Opining Away...

by Faith Rice-Mills

Young adults never fail to form opinions. I hear thoughts over the Iraq conflict in the local coffee shop. I encounter opinions over immigration in the Spanish class I teach. My friends and I often have conversations over religion and social rights in my living room.

I am hopeful when two or more young adults engage in lively debates over current issues, but my balloon of optimism deflates as I hear comments such as “But I’m not going to vote. I don’t know enough to vote” or “It doesn’t matter if I vote anyway.”

According to the Pew Research Center, 54% of the “DotNet” generation or those who were born between 1976 and 1987, “tried to persuade others” to vote or how to vote in 2004. Yet, from the same generation only 24% said they “always vote.”

You have to admit, the generations that preceded us have made life pretty easy. Most of us are fairly capable when it comes to technology, thus making research, paying bills and communicating quick and easy. Because of past generations, many people in this country do not see women, gays and lesbians or minority races and ethnic groups as inferior. We are free to be who we are and perhaps take this freedom for granted.

This freedom and these rights allow us to become adults at our own pace. There are many young adults under thirty who seem to think it is not their time to start a family, buy a house or settle on a career. These same young adults do not feel it is their time to make political decisions or fight for their beliefs. They still do not want to grow up.

There are also many young adults under thirty in the Middle East fighting for, what they understand, is freedom. Someone has told them that freedom means the privilege to live in a democracy which, according to dictionary.com, is “government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.” Basically, they are fighting and, let’s not forget, dying for this democracy.

No matter what you may believe about the conflict in Iraq or the function of the Electoral College, every time a young adult “forgets” to vote or is simply inactive, it is a slap in the face to every person who has so much faith in democracy that he or she is willing to die for it.

What is the solution? Write a letter to your congressman. Volunteer. Vote. Do something other than “try to persuade others” in 2008.

Make your words more than that; make them actions. Let us not be the generation that is remembered as being apathetic or lazy.