Young people — especially young people of color — are at the forefront of the most important social movements of our time. What advice can you share with them, based on your own experiences, on how to keep forging ahead when the battle seems uphill?
"The folks who benefit from keeping things the way they are — they are counting on your belief that things can't get better. But they are wrong."
Look, as I said in my speech at this year's Democratic National Convention, I understand why a young person might look at politics right now — the meanness and the lies and the gridlock — and think, what's the point?
And my answer to them is that the folks who benefit from keeping things the way they are — they are counting on your belief that things can't get better. But they are wrong.
Now, that doesn't mean progress in our country moves in a straight line. Sometimes, it's two steps forward, one step back. But if you think it's too hard to bring about change today, my advice to you is to remember those who came before us.
If anyone had a right to believe that this democracy did not work, and could not work, it was those Americans whose right to work in safe conditions, whose right to vote, whose right to marry, whose rights to basic dignity were denied year after year. But instead of giving up, they joined together and said somehow, some way, we are going to make this work.
So many young people, from those who flooded airports in the early days to those who organized protests for racial justice this summer, have followed in those footsteps over the last four years. And if we are going to usher in the progress we need, we cannot let up during these next four. We can't take off four years or eight years in a democracy. There's too much we still have to do.
