Generations

America is about to enter a presidential campaign that promises to be filled with divisive rhetoric and sharp differences over which direction the nominees want to take the country. This will be the fourth time in American history that the country has been sharply divided over the question of what the size and scope of government should be. Each time the issue was propelled by vast differences in beliefs between generations that caused the country to experience long periods of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD), before ultimately resolving the issue in accord with the ideas and beliefs of a new generation.

Every eighty years America engages in this rancorous, sometimes violent, debate about our civic ethos. The first occurred during and after the Revolutionary War and resulted in the most fundamental documents of our democracy: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.

The second took place during the Civil War. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments codified the outcome of that debate --- this time in favor of the federal government asserting its power over state laws when it came to fundamental questions of personal liberty and civil rights. It took the Civil War and a massive increase in Washington’s power to accomplish the end of slavery, although it would be another century until the rights of freedom and equality were fully extended to African-Americans.

And in the 1930s, the economic deprivations experienced by most Americans from the excesses of the Industrial Revolution, and the collapse of corporate capitalism, led to support for a “New Deal” for the forgotten man that placed the responsibility for economic growth and opportunity squarely on the federal government. The government demanded by the GI Generation (born 1901-1924) greatly surpassed the conventional views of earlier generations.

In each case, the resolution of these debates depended on the emergence of a rising, young civic-oriented generation that thought the nation’s dominant political belief system should contain a strong role for government, overturning the more conservative and limited-government views of the older generations then in power.

Now, as previously, the highly charged ideological arguments on both sides of the issue generate great agitation and anger among older generations, especially Baby Boomers, who have driven our political life towards ever wider polarization. As a result, the resolution of today’s debate over the nation’s civic ethos is not likely to come from older Americans who seem incapable of and unwilling to compromise their deeply held values and beliefs.

This time around, the largest generation in American history, Millennials, (born 1982- 2003), that will comprise more than one in three adult Americans by the end of this decade, are destined to play a decisive role in finding a consensus answer to this critical question. If the United States is to emerge from this most recent period of FUD, it will have to look to the newest civic-oriented generation, Millennials, for both the behavior and the ideas that will bridge the current ideological divide and spur the country into making the changes necessary to succeed in the future.

Millennials believe that collective action, most often at the local level, is the best way to solve national problems. Using social media, Millennials are organizing groups like the Roosevelt Institute’s Campus Network, to present a very different vision of America’s future. In this Millennialist future, the idea of top down solutions developed by experts in closed discussions will give way to bottom up, action-oriented movements. This will topple institutions as dramatically as Napster upended the recording industry, or the Arab Spring changed the Middle East. Just as their parents set the rules within which Millennials were free to exercise their creative energies when they were growing up, the new generation will continue to look to the federal government to set national goals or guidelines, as has long been the view of Boomer progressives. However, the way in which these guidelines are implemented will not be determined in remote and opaque bureaucracies, but by individuals in local communities across the country. In this way, Millennials will embrace progressive values, but with approaches that may be welcomed by many conservatives.

In the midst of the country’s current period of FUD, it is easy to despair that the nation will be unable to resolve its divisions and come to consensus about a new civic ethos. But throughout its history, when America has been equally fearful of the future, a new civic generation has risen to foster the necessary transition. In the end, this emerging generation served both itself and the country well. Now it is the Millennial Generation’s turn to serve the nation and move America to a less fearful and less divided future.

Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais are fellows of NDN and the New Policy Institute and co-authors of the newly published Millennial Momentum: How a New Generation Is Remaking America and Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics.

Photo by Kevin Dooley.

It's not every day we report on a campus newspaper editorial here, but sometimes one is problematic enough to require a response.

The Georgetown student newspaper -- the Hoya -- published a disappointing editorial today, calling for the disempowerment of students while arguing that national leaders should be left to continue their assault on our generation.

...Student body presidents are elected to represent their peers in campus-specific proposals that are designed to make college life easier. National political representation, however, should be left to the congressmen and senators that many of those two million-plus college students elect of their own free will.

The campaign, which kicked off August 2, claimed to represent "our generation," but what it became was a grandstanding gesture by student leaders who saw a publicity opening. They got what they wanted: endless web, newspaper and television press, including buzz over a conference call with President Obama. The coalition expanded quickly, not because the student body presidents were being urged by their respective constituents to mobilize, but because they found company in their equally ambitious counterparts at other universities.

