The Political Voices of Generation Z

Laurie Rice, Kenneth Moffett

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000450347
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Civics & Citizenship
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book explores political expression of members of Generation Z old enough to vote in 2018 and 2020 on issues and movements including MeToo, Supreme Court nominations, March for Our Lives, immigration and family separation, and Black Lives Matter. Since generational dividing lines blur, we study 18 to 25-year-olds, capturing the oldest members of Generation Z along with the youngest Millennials. They share similarities both in their place in the life cycle and experiences of potentially defining events. Through examining some movements led by young adults and others led by older generations, as well as issues with varying salience, core theories are tested in multiple contexts, showing that when young adults protest or post about movements they align with, they become mobilized to participate in other ways, too, including contacting elected officials, which heightens the likelihood of their voices being heard in the halls of power.Perfect for students and courses in a variety of departments at all levels, the book is also aimed at readers curious about contemporary events and emerging political actors.

1

Introduction

Why Young Adult Political Expression Deserves a Fresh Look

10.4324/9781003168898-1

Introduction

The voices of young activists suggest that the generation coming of political age today responds differently to the challenges they inherit. Instead of responding with resignation or apathy, or waiting on their elders to fix it, they act and believe that they can advance change. Amel Viaud, a 21-year-old organizer of the Black Boston 2020 march after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, said: “I think young people today are trying to break generational problems, and systemic issues that are going on in their environment” (Moore 2020). One of her partners in organizing the march, then 22-year-old Toiell Washington, stated:

The other generations already had their turn. They already went through it. They already did it, so not only should we not expect it of them, but we should be starting to expect it ourselves. We should be holding each other accountable. People think that in moments like these, we’re reaching out and waiting for someone to save us, but we are the next generation, so we have to save each other.

(Moore 2020)

These sentiments were not confined to young activists in Boston. Alesia Robinson, 23 years old at the time and who identified herself as one of the oldest members of a group organizing similar marches in Orange County, California, stated:

It seems to be youth at the forefront of this movement. They always say that young people are the ones who are going to make the change. The fact that they are leading this protest almost guarantees that change in my eyes.

(Walker 2020)

Meanwhile, then 20-year-old Sara Wunete who helped organize a protest in Howard County, Maryland, that drew thousands said: “There is a room of adults who are in positions to do something and they underestimate youth to make that happen” (Faguy 2020).

This belief in acting themselves and distrust in older generations to bring about change was not unique to the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. Two years earlier Parkland shooting survivor Cameron Kasky, then aged 17, posted on Facebook shortly after the tragedy at his high school, “I just want people to understand what happened and understand that doing nothing will lead to nothing. Who’d have thought that concept was so difficult to grasp?” (Witt 2018). As he and other survivors turned movement organizers met a few weeks later at one of their March for Our Lives planning sessions, he stated: “The adults know that we’re cleaning up their mess” to which Emma Gonzales added “It’s like they’re saying, ‘I’m sorry I made this mess,’ while continuing to spill soda on the floor” (Alter 2018). Thus, Kasky concluded: “We want the grownups we need in this, and nothing more. We only have people doing the things that as 17-year-olds we cannot” (Alter 2018).

Social media helped young adults organize for change. Jaclyn Corin, then aged 17, another young leader of the #NeverAgain movement against gun violence, just days before the first March for Our Lives Protest, told a reporter, “People always say, ‘Get off your phones,’ but social media is our weapon. Without it, the movement wouldn’t have spread this fast” (Alter 2018). Two years later, organizers of Black Lives Matter protests in Howard County, Maryland, credited their quick organization of large protests to social media with then 18-year-old Dumebi Adigwe adding “social media…is one of the best ways to get things in the faces of people who didn’t want to see it before” (Faguy 2020).

Young people have been at the forefront of social movements before, including in the 1930s and 1960s (Braungart and Braungart 1990b). Young Baby Boomers played meaningful roles in the civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam War protests in the 1960s. Yet, youth activism seemingly waned in the years afterward. Both young adults in Generation X as well as young adult Millennials were criticized for low levels of political participation. The stereotype of the politically unengaged young adult dominated.

