Next Generation Perspectives
This election season, Generation Citizen and GOOD want the country to hear what young people think!
Check out a recording of our first panel discussion here!
We will be hosting weekly panels during the 2012 presidential race for 16- to 24-year-olds throughout the country to ask young people about their opinions on the current state of politics, nationally and locally. We will start these the day after the first Presidential Debate (October 4th) and run them through the election. We’re honored to have Callie Schweitzer, the Director of Marketing and Special Projects at Vox Media and an award-winning journalist, moderate the discussions, which will take place on Google Hangouts.
These panels will be filmed and live-streamed, moderated by influencers and local community leaders, continued in extensive social media conversations. We’ll discuss the current issues of the day, as well as pressing political issues affecting young people.
See below for our all-star cast of Youth Ambassadors who will be headlining the panels:
Raheem Jessop, 17: Brooklyn High School for Law & Technology |
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My parents grew up poor, struggling, and wondering where their next meal would come from. Born into large families, both of them were raised in small, cramped apartments. They promised themselves that their offspring would never have to experience hardships. My parents have always impressed upon me the importance of education. When they immigrated to the United States of America, they worked vigorously to pay the bills and take care of me. When I was five, my father moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado for a better opportunity. His absence took a toll on me; I started misbehaving in school and my grades dropped. Not surprisingly, my life started to change drastically. During my sixth grade year, teachers complained about me daily, and my mother, who worked twelve-hour days, struggled to manage my behavior. Eventually, my behavior became such a burden on my mother that she sent me to live with my father. I felt rejected and unloved. My own mother could not deal with me and my problems. Her only solution was to send me away to a stranger titled “Father.” I did not know how to adjust to this new situation. At my Colorado middle school, my seventh grade math teacher told me that I wouldn’t amount to anything because I was black. This was my first experience with racial discrimination, and it floored me. Coming from Brooklyn, New York, I always thought racism was a myth. I was still growing, trying to figure out who I was and trying to get my life together. Life seemed to support my math teacher’s comment. I, however, wanted to prove him wrong. The following year, I returned to Brooklyn and faced an even greater challenge. Since Colorado and New York have different learning standards, the principal refused to promote me to the eighth grade. I was crushed when I found out that I wouldn’t graduate on time. From that moment on, I studied rigorously, and I became salutatorian of my eighth grade class. I took those work ethics to high school and excelled greatly. I will be salutatorian again, but this time, as a graduating senior. I arose from low expectations and through hard work and dedication, I prevailed. Perhaps one day, I will have the chance to show my seventh grade math teacher how I took his words to heart: I didn’t amount to just anything; I amounted to everything I set out to be. |
Saige Martin, 21: Hawai’i Pacific University |
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The issues that I’m most passionate about are equal rights for all, which ranges from immigrant and women’s rights to the repeal of DOMA. I have a strong passion in human rights internationally, with a focus on mass-atrocities prevention, and strongly believe in an education system that works for all of the world’s children, not just those in developed countries. However, youth rights and youth participation are what I am most passionate about; I believe that educating and engaging youth has become a much easier task with the increasing presence of social media and thus we have no excuses for not including them in our decision making processes. My future goals are to finish my BA degree and to find meaningful work with an organization that shares the same values of equality and youth participation and leadership as I do. My dream work is to travel the world engaging and educating youth and providing them with the resources and connections they need to bring meaningful change to their communities and countries.
I am honored to serve on this panel to help engage America’s youth in a defining election year. This panel can identify sources of frustration and sensitivity within America’s youth while also building on ideas and ways in which youth can be heard and taken seriously in our political discourse. After the last session of Congress, it is easy to see that problems facing our country and world are immense and challenging, but we should not seek to simply identify these problems but to find common ground and solutions. |
Zak Malamed, 18: University of Maryland, College Park |
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I am an advocate for the student voice in education policy. I am the the organizer of the #StuVoice Twitter chats and StuVoice.org. These efforts focus on providing a worldwide support network to enhance and unite the student voice. A graduate of Great Neck South High School, I served as Class President for three years and Student Government President for one year. I also served as Long Island Regional Director and Political Director for the New York High School Democrats. During the summer, I worked for The Lanier Law Firm, PLLC. I also serve on the Do Something Youth Advisory Council and is working closely with local politicians to develop youth advisory cabinets. Currently, I am a freshman Government and Politics major at the University of Maryland, College Park, and I’m excited to share and discuss his ideas and perspectives with a diverse panel of students. Follow me on Twitter @ZakMal. Education is undoubtedly the most important issue for me in this election. With a struggling economy and a high unemployment rate, there is only four percent unemployment amongst those 25 and older with a bachelor’s degree. The key to putting Americans back to work is nothing other than providing them with their rightful access to a proper education. A common focus of education critics is on the issue of accountability, but with high poverty rates students are going to school hungry only to find teachers with a lack of resources to help them succeed. This leads to a student’s depressed will to succeed. Therein, we find millions of American students dropping out. The father of public education, Horace Mann, saw education as “the great equalizer.” Without, equity there can be no effective measure of success. And without an effective measure of success, there can be no justifiable way of improving accountability. If we fail to prioritize our students in 2012, we are failing to uphold the values and integrity of our great country. Our future can no longer be left on the back-burner. We can no longer ignore today’s problems by believing that they will be solved tomorrow. There is no issue of greater importance to Generation Y than recreating and re-energizing our fledgling education system. |
Lamar Richardson, 19: Columbia University |
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I am originally from New Brunswick, New Jersey, but I grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina. I come from a working-class family that immigrated to the United States seeking better opportunities. Growing up, my parents always instilled in me to excel in my academic endeavors and worked multiple jobs to ensure that I could have better circumstances than they did. Because of this, I have spent my entire life striving for success and working towards a financially-stable future in order to support my family. I am passionate about networking, acting, and changing the status quo relevant to me. I also love to travel and spend time with friends and family. I aspire to be a professional in the business or legal realm and ultimately to have a positive impact on America’s future. I have volunteered with Big Brothers Big Sisters and served as a mentor to disadvantaged young men in hopes of motivating them to succeed academically. I am excited to be a part of this panel to make sure I can represent first generation minorities like myself and to have our issues accounted for. I have a passion for activism and want to get involved with this upcoming election because it is critical to the future of all young people in the country. The issue most important to me in this upcoming election is the state of the economy and student loan reform/ financial aid-grant reform. Having access to education, regardless of socioeconomic status, is essential to America’s youth; and I believe that enabling this should be a top priority of the candidates.