But in the end, what was actually accomplished? Elected campus leaders may have written a letter and filled the Twitter feeds of Congressmen with the now famous hashtag, but students did not march en masse in the streets of Washington. Student body presidents did not compel their peers to action by coordinating a phone-a-thon to congressional leaders. Nor did they solicit the cooperation of the College Republicans or College Democrats, two political forces on campus who may have been better equipped to take on Capitol Hill during the debt crisis.

While we understand GUSA's good intentions, it is important they remember their place as representatives of Georgetown students to the administration, not to politicians. GUSA executive representatives did not advertise a political campaign when they were running back in February. While Healy Hall and Capitol Hill were designed to mirror each other across Washington, GUSA leaders should stick to leading who they were elected to lead — our student body.

The editorial board disapproved of their fellow Georgetown student, student body president Mike Meaney, organizing a coalition of national student government presidents. The campaign--"Do We Have a Deal Yet"--was created to pressure Congress to stop bickering during the debt ceiling debate/budget crisis and to strike a deal with the next generation in mind, not the next election. It seems that the editorial board would have rather seen more of a focus on campus-specific matters than on "grandstanding gestures" protesting policies and discussions that ostensibly have no direct relevance to Georgetown students' lives.

Of course, the discussions and eventual compromise--if one could call it that--absolutely impacts the quality of life of each college student. For example, did you know that part of the ceiling deal takes money out of the pockets of loan-paying students? Grad students--used to being able to attend class without worrying about interest accruing on their loans--now find that reality taken away. Students who made 12 consecutive payments on their loans in a timely fashion used to be rewarded with a credit. As of July 1, 2012, that no longer exists.

Yes, these issues are made abstract and mind-numbing by the media, which generally aren't capable of facilitating a meaningful, substantive discussion on issues. And a system of higher education, resting on a bunch of siloed departments and divisions unwilling to cooperate, doesn't exactly serve as the best socializing force. Mix those together with an inability to see healthy conflict and a distaste for anything containing the word "politics," and we get the editorial quoted above, which surely represents something close to the views of many students.

What's sad is that this view--that officeholders are the experts and that students' roles are to merely take space on college campuses and exclusively agonize about matters like campus pub closures--is misguided at best and simply unaffordable right now given the problems we all face. Yes--there are problems on our campuses that student governments were elected to solve. But any student government with which I've affiliated is tasked with the responsibility of improving the lives of the students they represent. There is no such thing as a "campus bubble."

Various cultural, economic, and social forces infiltrate campus confines every second of every day. In taking on the task of representing students, student government representatives are obligated to lobby their local, state, and federal governments. Because politics is everywhere, the reality is that everyone is a politician, navigating various systems of power whether they like it or not--even the student journalists writing the editorial.

While compartmentalizing these systems would simplify the job of covering their campus, unfortunately things in the "real world" aren't that cut and dry. Yes, students are citizens of their campus and should have a say on something like a campus pub being slated to close. But students are also citizens of the town, state, country, and planet in which their campus is located. Policies passed at various levels of society impact the student experience, thereby creating a need for any elected student representative to serve as an advocate on and off campus; it also creates a need for student journalists to help their peers understand these impacts. Even though it might make these journalists' jobs a bit more complicated, that's what we need.

Students and young people are marginalized enough in our society; we don't need to do it to ourselves. If it were up to the Hoya editorial board, young people would go back to the kids' table and mind our p's and q's. We can't afford to take that approach any longer, however. The college student body presidents should be commended for 1.) observing the impact the debt discussion has on our generation--their campuses included--and 2.) for speaking out against the process. If anything, these student leaders had the opportunity to, and could have done more to stand up for their constituents, including broadening the number of participants to include the constituents themselves. I hope this collaborative activism continues and intensifies, and I hope to see the Hoya and other student newspapers cover it as they should.

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.

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.
-Bob Dylan

Some Cleveland-area businesses, officials, and citizens were frustrated in June when what was believed to be a flash mob disrupted an arts fair in Cleveland Heights. Take a peek:

Officials estimate that nearly 1,000 youth showed up spontaneously. Apparently there were random fights (though little information about these fights is provided in either the video or the Cleveland Plain Dealer's account).

This event, along with other alleged violent flash mobs, spurred Cleveland city council member Zach Reed (pictured, right) to introduce an ordinance criminalizing the use of social media - Facebook, Twitter, etc. - to organize crowds.

Under existing law, any member of a flash mob can be charged with disorderly conduct or other offenses carrying jail if there is a disturbance. Reed's legislation would have added a misdemeanor charge for summoning a crowd through social media. A first offense carried a $100 fine.

