This Nov. 28th Rolling Stone piece by Tessa Stuart made me think of this quote out of Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities:
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”
Doesn't this resonate for the moment we're all experiencing right now? I know it does for me.
GenZ youth are a clear force in state and national politics. Born sometime around 1996-2012, they are between the ages of 10 and 27. Many of these are our students in our classes in high school or college. They're the younger ones in our graduate, especially master's, programs.
They're unlike any previous generation. They are, for example, the most generationally diverse age-generational cohort in U.S. history (e.g., as compared to Boomers, Gen X, or Millennials). The generation following them, "Gen Alpha," will be even more diverse. Key quote:
“Young people are the reason why Biden won in 2020 and Democrats up and down the ballot won in 2022 and 2023,” says Abhi Rahman, national communications director for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. “If Gen Z continues to vote, we’re on the cusp of the most progressive era in our country’s history. Republicans know this as well, and that’s why they’re doing everything they can to stop young people from voting, including the fight for restrictions that we’re seeing play out in states like Wisconsin today.”
Yes, they are progressive and within GenZ, this attribute applies more strongly to females than males (Twenge, 2023). I can't help but think about reproduction rights and resistance to macho, misogynist culture playing into this. GenZ youth are also "digital natives." At least in developed countries, they only know this digital, online world that we have created for them—for better and for worse.
To their credit, Gen Z has normalized greater openness on mental health and illness. That's also a good thing so that folks don't suffer from stigma or fail to get the mental health services and supports they need.
The pandemic, curiously, gave not only a bump to Boomers and Gen X-ers with expanded computer skills like Zoom conference calls, but GenZ did, too, albeit from a different, more skillful starting point.
We also got pronouns from GenZ. The right, and some on the left, decry this, but it's probably because this generation, more than any other one prior, has simply shown more of themselves and who they are by virtue of social media. I've been studying this for awhile. I find it all so fascinating. Pronouns are not at all about political correctness, but about inclusion in being one's full self and that's a great thing.
What works for GenZ is the one-on-one. They pay attention to people they know and trust and who are authentic with them. So they take in information not just differently, but, I think, with a modicum of healthy skepticism. Tik Tok, specifically, I hear, is also huge for information sharing within this generation and for younger millennials—and for strategizing their next moves, too. Incidentally, older Millennials prefer Instagram and Facebook. I got this specific information from a friend who works at the UT library.
My message to GenZ and younger Millennials is the following:
First, you are genuinely feared. This Rolling Stone article attests to this.
Second, no matter what, do not let the GOP or anybody or anything try and keep you from voting. Your vote is precious, now more than ever. If all of you vote, you WILL get the outcomes you seek and you WILL position the planet for its most progressive era in human history.
Third, yes, we need world peace and I'm with you on prioritizing the environment.
Fourth, your best resistance to oppression is to resist anyone or anything that seeks to take away your right to an abundant, fulfilling life—even as you always seek justice so that all may share in this abundance.
Fifth, get grounded in community and build ethical relationships that nurture your sense of self and that speak to the value you add just by being exactly who you are.
Finally, always be ethical and responsible in your uses of power, considering always a role that caring adults, family members and elders play, or can play, in your life as mentors, advisers, and role models. Your thriving depends on your being in community. It's great for your health!
Much love and cariño to all of you in these worst and best of times.
Peace/paz,
-Angela Valenzuela
References
Twenge, J. M. (2023). Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents—and What They Mean for America's Future. Simon and Schuster.
The GOP Is Pushing to Steal Students’ Votes
LAST WEEK IN Wisconsin, the state Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that could invalidate the state’s comically, ludicrously, preposterously gerrymandered maps. If the court strikes those maps down, it will likely mean the end of the GOP’s decadeslong domination of the statehouse — and it will be because of what happened in Dane County in April.
Almost a quarter million voters turned out in Dane, home of University of Wisconsin, for a spring special election — several thousand more voters than turned out in Milwaukee, a county with almost double Dane’s population. A staggering 82 percent of Dane voters cast ballots to elevate liberal Judge Janet Protasiewicz to the state Supreme Court. Protasiewicz — whose vote could decide the gerrymandering case — ended up winning by 11 points.
