By Finch VanDyk, Iowa City
I’m a 28-year-old community organizer in Iowa City and I am younger than everyone I work with by an average of 30 years. Many of my colleagues express relief at my presence on the scene; they’re not used to seeing someone my age. Everywhere I go, at every meeting and from every connection, I hear the same thing: Where are the young people? How do we get them involved?
It’s not like they’re missing. There’s a whole university here. Downtown Iowa City has more under-30s than vape shops. Coralville’s gen Z and millennial population is not insignificant. And we’re mad, let me tell you. The perfect storm of angry. Student loans, rising rent, dead-end jobs, can’t afford kids. Forget retirement, forget ever owning a house — two entire generations whose present and future have been replaced with the endless tedium of trying to make ends meet.
So where are they? Why aren’t they joining ranks and doing something about it? Why aren’t young people buying in?
The answer is simple: you’re not selling what we want.
You sold us a few grand in student loan forgiveness. We want the whole industry abolished. You sold us the ACA — a stopgap measure that was never meant to last. We want free healthcare like other countries have. You sold us Obama and we got Eric Garner, Michael Brown. We want zero police killings. You sold us Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, vote blue no matter who and we ended up here.
We want real progress. You’re selling the same stagnant status quo that’s been ruining lives since Ronald Reagan. You expect us to buy? The minimum wage hasn’t been raised since 2009. If we weren’t so stressed we’d be laughing.
We’re not stupid. We know what we want is possible. We’re the richest nation in the world living in an age of unprecedented invention. We know we’ve been getting screwed over for 40 years and it doesn’t have to be this way. But we’re miserable, checked out, just trying to survive. The youngest of us have been skating this downhill slope since birth; we’ve never experienced anything else.
Where were we supposed to look for an example? All our lives we’ve watched you settle for less. You conceded on climate change, capitulated on wage stagnation. Just one more centrist Democrat and everything will be alright. All our lives we’ve watched our future decay before we can reach it. Why should we trust you now? Obama and incrementalism were your idea of progress. Look where it got us. You’ve spent as long as we can remember compromising tomorrow away.
So stop trying to get us to buy what you’re selling. Stop peddling the same old thing, stop telling us to defend the pittances we have. Stop asking us to join you. Find us where we are — exhausted, defeated — and meet us there. Show us that you’ll stand up for a new status quo, and follow through. Give us something real to believe in.
We don’t want to help you fight for your present. We’ve experienced it and we’re good, thanks. We want to fight for our future — one that we can actually thrive in. Start giving us proof that it’s worth it.
Then we’ll buy in.