Reed said the new measure moved beyond "antiquated legislation" that never imagined social media.

To his credit, Cleveland mayor Frank Jackson vetoed that legislation this week, noting that while he is sympathetic to it's goal, the ordinance was not narrowly tailored enough to pass constitutional muster.

Reading about this on the heels of reading an articulate post by Sam DuPont at NDN - which calls for more examination of how social media can enhance civic engagement and social capital, I'm thinking about this flash mob issue in a few ways.

First, Reed's proposal to specifically criminalize social media-induced flash mobs is ridiculous. The last thing we need is another petty law on the books that we ask police officers to enforce, especially when we already have laws that address the issue. If a large group of people convenes and is hellbent on disrupting an otherwise peaceful event with violence, then the laws should be enforced. Some comments from festival attendees actually suggest that the Cleveland Heights PD efficiently defused the mob.

But instead, Reed - while admirably looking to solve the problem - throws the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. Reed's proposed ordinance is far from being narrowly tailored. An Ohio ACLU official points out that the law could penalize innocent citizens; should two or three friends agree to meet up somewhere to talk, dance, listen to music, or whatever, and several others show up and cause problems, the two or three friends would bear the responsibility under this ordinance. In fact, what Reed proposes would have criminalized the actions of those young people abroad who used social media to gather and rally against their oppressive governments and in support of democracy. Effective government can't simply pass a broad, sweeping law and - voila! - expect results.

I'm not arguing that there isn't a problem to be solved when people congregate with the intention of disrupting a community. However, the question Cleveland and its suburbs should be asking is not "How are these youth organizing," as this legislation does, but "Why?" I wonder if it has something to do with 25 percent of teenagers in this country being unemployed? Perhaps many youth have nowhere left to gather, other than 24 hour Wal-Marts?

What is this subculture resisting? Perhaps it's not the suburban couple or family, but a society and community that seems to have forgotten about them?

I hope Zach Reed reads Sam DuPont's blog post. DuPont doesn't view social media as a menacing threat to society. Instead, he suggests that our communities and young people could benefit from a leveraging of these technological tools to increase social capital.

[I]f this generation is to rebuild American social capital, it needs fora in which to connect, build bonds, and establish the mutual obligations of social relationships. While the primary causes Putnam points to are immense, historical shifts, the secondary causes can be largely boiled down to the resultant decline of membership in general community organizations: churches, Rotary clubs, PTAs, etc. It's hard to imagine most of these organizations making a powerful comeback among the Millennial generation, and we're left with the question of where, exactly, Millennials will come together to build social bonds.

Another cause Putnam identifies as contributing an additional 10% toward the decline in social capital is "suburbanization, commuting, and sprawl." This trend has reoriented American communities away from the neighborhoods, downtown areas, corner bars, and public squares where social capital was once forged, to a landscape dominated by highways and strip malls where the closest thing to a shared public space can be found in the Caverns of Walmart. And so, in addition to the evaporation of civic groups, our shared physical spaces are also disappearing, and the question of where social capital can be created in the 21st century becomes still more confounding.

As you've no doubt guessed by now (Sorry this took so long. Actually, I'm not sorry at all. Brevity is for cowards.), the point I'm driving toward is this: with the decline of community organizations and associations, and the disappearance of shared public spaces, I look to new network technologies to bridge some of those gaps, and help create the shared public spaces of the 21st century.

Perhaps instead of fearing and resisting social media and flash mobs, the local government in Cleveland and its suburbs could make an effort to learn about and embrace these phenomena, while also trying to understand how to improve youth quality of life in the area? Yes, cities like Cleveland and the suburbs have lots going on and many priorities in these tough times, but ignoring youth issues and rejecting their culture is not effective problem-solving, it's sinking like a stone.

Well, another day, and another unknown guy lamenting the horrible things happening to our generation and our supposed complicit behavior.

This rando, some Gen Xer named Rob Long, writes that young people are being ripped off thanks to a "a vast, Madoff-like Ponzi scheme," in which payroll taxes are immediately shuffled off to help seniors pay their medical bills. He can't believe that young people are letting this go and are not more alarmed, Glenn Beck style.

And yet: no protests in the streets. No marches. No student sit-ins. No youth agitation at all, really, except for a couple of College Republicans in blue blazers. What? Are they stupid? After all of that college tuition? Are young people in their 20's just dumb?

