Many Millennial entrepreneurs and activists (including Gerber's Young Entrepreneur Council) are pushing for the development of a bill--the Youth Entrepreneurship Act--that would eliminate some barriers to young entrepreneurs starting new businesses.

One element would be a program to forgive student loans and debt for young entrepreneurs, which he says would address a major hindrance to recent graduates who want to set up their own shop.

"Now more than ever, with young unemployment being so high, we have to be educating people that youth entrepreneurship is a viable career path and not some renegade choice," Gerber said.

Aaron Smith, co-founder of another young advocacy organization Young Invincibles, is also working with Gerber on the Youth Entrepreneurship Act. He acknowledges that now is a tough time to get anything passed in Congress, but contends that a bill helping young entrepreneurs would give the government a good return on investment.

"Increasingly, Congress is looking at ways to create jobs at a relatively low cost," the 29-year-old said. "One of the interesting things about young people is that their barrier to starting a business is small, in terms of the monetary amount. We're talking only a few thousand dollars."

Unfortunately, Smith is right. This Congress isn't likely to be hospitable to this legislation, even though its passage could relieve some economic strife among many young people in the short-term, while spurring the kind of economic development we need to revitalize the economy down the road.

However, while Gerber, Smith, and their organizations rally support for the bill, Matt Segal and Our Time, another organization supporting entrepreneurs under 30, are working with consumers on the other end of things.

...[Our Time] recently launched a "Buy Young" campaign. The idea is to encourage Americans to support more than 125 member businesses, including discount luxury retailer Gilt Groupe, clothing company Karmaloop and dry-erase paint company IdeaPaint, by offering exclusive discounts on their products and services.

The companies are responsible for creating more than 7,000 jobs since they were founded, Segal said. Since the campaign launched, the website has received more than 30,000 visitors.

If we are going to find our way out of this mess, we need to foster an environment supportive of the innovation needed to move us forward. Kudos to Gerber, Smith, and Segal and everyone else involved in doing this work.

NPR is up with a piece this week suggesting that today's youth, many of whom have never known anything other than an over-saturated jobs market, are "lost."

As we discuss teen unemployment numbers--at last glance, 25 percent of teenagers were jobless--it might be easy to blow it off and assume that parents will take on the added burden. One expert explains why that's a narrow and faulty assumption.

"It's tempting to look at the teen unemployment rate and sort of shrug and assume that ... the only consequence is that maybe the parents are giving [teenagers] money to go out to the movies this summer instead of the kids earning the money themselves," Saltsman says.

But working a summer job as a teen is not just about earning extra spending money. Saltsman says it's also about learning skills so you can become a good worker later in your adult life.

"The risk is that if [teenagers] miss out on [the summer job experience], they become part of this lost generation of teens who never had a chance to get a foothold to take that first step on that career ladder," Saltsman says.

While the lost paychecks are compiling every day, another, often unlooked component of this crisis is the lost opportunity for young people to create and develop a pool of skills for future employment.

As this reality sets in, teens are becoming desperate. There haven't been any riots yet, but young people are going to alarming ends to pay for college and to pay back student loans. One high school student from the District of Columbia describes what he's noticed among his peers:

Jacquan Clark, 16, would have liked a job this summer, but he says the competition among his teenage peers is brutal.

"It's like crabs in a barrel," the Washington, D.C., resident says. "We're trying to all get jobs, but we're also pulling each other back because we want the jobs."

The more I read stories like this, the more I find the notion of cutting services to be ridiculous. What will our government's inaction on behalf of today's young people cost us tomorrow? It's frightening to think about.

Over the last few years, publications like Mother Jones and the New York Times magazine both have exposed us to the sugar daddy/baby phenomenon. Wealthy older men -- some married, some not -- plop their money down to entice young women to spend time with them, often with expectations of sexual activity.