Yet, since Donald Trump’s election as president in 2016, there has been a new wave of activism in American society. The seeds for this activism began after he took office in 2017 and have accelerated across issues since, particularly from the approach of the 2018 midterm elections onward. This bent toward activism appears particularly strong among young adults and coincides with a world networked on social media at levels like never before and a new generation coming of political age. Young adults have become deeply involved in sharp debates about multiple political and social issues that gripped the headlines. Among these were immigration policy, gun violence, sexual harassment and assaults, and racism in American society and politics. Those seeking change took both to the streets and to social media to register their views. Media accounts showed young adults at the center of many of these activities. For an age group often portrayed in the past as politically uninvolved, young adults were seemingly everywhere.

Immigration

As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump made resistance to unauthorized immigration a central campaign plank, promising to build a wall to stop immigrants at the border with Mexico and to deport unauthorized immigrants (Trump 2015). In his first years as president, several actions in pursuit of this policy sparked protests from young adults. The first was an action that directly targeted young adults – ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy of the Obama administration and threatening these so-called Dreamers with deportation. The night the policy was announced, more than 6,000 of the 400,000 members of the immigrant youth organization United We Dream collaborated on a conference call to commiserate and strategize (Preston 2017). Both Dreamers and their U.S. citizen peers joined together to protest the move. The day of the announcement, protests blocked traffic in Washington, DC, and New York (Preston 2017). Two months later in November 2017, Washington, DC, area high school and college students, supported by United We Dream, staged a walkout, marching to Capitol Hill and streaming into the Hart Senate Office Building chanting “Si Se Puede” and “Dream Act” and demanding that Congress pass a clean Dream Act that would offer a pathway to citizenship for the Dreamers without additional anti-immigration measures paired with it (Stein 2017).

By the late spring of 2018, a different anti-immigration policy dominated the headlines – family separation. The Trump administration had begun separating and detaining undocumented immigrant families crossing the Southern border. In the first six weeks of the policy alone, nearly 2,000 children were separated from their parents and held at detention facilities and shelters (Rhodan 2018). Both the policy itself and the conditions within these facilities sparked protests. On June 14, 2018, protests occurred in about 60 cities across more than a dozen states (Silva and Johnson 2018). The protests drew extensive media coverage. Teen Vogue even summarized news coverage of these protests for their readers, noting that some of the protests had been organized by those with no experience with activism and providing multiple examples of people tweeting about the issue (Beck 2018). Then, on June 30, a crowd of roughly 50,000 protesters gathered in Washington, DC, at a protest event featuring both celebrities and the stories of young people (Newkirk 2018). The same day, protesters gathered in more than 600 cities to demand the return of children to their parents (McCausland, Guadalupe, and Rosenblatt 2018). Young adults featured prominently in many of the pictures of protesters accompanying these news articles.

#MeToo and the Kavanaugh Hearings

The MeToo Movement went viral after a tweet from actress Alyssa Milano invited those who had been sexually harassed or assaulted to respond “Me Too” (Garcia 2017). The response was overwhelming and the online movement that followed was especially visible to young adults as they form the highest share of Twitter users (Smith and Anderson 2018) and are especially likely to follow celebrities (Hargittai and Litt 2011). But it was more than simply more visible to young adults, it touched on a value that is particularly important to them – gender equality (Shushok and Kidd 2015, 38) – and it targeted predatory behaviors that young adults are more likely to experience than their elders (Kearl 2018). Young adults quickly joined the movement.

This online movement produced offline consequences. The movement addressed sexual harassment and assault in numerous career fields and institutions, including college campuses. The movement did more than support survivors – lists emerged naming alleged perpetrators. For example, a student at Middlebury College posted a “List of Men to Avoid” on Facebook, listing 30 names and identifying them as rapists, harassers, or abusers (Bauer-Wolf 2018).

In the midst of the MeToo Movement, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford came forward with allegations that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her when they were both in high school. Young adults, far less likely than other age groups to have a very favorable opinion of Kavanaugh (YouGov 2018), joined with others in opposition to his nomination and led protests. Signs went up at his alma mater, Yale University, stating “We believe Dr. Christine Blasey Ford,” undergraduates there rallied against him, and law school students held a sit-in (Wood 2018). Such actions were not limited to his alma mater, though. For example, students at both the University of Massachusetts and Harvard held protests ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction: Why Young Adult Political Expression Deserves a Fresh Look
• Part I Posting, Protesting, and Civic Engagement: Causes and Movements That Mobilized
• Part II Moving from the Outside in: The Link between Posting and Protesting and Contacting Elected Officials
• Index