I appreciate your phony concern, Rob. But if you're truly advocating for a strong quality of life for Millennials, you'd come to terms with what must be a painful truth for you. Your party, while railing against imaginary deficits in the future, blatantly ignores the fact that many of us are struggling to make end's meet today. One of your party's governors, in the name of fiscal responsibility, cut $30 million from childcare centers. And "after all that college tuition," the Republican House proposes to balance the budget by taking Pell Grants, and therefore the prospects of higher education, away from us at the worst possible time. This is at the same time that we're being crushed by trillions of dollars worth of student loans. Fellow FM writer Karlo Marcelo used a great analogy to frame this reality back when we were debating the stimulus.

Millennials will face new challenges when caring for the Baby Boomer generation as they near towards retirement. What they don't need are unnecessary financial burdens that make it difficult for them to succeed early on in their adult lives. Young people are already saddled with a "burden", and the GOP needs to recognize and respect that reality.

Imagine for a moment that you are trying to traverse a hill. The hill represents how much taxes you expect to pay over your lifetime. One end of the hill is the start (the beginning of your life), the top of the hill is middle-age, and the other end of the hill is, well, six-feet-under. At both ends of the hill, you pay relatively little in taxes, and the top of the hill is when you pay the most in taxes. This is what tax-paying looks like throughout the course of one's life. For some generations, traversing this hill was made easier (but not faster), because the government helped invest in the well-being of the tax-payer very early on in life.

This is not the case with Millennials. The rising cost (PDF) of college and beyond has not resulted in a proportionate increase in services or resources. When you place this fact of rising costs into the context of rising college attendance, the effect is magnified. The share of young people that have attended college has increased 21 percentage points from the 1970s to the present (PDF, pg. 5). What's more is the fact young people with post-graduate degrees on are on the rise, too. What all this amounts to is a more difficult (but not slower) journey over the hill. It's almost as if Millennials have to carry a heavy backpack (read: student debt) and still keep pace with everyone else. Now add to that the fact that the end of the hill for Millennials is much farther away than it is for previous generations due to longer life expectancy.

So, if you're seriously concerned about our collective future, do us a favor: get off your high horse and hop on a time machine back to now and start working on these problems.

Mr. Long, you're not done. Please sit back down. Let me explain another thing. And I'll go slowly, because this might be hard for you to understand:

Millennials. Like. Government.

Seriously, we do. You can see that here, here, here, or even here. According to NDN, a Washington think tank, 58% of Millennials actually favor larger government, as opposed to one that “stays out of society and the economy.” It might be surprising since we've been let down by government so often (especially from 2001-2006 when the GOP ruled Washington), but it's the truth.

And we do protest. Your fellow unknown Ted Nugent also made the mistake of assuming young people don't get mad and act on it, and we provided these examples (these just being a few that one simple Google search turned up):

Students across USA protest over college funding, tuition
March 4, 2010

Dickinson College students protest school's handling of sex assaults
March 3, 2011

Cerritos College students protest proposed summer cuts
May 18, 2011

Half-naked college students protest coal
April 15, 2011

‘Students are not ATMs'; college students protest budget cuts
March 15, 2011

College students, staff protest budget cuts
April 13, 2011

College students protest higher fees
January 12, 2010

Three Arrested at Hunter College Protest
March 4, 2010

College students protest death penalty
March 27, 2010

College students protest PA budget cuts
March 30, 2011

'Ramen' protest highlights community college fee increases
March 2, 2011

California college students protest higher ed budget cuts
April 13, 2011

High school, college students to protest state education cuts
March 19, 2011

PSU students, State College mayor protest funding cuts
April 5, 2011

College students protest HOPE cuts outside State Capitol
March 2, 2011

Vt. college students protest planned cuts
March 16, 2011

Phoenix high school, college students organize Capitol protest
March 4, 2011

Michigan College Students Protest Higher Ed Cuts
March 24, 2011

College Students Protest Voter ID Bill
April 4, 2011

Allegheny College students protest education cuts
March 18, 2011

College students protest strip mine plans
September 14, 2010

Carthage College students protest anti-gay speaker
February 24, 2010

College students protest HB 176
February 24, 2011

Emory protesters arrested during student protest
April 26, 2011

TUSD on image control after student protest cancels meeting
April 27, 2011

Supporters rally for students arrested at SB 1070 protest
November 16, 2010

Thousands of students flock to Capitol to protest SB1070
April 22, 2010

Wisconsin Students Protest Governor's Attack on Unions
February 15, 2011

Zombie protesters lurch for voter, student rights
June 8, 2011

Based on the list above and the little we do know of you, it would appear you're merely grumpy because we don't protest the same things that your Tea Party friends do.