However, as our economy has spiraled even further out of control, this activity is picking up steam. This past week we learned from the Huffington Post that the phenomenon has overlapped with the student debt crisis. The story describes several relationships borne out of economic strife and the desperation that accompanies the racking up of large amounts of debt to finance one's education. It also reveals that the increasing popularity of matchmaking sites like seekingarrangement.com have aided the sugar daddy/baby boom.

The Huffington Post piece spurred Bill Maher and his panel to discuss the issue last night.

The first thing that strikes me about this conversation is that it happened. We are so often saturated with positive portrayals of capitalism and what that economic system does for us (that whole American Dream thing) that when we hear personal accounts of the desperation it's wrought, our society -- particularly the establishment -- acts like it's some curious, extraordinary event. Now that the street economy is impacting elite college students, it's suddenly real and they are taken aback.

The second thing I am thinking about is the whole notion that American youth -- and Bourdain specifically mentions this at 5:15 -- just don't want to do jobs that they perceive as being below them. This narrative has been around a while, and it might be true of a certain demographic. But we're forgetting that most youth are in such a poor economic position right now that they simply can't live or survive on these jobs because they don't pay enough. And when there is a small number of other, barely better-paying jobs with benefits that are available, youth will hold out for those, even if they appear as a mirage on the horizon. And especially if they have the student debt that is simply no match for the low wage, no-health care jobs.

So, actually, the question Bourdain poses is unfair. "Why won't young people take jobs that are below them," should be rephrased: "Why won't young people take jobs that don't pay them enough?"

The question answers itself.

The sugar daddy/sugar baby phenomenon goes back to the need for (and absence of) well-paying jobs for young people. Imagine that.

Erica Williams is a social and political commentator and serves as the Senior Strategist at the Citizen Engagement Lab, a non-profit, non-partisan organization that uses digital media and technology to amplify the voices of underrepresented constituencies. This piece was crossposted with permission from Erica and was originally published at the Huffington Post.

Watching the debt insanity these past few weeks, I've had one question ringing over and over again in my head: What do we do? Not what kind of short-term lobbying and marches and calls will save our economy. The question for me has been about the longer term: What do you do when your government can't govern?

As a Gen Y-er, a product of hip hop culture and a young person in this economy, I've been conditioned to determine my own destiny, and, for all intents and purposes, hustle. So the answer is simple: When your government can't govern, you govern yourselves.

I'm no longer electing representatives to create a vision and run the country on my behalf, since it appears that on average, they can't. No, instead I'm dreaming my own vision and electing people to work for me, doing what I tell them to do. That shift in outlook and on our role as master not servant in the political process, is a change both in the theory and in practice of our engagement. Fundamentally, it shifts how we view the election and what we do after.

It makes me confident that if I have a vision for a country -- maybe one in which education is affordable, people earn a living wage, health care is free, people pays their fair share of taxes, the economy works for everyone, etc. -- I have effectively written a job description that I now have the power, with my friends, family, community, and generation to hire for. And it is then our responsibility to be the boss and ensure that the job gets done.

That is the admirable confidence of the tea party. They shouted loudly and proudly "We want our country back!" And as frightening and divisive as their rhetoric has been, their belief that they have a stake in the future of this country and therefore a right to help determine its direction is dead on. 

Unfortunately their swag is unmatched on our side. Most progressive leaders don't effectively represent the constituents that will soon make up the majority of this country: young and/or of color. And conservatives know that when we do rise up and take our place as leaders, our sheer numbers, if put behind a bold progressive vision, can cause a true revolution.

That's why over the past year as Democratic pundits, operatives, intellectuals and organizations ran around fretting about Obama's approval ratings and whether or not they had been invited to the White House, Republicans were plotting out a 2012 strategy that has nothing to do with the issues. Instead of trying to win the young, black, and brown votes they focused on making it harder for us to vote at all. A "war on voting" is well underway, with Voter ID laws that cost the taxpayers millions of dollars, disenfranchise huge numbers of people of color, the young and the elderly, popping up in states across the country. Republicans unleashed a targeted and deliberate strategy to chip away at a person's ability to vote, bit by bit. Why?

