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Commentary
The world has changed so much in the span of my teenage years. Why haven’t our politics?
The November 2024 election will be my first time voting; I turn 18 just a month shy of the general election. People who know me as an activist generally assume I’m excited to vote. But the truth is, my prevailing feeling about this election is disappointment. And I’m not alone.
The two (likely) candidates in this election are both over 75 years old. They are both white men. While Trump’s rhetoric seems straight from the 19th century, Biden’s is cleaved to a conventional wisdom that doesn’t allow for transformational action. But the young people voting have grown up in an era that demands radical policy change. The COVID-19 pandemic colored our middle and high school years. Mass shootings made us afraid to go to school (even once the pandemic was controlled). We witnessed a national reckoning over police brutality and systemic racism after the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020. And all of this is intertwined with an existential climate crisis, the signs of which are showing themselves more and more clearly with every fire, flood, and storm.
The world has changed so much in the span of our teenage years. Why haven’t our politics?
We young people are asking ourselves, where is our visionary candidate, one who is neither looking backwards, nor holding on to the present? Where is our presidential hopeful who will look to the future; the future that us young people have to live in?
Like most young voters, I’m not enthusiastic about Joe Biden as a candidate. But I’m going to vote for him anyway, and I urge other young people who feel apathetic towards this election to do the same – and then take charge of our own futures through activism.
The prevailing sentiment about Joe Biden from my peers is something like, “ugh, he’s so old.” Clips on TikTok show him stumbling through his remarks or losing his train of thought. From my fellow climate activists, the critique is more policy focused. The American climate movement has been focused on pressuring Biden the past couple years: from the March to End Fossil Fuels in New York City last September, to Climate Defiance’s inaugural action of blockading the White House Correspondents Dinner in April, to protests against the Willow Project in March.
I believe the way to fight off feelings of encroaching inertia is for young people to take action.
But beyond individual policy, this election is just not exciting or galvanizing to young people, because there is, rightly, a sense that no progress has been made since 2020. It’s the same candidates, the same issues, the same debates and the same rhetoric used over and over, but with little or insufficient action. For example, though the Inflation Reduction Act was significant climate legislation (investing some $370 billion in tax credits and spending on cleaner energy), it also allowed for the expansion of oil and gas. “All-of-the-above” energy policy like this might get bipartisan support in Congress, but every minute fossil fuels keep burning in this country is a greater and greater risk to my generation’s future.
I believe the way to fight off feelings of encroaching inertia is for young people to take action. Our political systems are stagnant and exclusionary, with power begetting power. Only mass movements can change these systems. The Green New Deal, for example, was an unthinkably radical bill until the youth of the Sunrise Movement pushed it to the front of America’s climate consciousness.
I’ve been an activist since I was 13. Sometimes I work within political systems, like lobbying for climate legislation in the Massachusetts legislature. And sometimes I try to change the system itself, through organizing rallies or school strikes. Ultimately, voting is an action within the electoral system of the United States. Our choices will almost certainly be: Joe Biden, an old, moderate and unexciting candidate, whose record on climate, Israel, and student debt are not impressive to many young voters. Or, Donald Trump. They are not the same. Trump has pledged to “drill, baby, drill,” undo many of the strides in clean energy made by the Inflation Reduction Act, end birthright citizenship, block gender-affirming healthcare, and closely control the literature, history and science taught in our schools – among many other horrifying campaign promises that, if implemented, would plunge the country into chaos.
Just a few days ago, news broke that the Biden administration had enacted a pause for many new natural gas projects, including CP2 on the Louisiana coastline, that would have emitted unconscionable amounts of methane and carbon dioxide into our atmosphere. It was a huge victory for climate activists. It’s not a coincidence that this decision came just as The Sunrise Movement, Climate Defiance, Extinction Rebellion, Fridays for Future, and countless other direct-action organizations composed largely of young people, are gaining momentum and members. This CP2 decision was not catalyzed by working within the political systems — it was catalyzed by young people demanding change with the most powerful tool in an activists’ arsenal: direct, nonviolent action.
Our activism is working on Biden — much too slowly in my view — but more than it ever will on Donald Trump. In fact, under a Trump presidency, direct action will likely become much more dangerous. We saw former President Trump dispatch federal law enforcement agents, and he has a long history of encouraging police to use more violent tactics with less discretion.
I’m going to vote for Joe Biden, as a vote against the backsliding of democracy and basic rights. But young people need more than the status quo. So, after the election, I’ll continue to be out in the streets. We don’t have to wait for the electoral system to give us someone visionary — we can be the visionaries ourselves.
