Will young voters deliver for Kerry? (continued)

SUCH ENTREATIES notwithstanding, young people have opted out of the political system in increasing numbers ever since one of the sharpest contradictions of the Vietnam War — how those under 21 could fight and die for their country, but not have a voice in choosing its leaders — delivered the vote to 18 year olds. As Brown’s Darrell West says, "The Vietnam War made politics central to the lives of young people in the 1970s. They could be drafted and they could be sent to Vietnam, so they had a very personal stake in political decisions."

Even before 1972, though, younger Americans voted at lower rates because voting is something of an acquired habit, says Harvard’s Thomas Patterson, and young people tend to be more transient, less rooted, and otherwise less engaged with the civic life of a community. "It’s just a period in the life cycle when there’s more me-centeredness than we-centeredness," Patterson says. "It was as true in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s as it is today."

Meanwhile, two more contemporary factors — the absence of a defining global paradigm between the end of the Cold War and 9/11, and the fragmentation of the media, with the proliferation of such nontraditional sources as cable television and the Internet — exacerbated the lack of voting participation by young people. As Patterson notes, the relative peace and prosperity through much of the ’90s did little to draw people into the public arena. It also used to be the case that many young people, before they reached voting age, would develop a news habit that fostered an interest in politics. But the tendency of fewer young people to read newspapers, as well as the blurring of news and entertainment, has resulted in a situation, Patterson says, where only about 20 to 25 percent of young people have a news habit. "If you don’t have a news habit," he says, "you’re not likely to get a well-honed political interest."

At the University of Rhode Island, Tom Angell, a senior active with Students for a Sensible Drug Policy, is more of a political animal than the typical college student. "I definitely think there will be an increase in the number of young people voting," in large part because of Iraq, he says. "It definitely particularly affects young people. Those in harm’s way are college-age people. It personally gives me pause to stop and think about what our country’s policies are doing to our young people. I know a lot of other young people feel the same way."

Still, even though college students and the affluent are more likely to vote, Providence Councilman David Segal recalls encountering something of a cold shoulder from a surprising number of Brown students and East Siders when he campaigned in 2002, "because it’s a principle of their’s not to vote. They believe that voting is not worth a damn. They think it’s contributing to some system that’s already forsaken them." Although not without some sympathy for such views, Segal — who went on to win a four-way race by about 280 votes — tried to convince these cynics that each vote was important.

It remains far more difficult to make this case to low-income youth, including those who wind up at the Rhode Island Training School. "Frankly, I don’t find any sense of hope from these kids in terms of the system in general," says AS220’s artistic director Bert Crenca, who works with young people at the juvenile correctional facility. Whether it’s George W. Bush or John Kerry, "I don’t think that there’s much change that come out of it for them in the end." Even at youth poetry slams, "Very little of the material that I hear talks about creating change within the system," Crenca says. "I don’t hear it from them. I hear them talk about the system as if it’s something they’re very apart from, and I don’t know that it has changed in years. In some ways, I think young people are even more disenfranchised," because of the widening gap between rich and poor.

The disparity between who votes and who doesn’t explains why politicians spend so much time talking about Social Security, Medicare, prescription drugs, and catering to the middle class, rather than taking up the concerns of young people and the working class. As Brown’s Darrell West says, "The problem for people who don’t vote is that nobody pays attention to their issues . . . Politicians just don’t take young people as seriously because there’s no penalty for ignoring their issues."

This profound lack of political disengagement looms large for young political activists like 27-year-old Matthew Jerzyk, currently an organizer with the New England Health Care Employees Union, District 1199’s effort to have home-based day-care workers recognized as state employees. "I think the growing separation between the American electorate and the American people is by far the greatest condemnation of the failure of democracy than anything else you can point to," he says.

Certainly, non-voters deserve a share of the blame, but Jerzyk takes it a step farther. "A political system that produces indifference isn’t a healthy system," he says. "Before they turn 18 and after they turn 18, why aren’t we engaging young people, teaching them to vote? That seems very basic. Instead, they turn 18, and the draft card comes in the mail. We’re ready to put them on the frontlines of war, but are we giving them the tools to participate in democracy?"

With a little more than five months until the November presidential election, a variety of efforts are trying to do just that. The question now is, will these efforts bring more young people to the ballot box, and if so, to what effect?