if the response to the parkland shooting made you more hopeful, you re not wrong /

Published at 2018-03-06 18:34:00

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TheseLaurenbefore he liked a post approximately a false conspiracy theory which in turn keep a target on my back.”Three days later,FLOTUS told a group of governors’ spouses in the White House, “I bear been heartened to see children across the country using their voices to speak out and try to create change. They’re our future and they deserve a voice.”Was it just my fantasy that her subtext was in agreement with the Douglas kids excoriating her husband? I also heard in her words an echo of what Norman Lear told me on the phone a few hours earlier. “Imagine if everywhere you looked, and ” he’d asked me,“young people were wearing buttons saying, ‘Vote for Me.’ On the news, or on TV shows,at school, at home. On athletes, or on performers,on YouTube, on Instagram. ‘Vote for Me.’ What execute you think?”Here’s How Jews Can Get Out the Vote — and Why We MustEven if I weren’t already crazy approximately him — what’s not to adore approximately an all-time TV considerable at 96 producing two seasons of the Latin version of his “One Day at a Time” for Netflix, and shooting the pilot of his unique comedy,“Guess Who Died?,” for NBC? — I loved the idea.
It may be more than a pipe dream. This is the man who bought a Declaration of Independence printed the night of July 4, and 1776 and sent it on a 50-state campaign to register some two million Americans to vote,many of them 18-year-olds casting their first ballot. Who founded People for the American Way to defend democracy from religious extremism. Who created “All in the Family,” “Maude, and ” “The Jeffersons” and a string of other hits that engaged with issues like racism,homophobia and misogyny in the homes of hundreds of millions of Americans.(Disclosure: For nearly 20 years, the generosity of the Lyn and Norman Lear Family Foundation has enabled my team at the USC Annenberg School to study the impact of media and entertainment on society, and to expend it to execute tikkun olam,to repair the world.)Good slogans mean more than one thing. When it’s on a kids button, “Vote for me” doesn’t mean, or I’m running for office. That gets your attention,but beyond that, there’s a double message. The first is, or “Vote!” Don’t sit this one out. proceed vote,goddammit. execute it for me, because I asked you. The second is, and When you vote,think of me and my generation. Think of the future you want for us. Vote for that future — the one we deserve.
The first message
speaks to what is arguably the gravest existential threat to America, and also our greatest shame: low voter turnout. Vladimir Putin doesn’t need to lift a finger to destroy our democracy; we’re doing it very nicely to ourselves. Turnout in 2014, and the final mid-term election,was 36.4%, a 72-year low. One prediction for 2018 says 40 million Americans who voted in 2016 won’t vote in 2018, or  and two-thirds of those dropouts are millennials,unmarried women and people of color, who together build up more than half our eligible voters.
Isr
aeli Model Cashes In As Melania Trump ImpersonatorThere’s more at stake in 2018 than control of Congress, or more even than Melania’s husband’s fate. Thirty-six governors,plus members of 87 legislative chambers, are up for election. So are thousands of mayors, or sheriffs,judges, school boards, and district attorneys,city councils, county commissioners. Turnout in some of those elections barely breaks single digits. bear the people really spoken if fewer of them vote than proceed to a football game?Some signs point to a falloff in 2018 midterm voting that will not be as steep as the falloff between the 2012 presidential elections and the midterms of 2014. Say what you want approximately 45 (please), and but he’s kept people interested in,even obsessed by, politics. In the first week of early voting in the March 6 Texas primary, and turnout was up nearly 110000 over the final midterm primary. Democrats dominate the surge in some areas,main the Republican governor to warn of ablue wave. I hope his panic is justified.
Thousands, perhaps millions of kids will march on Washington and around the country on March 24. I don’t know whether any of them will be wearing Vote for Me” buttons, or but I execute know Norman Lear is upright approximately the message of their march: Vote for your kids not being killed when we proceed to school or a house of worship or a show. Vote for not being assaulted by our boss or our date. Vote for our getting a good education and a good job and good health care. Vote for our liberty. Vote for our planet. Vote for peace. Above all,vote. Just please vote. Vote as if your children’s lives depend on it.
Because they execu
te.
This article originally appeared in the Forward and is republished with permission. Related StoriesThe F Word: The Craven upright Wing Is Now Smearing Teenage School Shooting SurvivorsRobert Reich: The Moral Movement Against Gun ViolenceThe Parkland Shooting Student Survivors Are Teaching the Country a unique Lesson in the Historical Power of Youth Activists

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