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Genevieve Marcy, 19: New York University |
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I feel really strongly about the recent voter ID laws being enacted throughout the country, which I (along with many others) see as a blatant attempt to disenfranchise people of color, people of lower socioeconomic standing, and students. I also care about women’s rights; I believe that as a country we are taking some giant steps backwards with regards to allowing women to control their health and their bodies, and I think that unless people get fired up about it, this will not stop. In the future, I want to be a working actor in New York. Dreaming ambitiously, I would love to have the chance to act on Saturday Night Live. I have participated through youth justice and court systems to try and target juvenile offenders in appropriate and effective ways, and I was involved in high school in a campaign to raise awareness in our community over the genocide in South Sudan. I am excited to be part of the panel because I often do not hear my point of view represented in the media, and, personally, I think it will be really interesting and productive to have meaningful conversations with those who hold other viewpoints. The issue that is most important to me in this election is equality–be it equality for women, marriage equality, or equal access to polls. |
Julia Zenker, 20: Wagner College |
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As a junior Philosophy and Spanish major at Wagner College, I’ve made it a point to take advantage of the community service and action civics opportunities available to me. Since I was a freshman I’ve had the privilege of working as an assistant ESL teacher alongside student immigrants at El Centro del Inmigrante in Staten Island’s Port Richmond Community. It was shortly after meeting some of these extraordinary people that two classmates and I decided to write a letter to our congressman urging him to vote in favor of the DREAM Act, as part of the Debating for Democracy competition. After submitting our letter to the Project Pericles committee, I was chosen to represent Wagner College at a Political conference held in Manhattan. The founder of Generation Citizen, Scott Warren, was actually at the same conference and was featured on a panel, where he spoke in depth about the organization. Determined to get involved, I applied to become a democracy coach. The following fall semester I led a high school class in an action civics curriculum, where we targeted the issue of teen unemployment in the students’ community. After witnessing the students’ initial lack of interest in the political process, I was shocked to see how truly disenfranchised they felt. I’ve resolved to help students, like the ones I came to know as a Democracy Coach, to recognize the importance of their civic participation and the strength of their collective voice. I’m currently the Generation Citizen Chapter Executive Director of the Wagner College campus, where I train other college students to teach action civics class. I’m the student administrator for the Staten Island CLARO Project, which offers pro bono legal service for low income individuals involved in consumer debt cases. I also serve as the Community Service Chairwoman for both the Pre-Law society and the Wagner College Democrats. I’m interested to know the candidates plans for job creation over the next four years. As a college student nearing the end of my undergraduate degree, I’m apprehensive about entering the job market when I feel both candidates have been vague about their planned method of attack. Over the past several years, I have become increasingly disenchanted with the Congress. I would like to hear that the candidates have an idea of how they will work to bring the two parties together to accomplish their policy goals. |
Sameer Jaywant, 20: New York University |
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As a junior Philosophy and Spanish major at Wagner College, I’ve made it a point to take advantage of the community service and action civics opportunities available to me. Since I was a freshman I’ve had the privilege of working as an assistant ESL teacher alongside student immigrants at El Centro del Inmigrante in Staten Island’s Port Richmond Community. It was shortly after meeting some of these extraordinary people that two classmates and I decided to write a letter to our congressman urging him to vote in favor of the DREAM Act, as part of the Debating for Democracy competition. As a Canadian-born American citizen of Indian heritage, I am always conscious of the incredible global forces at play in current events. The world, now more than ever, is growing increasingly interdependent and the process of supranational cooperation is one of my personal interests. Nonetheless, America’s role in this new-age world is still defined by the values (and domestic policies that reflect these values) we espouse as a nation, and it’s impossible to overlook the two glaringly opposed visions of our country that are vying for superiority in this election. Unfortunately, neither vision really seems to grasp the non-political worth of my generation and it’s regrettable to see the swiftness with which the issues students my age and younger care about are completely ignored by politicians. I hope to contribute to the national recognition of education, gun control, and economic and financial reform as issues that should be responsibly dealt with, rather than irresponsibly talked about. I am currently a junior at NYU, studying International Relations and Economics. I studied abroad in Paris this past spring, where I witnessed the French presidential elections and gained some insight as to how and why democracies differ from one another. I am now Chair of the International Affairs Committee of our Student Senators Council, through which I work to strengthen our ties to the international community as well as improve our abroad sites. I am also an Opinion Columnist for our school newspaper, Washington Square News, so I get to air my grievances with and support for certain topics and issues on a weekly basis. I intend to become a lawyer and perhaps pursue a career in Foreign Service. I think it’s important that our disillusionment with the current state of affairs translates into positive steps towards reform, rather than disengagement with the political process as a whole. I’m looking forward to discussing the critical issues facing my generation with people who care about them as much as I do, and I think this panel is an important reminder that us kids know a lot more than people tend to give us credit for. |