Youth Vote gets props, street cred after bagging first election.

Originally published on Future Majority, 12/24/06.

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The day after the '06 elections, I told y'all that we would reap the benefits of our hard work- that if young voters became difference-makers in this election, politicians would start legislating on our issues- raising minimum wage, helping kids pay for college-

Well, we turned out, and now we're starting to enter into the next phase of our narrative. The media is starting to sing our praise.

In November and December alone, there have been hundreds of articles about young voters and our impact in 2006, most notably:

• Mtv
  
• Salon.com
  
• Washington Post
  
• Reuters
  
• Daily Kos
  
• MyDD
  
• USAToday
  

...and many, many more. Organizations such as Circle and Young Voter Strategies are backing up these stories with the hard numbers and legitimizing youth outreach in the eyes of political strategists.

By 2008, politicians will be woo-ing us in hopes of getting our votes in the next election. The the 18-29 "Millennial" generation is beginning its ascent to power, and about 20 years earlier than expected.

Take a look at this graph from William Strauss' power point presentation on the Millennial generation.



When Strauss talks about power, he's talking about Political Power. You can see that every generation has a lifespan of about 20 years in power, and that the Millennials ascent into power isn't supposed to begin until the 2030s, all things being equal.

But all things aren't equal. Generation X, our immediate predecessors, made their name by being apolitical, apathetic and disengaged. Gen X is also the smallest living generation.

What does that mean? When a generation is very small, and of that small number of people, many refuse to participate, there becomes a power vacuum.

The Millennial Generation, you and me and all our peers, are filling that vacuum. Whether or not this is a chicken/egg scenario is irrelevant. We are early bloomers in political power, and because of this, we will reap the benefits of our hard work well into the future.

What we accomplish now is barely even the beginning. Between our huge numbers, our strong community ties and our positive outlook, our generation has within itself the potential to completely reshape the country within our lifetimes.

All we need is the vision.