April 28, 2023 – John Abrams

I’m always looking for the Good News.  There’s an inexhaustible supply, but the mainstream media is generally not the best place to find it.  There’s plenty in John Della Volpe’s book  FIGHT: How Generation Z is Channeling Their Passion and Fear to Save America.

Head of the Harvard Institute of Politics, Della Volpe says he wrote this book because, after two decades of studying the 70 million young people of Generation Z, he came to the conclusion that everything he was told about this immense cohort – and everything most people believe about them – is wrong.

He found that although the Zoomers – born 1997-2013 and currently 11-26 years old – have been shaped by “an unfolding climate crisis, economic upheaval, gun violence, civil unrest, and increasingly brazen displays of intolerance, white nationalism, and hate . . . they won’t sit back and take it. They’ve decided to fight their own war against injustice and inequality.”

Yes, as reported, they are anxious, depressed, and lack a sense of security, but this has not caused them to buckle, but rather to take a stand.

Della Volpe tells “the oldest members of Generation Z were in high school when a protest targeting economic inequality took shape two blocks north of New York City’s Wall Street in September 2011. Through the long tail of its cause, Occupy became the first of five landmark events interwoven with Generation Zers’ personal experiences that shaped their political value set – and will, in turn, shape America’s in the days and decades ahead.  The Trump presidency, Parkland, the George Floyd murder, and Greta Thunberg’s School Strike for Climate are the other four.”

Shaped by these events, Zoomers are going directly to the polls and voting in droves.  Says Della Volpe about the 2022 mid-term elections, “In the end . . . young Americans under thirty turned out at twice the rate they had in the previous midterm elections, an unprecedented milestone.”

Della Volpe polled a representative Gen Z group of young “artists, farmers, laborers, lawyers, politicians, service workers, business leaders, students, academics, and entrepreneurs representing a range of locales around the globe” about what they think we can expect to happen in the decades to come.  These are some of the summary conclusions that emerged:

1. The purpose of work will change - Zoomers will ensure that companies serve a social purpose aligned with their values.

2. As technology replaces much of the drudgery and danger required today, there will be more time available for innovation and creative work.

3. A federalized job corps with basic income guarantees will support displaced industries and reward essential family and community service. 

4. A massive disruption of agriculture will lead to a rural and urban agricultural renaissance.

5. Zoomers will lead a resurgence of civic participation, and US citizens will be among the most active voters in the world.

6. They will fight to ensure that campaign finance laws remove dark money from politics, that gerrymandering has limits, and that automatic voter registration at eighteen is law.

7. Success and the American Dream will be defined by the bonds you make, not the stuff you buy.

Gen Z is using all peaceful means within their grasp to fight the powerful and oppose restrictions on what they consider human, political, and economic rights. Climate change, income inequality, LGBTQ rights, access to quality education, gun violence, reproductive choice, and police brutality are the causes that connect youth in every US state and most locales on the planet.

The forward to Fight was written by one of Gen Z's most visible activists, David Hogg, a survivor of the 2018 Parkland, Florida shooting.  Hogg told NPR that older people often thank him for his generation "standing up," eager to pass the baton. But Hogg argued that lasting change requires more than the resolve of young people — it requires a coalition across generations. “It's going to take every generation working together, hand-in-hand, to fix these things.”

I’m seeing this locally as we fight the housing crisis that has made life so difficult and traumatic for so many and depleted Martha’s Vineyard’s workforce.  The two-and-a-half-year-old campaign for a Housing Bank (now moved from local town meetings and polling places to the state legislature) has been a multi-generational effort.  In late March, when 250 Vineyarders went to the MA state house to lobby legislators for the Housing Bank, the group included, along with elders and boomers, a large contingency of high schoolers, Gen Zers, and Millennials.

By 2028 Zoomers and Millennials will comprise the majority of the U.S. population.  They will determine our political future.  They already are, and they will be a strong force in the 2024 elections.  Gen Z voters overwhelmingly supported Democratic candidates in the 2022 midterms (by 27 points) and had a big role in turning back the predicted red wave.

Zoomers have similar inclinations to activists of the sixties and seventies who dramatically changed a remarkable number of aspects of our society:  racial equality, LGBTQ rights, Native American sovereignty, women’s rights, wholistic health, local and organic food, regenerative agriculture, environmental awareness and justice, and the renewable energy transition. 

Each of these issues has even more urgency now than then.  Young people in America are poised to give them another boost.

Good News, huh?