Because they understand that a vote is more than a show of support for someone or something. They get that a vote is more than a moment to claim your identity, raise your voice, make yourself heard, or any of the other corny, clichéd slogans that we hear around election time. They understand that a vote can be an indication that we're hiring who we need... to do the job that we want... for the country that we deserve.

Knowing that what's at stake in this election isn't the possibility of another year with a black president but instead the opportunity to make government work for the rest of us, should be enough to get us to push past all of the hurdles, help folks get their IDs, mobilize, turn out and do what we should have been doing all along: governing our nation. 



The past two years, especially the debt ceiling debate, should have taught us a valuable lesson: Doing the work to hire someone -- knocking on doors, going to concerts, wearing t-shirts, making viral videos, and checking a box -- is a complete waste of time if you don't stick around long enough to train them, give them their marching orders, and monitor them.

So for me, Election 2012 -- and every single day afterwards -- is about taking back my power to move my country and my community in the right direction. "Hope" comes from my faith, not my politics, and I'm exhausted with the idea of "change." No more slogans, no more buzzwords. I'm tired of looking for "leaders" -- new crowned princes and princesses who are able to bundle Democratic dollars, make rich people love them, talk about young people and black folks and poor folks, and then do the same old same old. We ARE the leaders. And it's pretty simple: our vote is a powerful statement that from now on, we run this, in spite of every effort that's been made to prevent us from doing so. So let's gear up to do just that.

Follow Erica Williams on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ericawilliamsdc

New York's passage of a law allowing same sex couples to marry was met with support from New Yorkers, according to a Quinnipiac poll released today. A core segment of that support comes from young voters:

New York State voters support 54 - 40 percent a law allowing same-sex couples to marry, with voters under 35 supporting the measure 70 - 26 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. Voters 35 to 64 years old also support the measure, while voters over 65 oppose it 57 - 37 percent. Support remained consistent before and after passage of the bill.

The more the GOP resists, the more problems it brings upon itself. Civil unions aren't enough anymore, and the larger the presence Millennials have in the voting booth and in public office, the more society will be receptive to liberty and justice for all couples.

Here is some youth news to get your week started:

• Does the Millennial Generation need to produce more career politicians? This guy argues that the Anthony Weiner saga demonstrates that they do.
• You know that whole thing where Republicans try to keep young people from voting because they know they pursue policy that is at odds with what young people want/need? Well, apparently that happens in Canada too, with conservatives.
• Meanwhile, E.J. Dionne demonstrates how states are rigging the 2012 elections. Yes, folks, it is happening.
• Here is Firedoglake's recap of the Netroots Nation Young Voter Turnout Session. Check it out.
• Tracy Morgan decided that telling people that he'd kill his son if he ever acted gay might not be a good thing (in fact, it's disgusting). Looking to make amends, Morgan recently met with gay youth.
• High school and college student activists are uniting to protect ethnic studies courses in Tucson's high school curriculum. Gov. Jan Brewer recently signed House Bill 2281 into law, which "prohibits a school from including in its program of instruction any course or classes that are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnicity or promotes resentment towards a race or class of people."
• Have law school debt? Here are six ways to tackle it.
• Did anyone catch the U.S. Open this weekend? Rory McIlroy kicked some major ass. He's 22 and the youngest U.S. Open winner since Bobby Jones in 1923.
• MTV's True Life is set to explore some compelling issues in youth culture.
• Continuing our commentary on K-12 history and civic education, the Wall Street Journal recently interviewed popular historian David McCullough. McCullough expressed his own concerns regarding history education:
  

  "'We're raising young people who are, by and large, historically illiterate," David McCullough tells me on a recent afternoon in a quiet meeting room at the Boston Public Library. Having lectured at more than 100 colleges and universities over the past 25 years, he says, "I know how much these young people—even at the most esteemed institutions of higher learning—don't know." Slowly, he shakes his head in dismay. "It's shocking."

