Meet the young Democrats waging war on MAGA from behind enemy lines

[RandySF]

Catalyzing events in U.S. history have a tendency to shape generations of public officials. In the 1920s, Prohibition and the GOP’s depression economics gave rise to the New Deal Democrats. Racial and cultural repression in the mid-20th century spawned classes of lawmakers fighting for the “rights revolution.” In the 1970s, the Vietnam War and Watergate inspired the antiwar “Watergate babies” to run for Congress.

It might be happening again: The reactionary turn underway in many red states is beginning to shape a new generation of young Democratic officials, many of whom will one day be the party’s leaders.

In these red states, young Democrats are entering local politics and developing public presences in response to the far-right culture-warring unleashed by GOP majorities. New restrictions on abortion and the growing right-wing backlash to LGBTQ rights are radicalizing a wave of Democratic public servants who mostly hail from the Gen Z and millennial generations.

“We’re seeing this across the country,” said Amanda Litman, a co-founder of Run For Something, which recruits progressive candidates for state and local office. “It’s no coincidence that some of the loudest voices pushing back are young leaders in red states, often from urban environments, often people of color, often LGBTQ themselves.”

Last week, after the GOP-controlled state legislature in Tennessee expelled two young Black lawmakers for protesting gun violence, and after a Texas judge invalidated federal approval of abortion medication, Run For Something’s candidate recruitment spiked. Litman says more than half the new candidates are from red states.




https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/04/11/maga-culture-wars-young-democrats/

[Samrob]

1. Could be because when you hear them speak, they are saying something that really matters to people.

AND the are fearless and sharp enough to cut through the bullshit.

[ExWhoDoesntCare]

2. Thanks to my son and his wife

I do have a bit of a peek into this new generation of politically active young adults. They're building a culture right under our noses that most of us have zero clue about.

For instance, one of their music preferences, K-Pop, is increasingly getting political--and they're using their elders' ignorance of the phenomenon to create the glue that binds them and inspires them.

These are songs their elders aren't even remotely aware of, because, unlike the music of the 60s. the edgier K-Pop plays on no radio stations here, the artists don't appear on our standard TV shows--none of it. They're on assorted video channels like Youtube, but you have to be "in the know" about them to find them in that vast landscape.

The kiddo provided me a link to but one of the highly political songs they're not only grooving to, but using as their own private anthem. The artist himself has explained that the song's message is 100% political. He wants it to encourage youth to accept that, yes, they've been dealt a bad hand by their elders, they can't change that, but they can change what gets done from here if they stop just lying down and taking it:

Me, I had to watch it several times before I realized it came with lyrics, because I couldn't stop gawking at the artist. I'm too old to be that taken by a gorgeous pop idol.

[Leith]

3. It's good to hear about it

There are always subcultures that others don't hear about, but should.