Do us a favor and can the fake outrage. If you're genuine, you'd be doing what you could to keep conservatives from defunding our collective future so that fat cats can keep flying their corporate jets.

Thomas Goldstein and Thomas Bates, Executive Director of the Washington Bus and Vice President for Civic Engagement at Rock the Vote respectively, penned an op-ed published in today's Seattle Times. Goldstein and Bates took aim at the idea that youth's "low" turnout in midterm elections relative to older age groups ultimately means a smaller impact on the results.

It isn't exactly news that young people tend to vote at lower rates than older voters. The more interesting story is that even if young people turn out at lower rates, they can dramatically affect the election landscape and outcomes. That happened most visibly in the 2008 presidential election, but also in certain nonpresidential elections closer to home.

The approval of Referendum 71, the election of a young mayor in Tacoma, and two victorious young City Council candidates in Spokane are all evidence of the efficacy of targeting young voters. Moreover, the highest turnout in the state in 2009 was in the 43rd Legislative District, which has the greatest concentration of young voters.

Even with mounting evidence, too many campaigns write off young voters, and this tired habit has made the prophecy of low turnout a self-fulfilling one. It almost reads as a new definition of madness: Time and time again, campaigns don't invest time and resources into young people, and then are surprised when they don't mail in their ballots.

[...]

Luckily, we're doing something about it. Forward-looking organizations and campaigns have tested methods to engage young people and have committed resources to make them reliable voters. And we're seeing results: For the past three major election cycles — yes, even pre-Obama — the turnout of young people has steadily increased.

We know what works: Make sure young people are registered to vote, give them relevant information in an engaging way, and run campaigns that connect with their values.

The point both are making is that, blessed with size, the effect of even a subtle increase in the Millennial voting rate can be worth a few points in various midterm elections -- enough to tip those races in different directions.

As we move forward into the meat of the 21st Century, these younger people, increasingly becoming adults, are going to need to be pursued in a different way than past voters. This calls for aggressive engagement, complete with the "relevant information" Goldstein and Gates mention above, as well as managing campaigns that reflect youth's values.

Tim Egan wrote an interesting blog post last night at the New York Times, describing that the Millennials are exactly what this country needs after all it's been through. Surprisingly, with all the recent focus on how Millennials lack empathy or how they are narcissistic, Egan wasn't being sarcastic.

After going through the myriad reasons for why Millennial tendencies, characteristics, and attitudes match up well against the contemporary issues plaguing our nation (the BP oil spill and drilling policy, Arizona's SB 1070 and immigration policy, and gay men and women being allowed to serve in the military), Egan concludes, in my favorite part of the post, that Obama needs to ask Millennials to flex their political/activist muscles and get involved.

“This is the most diverse generation in history,” said Heather Smith, the president of Rock the Vote, a nonpartisan youth political advocacy group. “They’re also optimistic, and don’t participate in all the fear-mongering.”

Obama could rouse this generation to help save the oil-choked gulf, much the way Franklin Roosevelt did with his youthful Civilian Conservation Corps. While still holding BP accountable, the president could set up a millennial corps of workers, calling on their sense of service, their desire for change, their youthful belief in restoration.

Now some of this language is a little bit romantic for even me, one who identifies as one of the most fervently liberal Millennials. But the spirit of Egan's words rings true. If Obama is so good at turning crises into defining moments, he'll realize that he has an army of young people ready to make change, and he'll mobilize them. Once the leak is stopped and controlled, it'd be a great sight to see young people from all over the country taking ownership -- along with BP -- of the crisis by flocking to the Gulf Coast and restoring it.

A New York Times piece published this morning sheds light on the generation gap present in views on immigration.

In the wake of the new Arizona law allowing the police to detain people they suspect of entering the country illegally, young people are largely displaying vehement opposition — leading protests on Monday at Senator John McCain’s offices in Tucson, and at the game here between the Florida Marlins and the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Meanwhile, baby boomers, despite a youth of “live and let live,” are siding with older Americans and supporting the Arizona law.

This emerging divide has appeared in a handful of surveys taken since the measure was signed into law, including a New York Times/CBS News poll this month that found that Americans 45 and older were more likely than the young to say the Arizona law was “about right” (as opposed to “going too far” or “not far enough”). Boomers were also more likely to say that “no newcomers” should be allowed to enter the country while more young people favored a “welcome all” approach.

