Carl Gibson, young American activist, wrote an open letter to Democrats about the 2014 midterm elections--
Open Letter to Democrats From a Disillusioned Young Voter
By Carl Gibson
Dear Democrats,
Are you listening? President Obama says he hears us. He says that people don’t have a reason to show up to vote if the politicians they have to choose from don’t motivate them. ... To all you would-be elected officials looking for my generation’s support at the polls, listen closely – get populist or get ready to lose bad. ... We just didn’t vote for Democrats who haven’t done anything for us since we voted for them in 2012, and who brazenly took our votes for granted this year. ... we won’t show up and vote for you if you aren’t offering us anything real.
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Carl Gibson, 26, is co-founder of US Uncut, a nationwide creative direct-action movement that mobilized tens of thousands of activists against corporate tax avoidance and budget cuts in the months leading up to the Occupy Wall Street movement. He currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin.
Open Letter to a Disillusioned Young Voter
by Stephen Doonan
Dear Carl and other young Americans,
You're right, us older people do vote. We've lived long enough to know that if we don't vote, things will become worse, because there are always opportunists waiting to seize control and make lives worse for everyone. Many of us including myself live in Red states or regions where even if things appear hopeless, we nevertheless firmly maintain the hope that our votes will be pooled with those of enough other likeminded people to make a difference, however small. So despite our aching bodies and our painful joints and muscles, we vote.
Many of us older voters won't live to see the benefits of our votes. We are voting for you, the younger people of America, so that even if your lives don't get much better in the short term, at least they won't get too much worse until you can take control.
Voting is a responsibility that occurs only once every two years on just one very important day. If just 120,000 more Democrats had voted in key races in the entire country on the last election day, the Democrats would have retained the U.S. Senate, the Republicans would have made fewer gains in the House and at at all levels of government.
But because so many progressive-minded young people neglected to vote, Republicans, elected by a minority of less than 15% of the American voting public, took control. That is deeply saddening to us older people, and refraining from voting seems almost unforgivable from our vantage point.
Yes, you have legitimate concerns and complaints that rightfully deserve to be aired and should be discussed and addressed. But you could vote first.
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