Can you hear us now? A Young Voter's Rally Cry

We are young and we want them to listen. We want them to stop ignoring us. They see us as lazy, inarticulate, and angry. They see us as too apathetic to have our own opinions. When we, the young voter, have many opinions. Opinions about the crippling issues this country now faces, opinions about they, the older politicians and leaders who discount us because they think we have no money, and no power to offer them. But what they don’t know is, we have more power than ever and we are not giving it away.

We are young and we believe in people. More than ever we can communicate with all people all over the world faster than ever before. Through social media we are able to see people’s faces, to see our hopes, our dreams, to see our sorrows, our struggles, to see our lives, and most importantly to see that inside we are all the same. That no one is better than anyone else. That everyone is equal.  Through our time connecting, we also realize that we all want the same thing. We want someone to care. We want our government to care about us once again. We connect with everyone; everyone except our own political leaders who label our innovation as nothing but a fad. While they should be using it to educate themselves about us, as we have educated ourselves. To communicate with us as we have communicated with each other.

We are young and we stand here together today unified, unlike our own government. Our own government that has only become concerned with party lines, lobbyists, and their next paycheck.  Yet they dismiss us, our generation, as the selfish ones. As a bunch of kids who understand nothing. When in fact, we understand the most important thing, what is right and what is wrong. Politicians don’t always understand this or pretend not to. We know it is wrong to judge someone based on their religion, race, or sexuality. We know it is wrong to deny someone their basic rights as a human being because they love someone. We know it is wrong to let people suffer jobless and debt-ridden as congress vacations months out of a year. We know it is wrong to let people die in another land because they don’t have some resource we desire when we have the medical capability to save them. We know it is wrong to spend billions of dollars on killing people, sometimes innocent people, while our own economy is flailing. We know it is wrong to censor our internet, our communication.

We are young and we know it is wrong to lie. To lie about how much money you make. To lie about what you can do for us. To lie about what you have done in the past. Or more often than not, to lie as an excuse for doing something that we know is wrong. We are sick of the lies, not just from politicians, but from the older generations of this country who run our markets and our media. We need someone to tell us the truth not just what we or more likely their donor or political party wants to hear. When we learn the truth we learn reality; and by understanding today’s reality we will have a better ability to improve our future reality. The truth leads to freedom. We know that is right. They are afraid of the truth as they are secretly afraid of us.

We are young and we understand that our future appears dimmer than any American generation before us. Our future, America’s future, is like a lone flashlight running out of battery power in a dark cave. Because they have forgotten about us along with our crippling student loans, our unstable jobless future, our despicably biased education system, our rising oil and food prices, and our inexcusable gender and homosexual discrimination. Yes. It is up to us to change those batteries before that light is gone completely. Together we need to stand- up, we need to make them listen to what is important to us, We need to take action by convincing them to finally take action. Otherwise, we, The United States of America, will be left in darkness.

We are young and we need to tell this country what is right. We will do this by doing what our generation knows best, connecting on social media and forming a united front for young voter awareness. We will take to our Twitter accounts, our Facebook accounts, and our blogs to express our opinions to our many friends and followers at least once every day.  We will use You Tube to send our messages of frustration to our political leaders until they listen. We will flood our congressman’s Inbox with emails about issues we care about until they finally respond. But most importantly we will use our social media to organize as one collective voice that they no longer can avoid. If they continue to put in their earplugs, we will go to their doorstep and ring the bell.

In August, we mobilized united young voters will march at the Republican National Convention. In September, the Capitol building. They cannot hide from us anymore. We will make them have to look at us, to look upon the faces of their people, to look upon the faces of their future.

We are young and we have something to say, we will tell them what we have to say.
We are young and we can make a difference. We will make a difference.
We are young and we are ready.
We are young and we vote.

Sarah Mitrotz

Communication Studies 

Wilkes 2013