I HEAR YOU. As a mother of four millennials who have campaigned and voted for Senator Bernie Sanders since the 2016 presidential election, I feel your pain and understand your worries for your future.
The facts have been so excruciatingly painful in the past decade as you transition to adulthood and have to take care of yourselves. It just hit you that the America that had raised your Boomer parents has now turned out to be so different from the America where you are working so hard to survive in right now.
Whatever happened to the American dream — the ideal by which equality of opportunity is available to any American, allowing the highest aspirations and goals to be achieved?
You worry about your chance of finishing your bachelor’s degree, or the opportunity to go to graduate school. Quality affordable higher education has given your Boomer parents the chance to go up the economic ladder even if they were born to a low-income or middle-class family. Now, most of you would have to contract student loans to afford the astronomical rise in the cost of tuition and attendance fees.
You worry about your student loan debt in the tens of thousand, if not in the hundreds of thousand dollar range, that would take you decades to pay off, while banks have increasingly been more powerful and unbridled in their loan shark business practices, condoned by the government in the name of “free market economy.”
You worry about having to take on a job, or two jobs just to pay for your bills, cover the living expenses of going to college. Even after graduation, you worry about having less purchasing power because the decent wages that your boomer parents enjoyed in the past are now gone.
While the government boasts of low unemployment rate, a $7/hour minimum wage that has not coped up with the higher costs of living is not a living wage, and has not been so for 10 years. This reality is contrasted by the millions of dollars in bonuses raked in by the CEOs of corporations even when their companies go bankrupt. Again, this is protected by the government in the name of “free market economy.”
You worry about your health and are afraid that you are jus one accident or medical diagnosis away from bankruptcy. Prices of premiums have skyrocketed and would have to take a much bigger share from your already lean income.
What happens when you turn 26 after the Affordable Care Act kicks you out of your parents’ health plan? How can you afford to give your own family health care coverage when you are struggling to have your self covered as employers fight hard to cover just the barest minimum for you to lower their cost and maximize their profits?
What happens to you when you are hit by a pandemic like the coronavirus and are asked to self-quarantine? How do you pay for the expensive tests? How do you pay for your family’s bills when you cannot work? How do you pay for your treatment when your insurance coverage doesn’t give you enough coverage?
You worry about the taxes you have to pay every year to Uncle Sam, even as the quality social services accorded to you by the government get leaner and leaner every year. You wonder why you, as part of the middle class, pay for so much taxes as millionaires and billionaires pay less commensurate to the wealth they are amassing from the economy you help build? You wonder why corporations are given corporate welfare and pay zero taxes as you struggle to pay for the basic needs of your family?
You worry about racial biases and discrimination being persons of color, a sad reality in America that has escalated even more during the present administration.
You worry about how carbon emissions have been threatening our planet earth and the life of your family and the future generation, and yet the government has not been doing enough to fight against climate change, and even deny the facts and science of it to protect the interests of the fossil fuel industry.
YES, you worry about these realities and you have lost faith in the ideals of the American dream because you feel betrayed. You have witnessed how politicians do not really represent the interest of ordinary hardworking Americans like you, and have election cycle after election cycle failed to deliver on their campaign promises.
This is until Senator Bernie Sanders ran for president in 2016. You got to know about his vision for America and how he has been fighting for this for decades since he was a young adult like you.
You found out how Sanders marched with Dr. Martin Luther King to fight against racial discrimination, and for the protection of civil rights, justice and protection for all Americans.
Sanders has been fighting for an America where health care is a right for all Americans, and not just for the privileged powerful few by proposing to create a Medicare for All, just like how it is in all other major industrialized nations in the world. He has introduced a proposal to eliminate past-due medical debt. He also proposed measures to guarantee housing as a human right and to eliminate homelessness.
Sanders has been fighting for free public college education and wants to cancel all student loan debt, and place a cap on student loan interest rate going forward at 1.88%. He has proposed to guarantee universal child care and preschool for families in need and to reinvest in public education.
Sanders has been fighting to empower workers by strengthening labor laws and regulations so that each worker will get the fair and equitable living wages and benefits.
Sanders has been fighting to expand social security and to protect the most vulnerable sectors of society.
Sanders has been fighting to protect the environment by transforming our energy system away from fossil fuel and toward energy efficiency and renewable energy.
He has been proposing to pay for all of these by making the millionaire and billionaire people and corporations pay their fair share in taxes, establishing an income inequality tax and wealth tax, and make the fossil fuel industry pay for their pollution.
THESE ARE WHY the powerful corporate elites have been fighting against a Sanders presidency. This is why Sanders does not accept hefty campaign contributions from Wall Street, Super PAC, millionaires and billionaires so that he will not be beholden to anyone but only to the American people.
For many Boomers like your parents and grandparents, Sanders’ vision for America may be too radical, too extreme. This is just how corporate lobbyists have been framing Sanders’ vision to tap into that fear of change, just like how Social Security and Medicare that our Boomers are now enjoying had been fiercely fought against in the past.
Millennials, you have been marginalized and mocked for being loud and fierce supporters of Sanders who did not show up in the polls to vote for your candidate last Super Tuesday that gave former Vice President Joe Biden the momentum moving forward. Again, do not give in to these labels and intimidation to dishearten you and make you stay home and out of the game.
The Boomers have all to lose, having already established their life and fortunes, that is why they are more cautious and are more leaning to protect and perpetuate the status quo, fighting against “radical” changes, clinging to the same old model they have grown accustomed to, no matter how imperfect.
This is why for many of them, Biden is the safe choice. Centrist is the safe choice. Moderate is the safe choice. This is exactly the position and the message of the Democratic Party, that is why the other centrist, moderate, safe candidates dropped out of the race to rally their support for Biden.
But changes in history have not been driven by those who want to play it safe. It is propelled by the youth, fueled by their dreams and idealism, lifted by their fearlessness and hunger.
The students spearheaded the French Revolution and ended the reign of abusive monarchs. The Filipino youth of the 70s to the 80s fought against the Marcos dictatorship through a peaceful and bloodless revolution.
Millennials, this is your time. You have the numbers to write the next chapter of our history. You have the power to transform America and make it live up to its ideals.
But history is written by those who show up and vote. Millennials, this is your revolution. Fight it to win it by getting out of your comfort zone, by going to the polls, by voting for Bernie Sanders to be the Democratic nominee who will defeat Trump. Fight it by empowering others to vote. Your future depends on it.
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Gel Santos Relos has been in news, talk, public service and educational broadcasting since 1989 with ABS-CBN and is now serving the Filipino audience using different platforms, including digital broadcasting, and print, and is working on a new public service program for the community. You may contact her through email at [email protected], or send her a message via Facebook at Facebook.com/Gel.Santos.Relos.