  [...]

  And teach history, he says—while tapping three fingers on the table between us—with "the lab technique." In other words, "give the student a problem to work on."

  "If I were teaching a class," he says, "I would tell my students, 'I want you to do a documentary on the building at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. Or I want to you to interview Farmer Jones or former sergeant Fred or whatever." He adds, "I have been feeling increasingly that history ought to be understood and taught to be considerably more than just politics and the military."

  What about textbooks? "I'd take one of those textbooks. I'd clip off all the numbers on the pages. I'd pull out three pages here, two pages there, five pages here—all the way through. I'd put them aside, mix them all up, and give them to you and three other students and say, 'Put it back in order and tell me what's missing.'" You'd know that book inside and out.

  Though the Wall Street Journal leans conservative and the story's writer is from the right-wing National Review, I was impressed with this interview and the relatively radical problem-based pedagogy McCullough suggests.

You've probably seen a story the last few days regarding students' poor performance in American history. In fact, alarmingly, a national test showed that students are least proficient in American history than in any other subject.

This New York Times writeup explains:

American students are less proficient in their nation’s history than in any other subject, according to results of a nationwide test released on Tuesday, with most fourth graders unable to say why Abraham Lincoln was an important figure and few high school seniors able to identify China as the North Korean ally that fought American troops during the Korean War.

Over all, 20 percent of fourth graders, 17 percent of eighth graders and 12 percent of high school seniors demonstrated proficiency on the exam, the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Federal officials said they were encouraged by a slight increase in eighth-grade scores since the last history test, in 2006. But even those gains offered little to celebrate because, for example, fewer than a third of eighth graders could answer even a “seemingly easy question” asking them to identify an important advantage American forces had over the British during the Revolution, the government’s statement on the results said.

Of course, we can sit around and lob grenades at the students taking these exams, describing them as lazy, disappointing, and the like. But the real perpetrator here is our education system, which repeatedly spurns history and civics education in favor of the more rational science and math. No Child Left Behind has only accelerated this trend over the last decade.

History advocates contend that students’ poor showing on the tests underlines neglect shown to the subject by federal and state policy makers, especially since the 2002 No Child Left Behind act began requiring schools to raise scores in math and reading but in no other subject. The federal accountability law, the advocates say, has given schools and teachers an incentive to spend less time on history and other subjects.

“History is very much being shortchanged,” said Linda K. Salvucci, a history professor in San Antonio who is chairwoman-elect of the National Council for History Education.

Many teacher-education programs, Ms. Salvucci said, also contribute to the problem by encouraging aspiring teachers to seek certification in social studies, rather than in history. “They think they’ll be more versatile, that they can teach civics, government, whatever,” she said. “But they’re not prepared to teach history.”

Salvucci's point is interesting, especially given that I and others here have called for more civic education. Perhaps history is being shortchanged.

However, we should be careful to not view history as some static set of facts that need to be deposited into students' brains. History is a set of complicated lessons and problems that, unfortunately, aren't mined at all. In my experience, for example, high school history classes are too scared to touch anything after World War II for fear of parental rage over indoctrination and the like.

Yet, the complex nature of our problems these days--created by many of those who use this study as ammunition to attack youth--demand students who can sort through the messy stuff. Yes, funding is limited, and we have already committed to investing much of it in science, math, and reading, but history and civics are also more important than ever. And we simply can't afford to watch this area of our education atrophy.

In my work with college students, one of the things I have observed is that anytime students hear the word "politics," they tend to exclusively link it with our national political discourse. With our national political dialogue and process failing to solve the large problems we face, we shouldn't be surprised that many students consequently develop a negative attitude toward politics and believe the political world is unproductive and difficult to access and navigate. Basically, trying to get through the large mess isn't worth the effort.