This makes sense given what we know about the diversity in the Millennial generation. The New Politics Institute's 2007 Report, "The Progressive Politics of the Millennial Generation," cites Census data showing that nearly 40 percent of Millennials do not identify as being white. "[A]bout 62 percent of Millennial adults are non-Hispanic white, 18 percent are Hispanic, 14 percent are black and 5 percent are Asian," the report notes. What sharpens the debate is that many of the areas having the most diversity among youth also have fairly homogeneous white Boomer/Silent populations.

Given their demographic diversity, Millennials hold progressive opinions about immigration compared to the rest of the population. The Times piece, for example, provides some anecdotal evidence ensconced in the opinions and stories of youths Meaghan Patrick and Nicole Vespia.

Meaghan Patrick, a junior at New College of Florida, a tiny liberal arts college in Sarasota, says discussing immigration with her older relatives is like “hitting your head against a brick wall.”

[...]

Nicole Vespia, 18, of Selden, N.Y., said older people who were worried about immigrants stealing jobs were giving up on an American ideal: capitalist meritocracy.

“If someone works better than I do, they deserve to get the job,” Ms. Vespia said. “I work in a stockroom, and my best workers are people who don’t really speak English. It’s cool to get to know them.”

Her parents’ generation, she added, just needs to adapt.

“My stepdad says, ‘Why do I have to press 1 for English?’ I think that’s ridiculous,” Ms. Vespia said, referring to the common instruction on customer-service lines. “It’s not that big of a deal. Quit crying about it. Press the button.”

The stories are backed up by data on Millennials. In his 2008 book/project Generation WE, Eric Greenberg cites data revealing Millennials' open attitudes on immigration.

Generation We also has an open and positive attitude toward immigration, much more so than older generations. In the Pew Gen Next poll, 18- to 25-year-olds, by 52 to 38, said immigrants strengthen the country with their hard work and talent, rather than are a burden on the country because they take our jobs, housing, and healthcare, compared to very narrow pluralities in this direction among Gen Xers and Boomers and 50–30 sentiment in the other direction among those 61 and over. In a 2004 Pew survey, 67 percent of 18- to 25-year-old Millennials thought the growing number of immigrants strengthens American society and only 30 percent believed this trend threatens our customs and values—again, much stronger positive sentiment than among any other generation.

Unfortunately, most Boomer-run news outlets do not pay attention to Millennial opinion on this issue. With older Americans voting at higher rates than young people, the age and views of Congress and other officeholders reinforce the fear-driven status quo. Just like many other issues, to change this reality, youth must vote in higher numbers, be willing to run for office themselves, and pair this with some organized, non-traditional resistance to mount a strong opposition.

It might be convenient to take a John Mayer approach and wait for the world to change, but how many hard-working families who already embody American values will suffer in the meantime? This is yet another issue on which we must begin making change now.

If you have followed Future Majority over the last couple years, you will recognize that Thomas Friedman's hit piece on Millennials, labeling them "Generation Q" for being too quiet, serves as the foundation for many a post. His Boomer paradigm interferes with his ability to understand how Millennial activism differs.

Friedman argues that Millennials may be "too quiet, too online, for its own good, and for the country's own good." The problem most of us had with Friedman's writing was that he was unable to see that one could be mad, could be online, and could be productive all at once. Another issue was the power Friedman ascribed to symbolic and yet meaningless acts. What good is chaining one's self to a bulldozer actually going to accomplish long-term? Very little.

With that in mind, we now have some more information regarding college students' heavy use of social media, and it is easy to see how our activism has changed course. The International Center for Media and the Public Agenda (ICMPA) at the University of Maryland released a study revealing the considerable depth of students' connections to social media.

200 University of Maryland (College Park) students, as part of a class assignment, were asked to abstain from all media for 24 hours straight. Following this time window, they were then asked to describe their experiences in private blogs. Perhaps the most interesting nugget of information this study yielded was just how interwoven social media has become in 18-21 year olds' lives.

"The students did complain about how boring it was go anywhere and do anything without being plugged into music on their MP3 players," said Moeller. "And many commented that it was almost impossible to avoid the TVs on in the background at all times in their friends' rooms. But what they spoke about in the strongest terms was how their lack of access to text messaging, phone calling, instant messaging, email and Facebook, meant that they couldn't connect with friends who lived close by, much less those far away."

"Texting and IM-ing my friends gives me a constant feeling of comfort," wrote one student. "When I did not have those two luxuries, I felt quite alone and secluded from my life. Although I go to a school with thousands of students, the fact that I was not able to communicate with anyone via technology was almost unbearable."

