The Generations That Changed America Are Handing the Baton to Gen Y and Gen Z
For the people who love to take shots at the older generations, take a minute and look at the record.
Two generations stepped into defining fights that helped reshape this country.
The Silent Generation and the Baby Boomers.
They did not sit on the sidelines.
They pushed the country forward.
Young Americans rode buses into the Deep South during the Freedom Rides. They sat at segregated lunch counters in Greensboro. They marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma knowing state troopers were waiting with batons and tear gas. Their courage helped push Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Students and young Americans filled college campuses and city streets protesting the Vietnam War. Kent State. Washington. San Francisco. The movement grew so powerful that it helped shift national policy and end the draft.
In 1970 twenty million Americans showed up for the first Earth Day. That pressure helped lead to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Clean Air Act, and the Clean Water Act. Up until the Trump administration, these laws protected the air you breathe and the water you drink.
Women stood up and demanded equal opportunity in education and the workplace. Title IX passed in 1972. Millions of girls and women suddenly had doors open in schools, sports, and careers that had been closed for generations. Until this administration.
After the Stonewall uprising in 1969, people who had been forced to live in silence began organizing openly for dignity and equality. That movement grew over decades and eventually led to nationwide marriage equality. Until this Congress.
Journalists and citizens demanded accountability during Watergate. A president resigned. The message was clear. No one is above the law. Until this presidency.
At the same time another revolution was starting in garages and college labs. Young engineers and entrepreneurs built the foundations of the personal computer and internet economy. Companies that would eventually shape the modern world were born during that era.
Those changes did not happen by accident.
They happened because people showed up.
They organized. They protested. They voted.
They believed the country could be better and they worked to make it happen.
Now something important needs to be said.
The baton is moving.
Gen Y. Gen Z.
This next chapter belongs to you.
Every generation inherits a country that is unfinished. Every generation faces problems that feel overwhelming. Every generation has a choice.
Sit back and complain.
Or step forward and lead.
The power you hold is not theoretical. It is real and it is immediate.
Millions of you are eligible to vote in the upcoming midterm elections. The decisions made in those elections will shape laws, courts, rights, and opportunities for decades.
History shows how change actually happens in America.
People stop pointing fingers.
People get involved.
People vote.
The generations that came before you carried the baton through some of the toughest chapters in modern history.
Now it is being placed in your hands.
What happens next is up to you.
Show up.
Speak up.
Vote.
And move this country forward again.