Their Parents Rocked the Vote, Now Their Vote is Rocking the World
By: Mtv Entertainment Group - Social Impact
Tags: Youth, 2020 Presidential Race, Voting

By Brianna Cayo Cotter, Senior Vice President of Social Impact, MTV Entertainment Group

At 23 years old, I was a fired-up activist. I understood that if I wanted the issues I cared about to change, I had to do something. So in 2004, my friends and I took it upon ourselves to spend three months biking across the country registering voters and volunteering with election protection organizations.

16 years later, the activist that is still inside this corporate executive is beaming with joy over the earthquake we just witnessed — the largest youth voter turnout in history. It is the culmination of an era that cements Gen Z and young millennials as our most remarkably resilient citizens. Young people have always had this passion, but this generation is fully wielding their political power.

In a period defined by the rallying cry of resistance, young people have, despite the conditions they inherited, also resisted cynicism. They grew up through the ashes of 9/11, the pain of the Great Recession, and now the health, economic and social upheaval of a global pandemic.

They’ve been handed a climate crisis that’s growing and wages that aren’t in a nation fraught by inequalities of opportunity that hinge on one’s race and health outcomes that hinge on one’s income. Beneath it all lies a desperately polarized political system incapable of implementing even the most popular fixes.

Instead of shutting down, this generation has assigned itself the challenge of patching up the cracks in our broken body politic. Driven by empathy, inclusivity and a commitment to social justice, they have built a broad, loud and informed movement.

They survived school shootings, so they marched for safer and smarter gun laws. They endured wildfires, floods and projections that portend even worse, so they’ve taken green policies mainstream. They saw their families and friends suffer injustices for no other reason than how they were born, so they took the lead in movements for racial and LGBTQ+ equality.

Importantly, young Americans have concluded that nothing will change until they change the system itself. So this year, they organized, built coalitions and activated their social networks to make electoral history.

When states shuttered voting locations, student leaders from more than 20 universities secured and protected polling places in nearly a dozen states. Their efforts benefited more than 375,000 students.

When the pandemic threatened older Americans who typically serve as our poll workers, young people stepped up once again. More than 700,000 people signed up through Power the Polls, nearly tripling the program’s initial recruitment goal.

And when young people encountered one of the most long-standing barriers to voting — the outdated idea that you can only vote on Election Day — they hurdled over it without a backward glance. Young people embraced early voting like never before and are a big part of the reason more Americans cast their votes before November even began than in all of 2016.

Inspired by this generation, we created a new national holiday, Vote Early Day, a non-partisan movement of over 2,700 businesses, organizations and student groups across the country. We saw how a generation long-criticized for “slacktivism” now has the most sought-after political asset in the COVID-19 era: the ability to build online movements that translate to real action.

Maya Patel, a campus activist in Texas who has now registered hundreds of students to vote, got involved because she didn’t want anyone to take their right to vote for granted. As a child of immigrants, she helped her dad study for his citizenship test in fourth grade. After seeing students line up for three hours to vote at UT Austin’s only polling place in 2016 — and saw others walk away rather than wait — she worked to get another polling location on campus and wrote a bill in the Texas state legislature to help other colleges do the same.

Maya’s not alone. More than a quarter of people ages 18–24 have recently attended a march or demonstration, a quarter have registered others to vote, and one in five has volunteered on a political campaign.

This organized generation’s instinct for coalition-building is a key to their success — rallying, advocating and voting not only for their own interests, but on behalf of one another. They are linking arms with people of every background, color, orientation and age. Their embrace of intersectionality isn’t performative; it’s productive. And if we pay attention to how they do it, it can be the key to our collective ability to bounce back.

As someone who got the activist bug at a young age — helping register voters and fighting for social justice — it’s amazing to see how Gen Z and young millennials have maintained their energy and optimism against all odds. Those of us who came before them should now follow their lead — listen to their priorities and learn from their passion — to build the future together.