The student responses to the assignment showed not just that 18-21 year old college students are constantly texting and on Facebook -- with calling and email distant seconds as ways of staying in touch, especially with friends -- but that students' lives are wired together in such ways that opting out of that communication pattern would be tantamount to renouncing a social life.

Bringing this back to the Friedman contention that students should cut out the online crap and do something meaningful with their lives, this survey points to how misguided Friedman actually was in his writing. Social media is so pervasive and such a large part of our world that it is rewiring our brains. As the piece argues above, there is no exiting the social media world to "act" in the real world. To the wide majority of young people, social media is reality. If one had to renounce his or her social life in order to please Friedman, the activism would not mean anything.

Another enlightening conclusion was the impact the abstention from media had on these students' information-gathering capabilities. Participants in the study reported that they normally do not read the newspaper, watch mainstream television news, or listen to radio news, yet they were informed enough to discuss specific news stories. During the study, though, participants remarked on how uninformed they felt.

..."To be entirely honest I am glad I failed the assignment," wrote one student, "because if I hadn't opened my computer when I did I would not have known about the violent earthquake in Chile from an informal blog post on Tumblr."

"Students expressed tremendous anxiety about being cut-off from information," observed Ph.D. student Raymond McCaffrey, a former writer and editor at The Washington Post, and a current researcher on the study. "One student said he realized that he suddenly 'had less information than everyone else, whether it be news, class information, scores, or what happened on Family Guy."

"They care about what is going on among their friends and families and even in the world at large," said McCaffrey. " But most of all they care about being cut off from that instantaneous flow of information that comes from all sides and does not seemed tied to any single device or application or news outlet."

Students clearly rely on social media for information. Given our knowledge -- going clear back to Thomas Jefferson -- that information is vital in managing our country's affairs, dispensing with internet-based activism would be foolish and regressive, breeding even more disengagement and misinformation.

Friedman's Boomer lens assumes that we still have a critical mass of institutions that need tearing down, and that it needs to happen quickly. These Millennial college students, as Morley Winograd and Michael Hais point out, understand how decentralized our lives are, and, in role-modeling their "civic" archetype, they must rely on these anything-but-linear connections and the decentralized flow of information to reconstruct society.

Because idealist generations are unwilling to compromise on moral issues, they've always failed to solve the major social and economic problems of their eras. In the decades after the 1828 election, the country was pulled apart over slavery, ultimately leading to the Civil War. After the 1896 campaign, the United States couldn't find a way to help blue-collar workers and farmers to share fully in the wealth generated by the Industrial Revolution. It took the Great Depression to usher in the sense of urgency that led to Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. Today, issues such as affordable health care or quality education or climate change are endlessly debated but never resolved by two sides unwilling to set aside their ideological agendas for the common good.

But now, with another civic generation emerging, the times, as boomer troubadour Bob Dylan sang, they are a-changin'. Civic generations react against the idealist generations' efforts to use politics to advance their own moral causes and focus instead on reenergizing social, political and government institutions to solve pressing national issues. Previous civic realignments occurred in 1860, with the election of Abraham Lincoln, and in 1932, when the GI generation put Roosevelt in office. It's no coincidence that these "civic" presidents, along with George Washington, top all lists of our greatest presidents. All three led the country in resolving great crises by inspiring and guiding new generations and revitalizing and expanding the federal government.

In their book Millennial Makeover, Winograd and Hais describe technology as "[enabling] these changes by creating powerful new ways to reach new generations of voters with messages that relate directly to their concerns" (p. 24). Yes, face-to-face interaction continues to have its place in our society. However, if we were to scrap our reliance on social media, we would be willfully ignoring the new generations of voters Winograd and Hais mention. This study's results underscore how vital social media is to our generation's civic health. If we were to purge ourselves of our internet activism, only then could we legitimately be considered "quiet."

Those of you who pay attention to television commercials have probably noticed Levi's new advertising campaign titled "Go Forth." The theme centers on the progressive tradition of the Levi Strauss & Co., nostalgically looking back to the role of jeans on the frontier. One commercial uses Walt Whitman's "Pioneers! O Pioneers!" to call a generation to order.

I thought that given our current economic crisis's impact on our generation, whether it be in the form of a poor, unjust health care system, or whether it takes the shape of severe budget cuts and sharp, painful tuition increases, Whitman's message would be particularly apt for this weekend.