Coming on the heels of the 2022 midterms — when Wisconsin led the nation in youth turnout in the country — the GOP judicial candidate’s April humiliation stunned the party. Former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker put it plainly: “Young people are the issue.”
“We’ve got to turn it around if we’re going to win again,” Walker, now the president of a conservative youth organization called Young America’s Foundation, told Fox News. The power that young voters wield was not exactly a revelation to Walker; as governor 12 years earlier, he signed a law making it harder to use a student ID to vote, prompting universities in Wisconsin to offer IDs that met the state’s new standards for free.
Student engagement has only soared in Wisconsin in the years since, but that hasn’t stopped the GOP from pulling pages from the same playbook. Across the country this year, targeted efforts to disenfranchise student voters have ramped up as election after election proved just how critical the bloc is to guarantee Democratic victories. With encouragement from influential GOP operatives, those efforts — which met with middling success in ‘23 — are poised to escalate in 2024. And they speak to a growing fear with which Republican officials and strategists regard young voters.
In Wisconsin, the GOP-controlled legislature has seized every opportunity to try and block students from voting. “We’ve seen really strong student engagement in our last couple of elections,” Morgan Hess, executive director of the Wisconsin Assembly Democrats, tells Rolling Stone. “And suddenly, we’re seeing new legislation that would prohibit student’s ability to vote.”
Hess points to GOP efforts over the past several years to make it harder to register, eliminate drop boxes, shorten early voting, increase residency requirements, and reduce polling locations — mostly in Madison and Milwaukee. “These are very targeted operations that serve to further entrench the power that they already have,” says Hess.
Months after their April routing, party functionaries at the Wisconsin GOP’s convention mulled a resolution demanding college students to vote absentee in their hometowns; one supporter of the resolution declared students had “hijacked” his city. The resolution failed to advance after another official raised the possibility that attacking students’ right to vote could backfire — an argument that seems prophetic in retrospect, as a growing number of polls show Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, outpolling Joe Biden with young voters.
Nevertheless, Republicans in state legislatures across the country this year have proposed laws targeting the student vote. In New Hampshire, House Republicans introduced a bill that would have prohibited any college students who pay out-of-state tuition from voting, and require the state’s colleges to provide the secretary of state with a list of eligible voters. Lawmakers “want the elections to be the reflection of those who reside in New Hampshire towns and who ultimately bear the consequences of the election results,” said Republican Rep. Sandra Panek, who introduced the measure in committee. (The bill was eventually killed.)
The same month, a GOP lawmaker in Texas introduced a bill that would ban polling places at colleges and universities. (That bill has not advanced out of committee.) In Virginia, there was a failed effort to repeal a law that allows anyone 16 or older to register to vote if they will be 18 by the next major election. And, according to the Voting Rights Lab, legislation seeking to change the rules around student IDs was introduced or enacted in at least 15 states this year.
It’s all part of a concerted strategy advanced by GOP operatives like Cleta Mitchell — one of the central figures behind Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. At a summit a few weeks after Wisconsin’s April special election, Mitchell told Republican donors that the party must do more to limit campus voting in swing states like Wisconsin “for any candidate other than a leftist to have a chance to WIN in 2024.”
Students and their advocates are pushing back against these efforts. In Wisconsin, leaflets distributed on campus ahead of April’s special election included information educating voters about the state’s ID requirements. In Idaho — the state that saw the largest increase in voter registrations from 18- and 19-year-olds ahead the 2022 midterms — a law set to go into effect Jan. 1, which bans the use of student IDs to register to vote or cast a ballot, is being challenged in lawsuits by the organization Babe Vote, the League of Women Voters and March for Our Lives Idaho. The groups claim that the law violates constitutional protections against age discrimination in voting.
“Young people are the reason why Biden won in 2020 and Democrats up and down the ballot won in 2022 and 2023,” says Abhi Rahman, national communications director for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. “If Gen Z continues to vote, we’re on the cusp of the most progressive era in our country’s history. Republicans know this as well, and that’s why they’re doing everything they can to stop young people from voting, including the fight for restrictions that we’re seeing play out in states like Wisconsin today.”
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