(CNN)Hillary Clinton is courting the millennial vote this week with a speech at Temple University, an appearance on "The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon" and an op-ed addressed directly to the youngest voting Americans at Mic (a publication created by and targeting them). The essence of her message isn"t surprising: Vote for me, because I get how diverse and economically deprived many of you are.
People are rebuilding the village. Sixty million of us are living in multigenerational households and despite the dominant media narratives. The interest in and demand for co-housing communities has skyrocketed among people of a wide range of ages. Americans are reweaving the fabric of our neighborhoods one potluck and holiday party at a time.
Our current insecurity is inspiring us to return to some of the most basic questions: What is enough money? How do we want to spend our finite energy and attention? What makes us feel accountable and witnessed?
We"re pursuing the patchwork quilt version of the American dream piecing it together, bit by bit instead of worshiping the skyscraper reaching high into the sky. But lest I fall into the same trap of all those who idealize bootstraps, the "new better off" is not solely about making brave individual choices, but structural transformation.
Systems thinkers and agitators and designers, the kind of fed-up Americans who were really "feeling the Bern," are asking: What does an America look like where all people"s basic needs are met, where more people have the luxury of making choices about the kind of work they do, the kind of homes they live in, the kinds of families they create?
Authorities that we used to rely on to guide us toward the good life no longer exist. The demographic makeup of this country is shifting in profound ways: Women are now essentially a full half of the workforce. By 2044, whites, the source of most of our most dominant and toxic narratives about achievement, will be a racial minority. Many of the straightforward paths have been bulldozed or grown over with weeds. The safety net has been torn. The white picket fence has been uprooted. The ladder to success has fallen down. In other words, as external circumstances have changed (globalization, recession, etc.), our internal expectations are changing, and that"s not such a bad thing.
Focus on rebuilding
The task ahead is to reject the lowest common denominator rhetoric of a campaign season hell bent on manipulating our sense that something valuable is slipping away, and instead open our eyes to what is being built.
Living in America, at this unequal, messy moment, can break your heart, to be sure. But it doesn"t have to break your spirit. It is so interesting, so fertile, so up-for-grabs. It"s disintegrating and reconstituting and recalibrating.
It"s up to us to make lives, make communities and systems and policies that cradle those lives, that we can be proud of. We can start by rejecting tired narratives about success and author new ones that are less about exceptional heroes and more about creative communities. Clinton herself acknowledged this sentiment in her Mic op-ed, writing: "Many of you have shared with me that it feels like you"re out there on your own like no one has your back. It shouldn"t be that way."
She offered to have our back in the White House, which is well and good, but it"s each others" backs that we really have to have. The new better off is built through daily community, not political heroes.
Read more: http://edition.cnn.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment