Millennials: Making a Difference in the Status Quo

 

This is my family. Loving them is no problem, but you may be in the same boat with me as I try to understand them.It's easy to see that there is a huge difference between those between 18-33 years old and their elders. As a bonafide member of the Baby Boomers, I'm amazed when I look back at all my generation faced, while standing in awe of the emerging world of Millennials (born 1980-2000). Changes in the demographics of the country, the wealth and income gap between the upper one percent and the declining middle class, and issues of poverty and unemployment-these are but of few of the problems facing our youngest adults. When you realize that the country's future is in their hands, it is vitally important to have a clear vision into their values, beliefs, and world view. Recent Pew Research Study reports give us some vital information on how Millennials polled on a variety of subjects.

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Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP)

Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) was a political party formed in 1964 as an alternative to the dominantly white and conservative Democratic Party of Mississippi. After President Lyndon B. Johnson formed a coalition between liberal Democrats and liberal and moderate Republicans to address issues of concern to African Americans, conservative Southern Democrats openly encouraged their members to vote for the 1964 Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, who opposed civil rights legislation.


In response, African American Mississippians formed the MFDP as an alternative group that would represent their interests at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. With the support of Martin Luther King, Jr., the MFDP nominated three African American women—Fannie Lou Hamer (one of the cofounders of the party) and civil rights activists Annie Devine and Victoria Gray—to run against the traditional Democrats in the state’s 1964 congressional elections.

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"We had sneakers...they had guns": Freedom Summer-Fifty Years Ago



In June 1964, the Mississippi Summer Project  was launched to attempt to register African Americans in Mississippi, which historically excluded most blacks from voting. 

Southern states had effectively disfranchised most African Americans and many poor whites in the period from 1890 to 1910 by passing state constitutions, amendments and other laws that imposed burdens on voter registration: charging poll taxes, requiring literacy tests administered subjectively by white registrars, making residency requirements more difficult, as well as record keeping to document required items. They maintained this exclusion from politics into the 1960s.

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Can Partisan Politics and Political Polarization Affect Your Life? The Answer May Surprise You.

It’s no secret that “Republicans and Democrats are more divided along ideological lines – and partisan aversion is deeper and more extensive – than at any point in the last two decades.” A recent Pew Research Center survey of 10,000 adults nationwide finds that these divisions are greatest among those who are the most engaged and active in the political process. Would you be surprised to learn that these trends manifest themselves in a variety of ways, both in politics and in our everyday lives.

 

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Finally, Justice for the "Central Park Five"

The $250 million lawsuit was filed more than a decade ago on behalf of five black and Hispanic defendants convicted in 1990 of raping and beating a white woman jogging in the park a year earlier.

 Each served six to 13 years in prison. Their convictions were tossed in 2002 after evidence emerged linking someone else to the crime.

New York City has agreed to a $40 million settlement in a civil rights lawsuit filed against police and prosecutors by the five men exonerated in the 1989 Central Park jogger attack, a city official said Friday.

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