Accompanying the text is the audio of Will Greer's reading of the poem on YouTube; this is the voice that reads the poem on the Levi's commercial.

Pioneers! O Pioneers! by Walt Whitman

Come my tan-faced children,
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready,
Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes?
Pioneers! O pioneers!

For we cannot tarry here,
We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,
We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

O you youths, Western youths,
So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,
Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Have the elder races halted?
Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond the seas?
We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

All the past we leave behind,
We debouch upon a newer mightier world, varied world,
Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

We detachments steady throwing,
Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep,
Conquering, holding, daring, venturing as we go the unknown ways,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

We primeval forests felling,
We the rivers stemming, vexing we and piercing deep the mines within,
We the surface broad surveying, we the virgin soil upheaving,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Colorado men are we,
From the peaks gigantic, from the great sierras and the high plateaus,
From the mine and from the gully, from the hunting trail we come,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

From Nebraska, from Arkansas,
Central inland race are we, from Missouri, with the continental
blood intervein’d,
All the hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern, all the Northern,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

O resistless restless race!
O beloved race in all! O my breast aches with tender love for all!
O I mourn and yet exult, I am rapt with love for all,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Raise the mighty mother mistress,
Waving high the delicate mistress, over all the starry mistress,
(bend your heads all,)
Raise the fang’d and warlike mistress, stern, impassive, weapon’d mistress,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

See my children, resolute children,
By those swarms upon our rear we must never yield or falter,
Ages back in ghostly millions frowning there behind us urging,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

On and on the compact ranks,
With accessions ever waiting, with the places of the dead quickly fill’d,
Through the battle, through defeat, moving yet and never stopping,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

O to die advancing on!
Are there some of us to droop and die? has the hour come?
Then upon the march we fittest die, soon and sure the gap is fill’d.
Pioneers! O pioneers!

All the pulses of the world,
Falling in they beat for us, with the Western movement beat,
Holding single or together, steady moving to the front, all for us,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Life’s involv’d and varied pageants,
All the forms and shows, all the workmen at their work,
All the seamen and the landsmen, all the masters with their slaves,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

All the hapless silent lovers,
All the prisoners in the prisons, all the righteous and the wicked,
All the joyous, all the sorrowing, all the living, all the dying,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

I too with my soul and body,
We, a curious trio, picking, wandering on our way,
Through these shores amid the shadows, with the apparitions pressing,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Lo, the darting bowling orb!
Lo, the brother orbs around, all the clustering suns and planets,
All the dazzling days, all the mystic nights with dreams,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

These are of us, they are with us,
All for primal needed work, while the followers there in embryo wait behind,
We to-day’s procession heading, we the route for travel clearing,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

O you daughters of the West!
O you young and elder daughters! O you mothers and you wives!
Never must you be divided, in our ranks you move united,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Minstrels latent on the prairies!
(Shrouded bards of other lands, you may rest, you have done your work,)
Soon I hear you coming warbling, soon you rise and tramp amid us,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Not for delectations sweet,
Not the cushion and the slipper, not the peaceful and the studious,
Not the riches safe and palling, not for us the tame enjoyment,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Do the feasters gluttonous feast?
Do the corpulent sleepers sleep? have they lock’d and bolted doors?
Still be ours the diet hard, and the blanket on the ground,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Has the night descended?
Was the road of late so toilsome? did we stop discouraged nodding
on our way?
Yet a passing hour I yield you in your tracks to pause oblivious,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Till with sound of trumpet,
Far, far off the daybreak call–hark! how loud and clear I hear it wind,
Swift! to the head of the army!–swift! spring to your places,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

The future of this country is intimidating. In many ways, we find ourselves in the same wilderness Whitman writes of here. At any moment, an arrow carrying the news of a health tragedy could pierce our lives. The disease of joblessness continues to spread; who next? How do we stop it, or prepare for it? Fighting the brush, the daily reminders of what might seem like an ill-fated voyage, is exhausting. How do we survive?

If we follow Whitman's advice, we join together. We think of those Americans behind us, not yet present. Will we give them the same opportunities we have? Better opportunities? We clear the brush, forging a clear way forward. We capitalize on our talents -- organizers, students, tradespeople, farmers -- to keep pushing forward. Though there are those who bring up the past in an effort to distract us from moving forward, in Whitman's words, "all the past we leave behind."

"We cannot tarry here ... we must bear the brunt of danger." We must pursue change, big change, to keep moving forward. It is up to us, the young people, to do the work.

Note: Thanks to a friend of mine, Chris Fox, for pointing me to this poem.