These observations have led me to question a few things.

First, isn't everything political? Politics isn't merely a game we play (the notion of someone "playing politics" is false and misleading); it's a reality that, if analyzed, reveals the power dynamics at work in our society that impact everything, from our national budget to whether a student or an administrator reads the morning announcements in a high school. If everything is political, we all bear responsibility as citizens to examine and critique not only the large-scale debates -- about job creation (for young people especially), education, climate change, voting rights, and social justice issues -- but also the smaller, seemingly insignificant and taken-for-granted aspects of our life. One does not need to be in, or thinking about, all things Washington, D.C. to be an activist or create positive change.

So, if we as young people adopt this view of politics -- that it's everywhere -- don't we produce more opportunities for engagement in politics, on a smaller, somewhat more manageable level? One challenge that young people and activists often face in working with local governments to create change is the community's adherence to tradition: "It's always been done this way, and who are you to drop in and suggest we change it?" Local elected officials have the least to gain personally from transforming the way they operate, as they believe they will be shouldering the blame for whatever might go wrong in the future. Yet, sadly -- and in a way, luckily -- the dire fiscal status of many local governments can serve as an opportunity to try new things. As the idea that moving forward in the same direction is no longer comforting to local officials, but actually a threat, innovation suddenly becomes more enticing.

In order to recognize and take advantage of these strategic opportunities, though, I propose that we need to begin with our local media, especially newspapers. Last week, a federal study reported that state and local reporting had severely weakened over the last few years, as news operations shifted their priorities elsewhere.

“In many communities, we now face a shortage of local, professional, accountability reporting,” said the study, which was ordered by the Federal Communications Commission and written by Steven Waldman, a former journalist for Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report. “The independent watchdog function that the Founding Fathers envisioned for journalism — going so far as to call it crucial to a healthy democracy — is in some cases at risk at the local level.”

On Thursday, Mr. Waldman is to issue a number of recommendations, none binding. Those include making actual in-the-field reporting a part of the curriculum at journalism schools, steering more government advertising money toward local instead of national media and changing the tax code to encourage donations to nonprofit media organizations.

Unfortunately, as the article goes on to note, many of today's local media outlets simply relay a politician's press release word for word, strengthening the government's power in its relationship with citizens, whether this official is a member of Congress, or a city council member. The lack of youth reporting in local media outfits is also troubling, and I believe this blame lays at the feet of young people, as well as these media operations. We need to wise up and understand that reporting on local news is just as civically critical as teaching in a challenging classroom environment or working in a low-income setting; simultaneously, local media also need to look for ways to shift funding to allow for a younger, fresher reporting staff, more familiar and comfortable with technology. Further, I would argue the copy-and-paste fest also leads to heightened use of Associated Press content rather than local reporting.

The problem with these tendencies is that citizens do not play on a level playing field with their representatives. Community members, lacking the "expertise" about local public affairs, self-select out of the political process because they receive little information about community issues, and the information they do receive is not properly vetted by the media.

If we as young people want to take advantage of these difficult economic times to create positive change, we must embrace our responsibility to critique, infiltrate, and strengthen our local media. We must be willing to voice our displeasure with its current product, pointing out where and how coverage could improve. We must accept strong, quality journalism as a critical component of active citizenship, incentivizing young people who choose to give back to their community through reporting on local current events. And we must beef up local journalism, exploring better ways to deliver local, scrutinized information to citizens to encourage their engagement (even if these local outlets are operated by larger conglomerates).

A more robust local media would enhance our efforts to beat back the tradition-minded crowd by allowing for the articulation of challenging questions and the examination of new ideas in our local politics. Politics is not an episodic game in which we can choose to participate or not participate. We are all engaging in politics whether we admit it or not. Improving the quality of our local media will make it easier to embrace the role we all have in our democracy and ever-present political world.