Forum Post: A letter to Young America (those under 40)

I wrote this letter about six months ago, and it seems many are moving together. Tell me what you think

To All Young Americans

The intention of this letter is to not be ageist, many of our older brethren can offer much insight and knowledge that the young cannot comprehend until the experience of life teaches us the lessons that the older generation knows. I write this note with the intention to reach out to Americans under 35 because other people of our generation across the globe are creating change. And for some time in America, us of the younger generation have let America dictate to us about what we want, desire and need.

Now to be fair there are many young Americans breaking through with technology and creating revolutionary forces that have changed society. Facebook and Google to name a couple. Let's not forget the countless artists and writers that are pushing the limits of what we expect from music and the written word. What I am appealing to, is the economic and cultural alignment that has been consolidated under the past generation. American children and youngsters are now drilled to think that our prosperity is indefinitely linked solely to financial and material gain. That anything that stands in the way of an individual's ability to gain massive material and financial wealth is anti-democratic. From the moment we are born, we are now inundated with commercial ideas of happiness. In the past 30 years we have grown up with this message and it has only become more intense. And what has this left us with? Jobs that are no longer there. Most of our products are made in another country and the wealth generated by those savings have not been passed down to us. A real estate market that has crashed, a public education system that does not educate the masses, an attack on the retirement systems that were setup as fail safes. A healthcare system that does not work for the young or old, an environment that is in the process of being destroyed by the greed that is fed to us from the moment of conception.

I write this letter to appeal to the young American and say another world is possible. Our brothers and sisters in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, China and other places across the world are standing up to the undemocratic autocracies in their land. We, in America are blessed with a document that ingrains democracy into the fabric of this nation. But must make it so that this democracy is not just about having the freedom to choose what type of shoes we can buy or where we can purchase the next automobile but it is has to be about having control of the destiny of our future and a voice in the direction of our country.

The banks, corporations, and other large industrialists and capitalists are leveraging our's and our children's future for today's gain. And it seems that most in the Baby boom generation seem to be more about their present than our future.

You may ask yourself what can you do? How can we stand up to this force that is seems overpowering? I ask each of you, what type of world do you want to live in? What type of world do you want your children to grow up in? Now many in the world are working on trying to change this moment and many in our generation are working on different pieces of the masterpiece we want our future to be. Some of those are; the buy local movement, the labor movement, the social justice movement, the women's movement, etc. There is energy out there, but it is time for our generation to break down the silos and individuals and create a new progressive movement. It is time to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, and challenge the status quo. Let's use the tools of today to create a better tomorrow. We have to, the responsibility is ours.