Change. Whether it’s Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton or John McCain “change” has been a buzzword this election season. But, like all buzzwords, it is slippery and elusive. Obama’s “Change we can believe in” means something entirely different than the now fallen Huckabee’s “Change the constitution,” which in turn differs from McCain’s own version of “the kind of change we need right now.” Across the country, citizens have been rallying behind the belief that something different—and presumably better— lies on the horizon. Exactly what everyone is hoping for remains difficult to pin down.
One thing is for sure. One of the changes this election cycle has seen is the enormous surge in youth involvement. Young people are coming out in droves, canvassing, discussing, and more than doubling voter turnout in the primaries and caucuses. But why? What is it about this election that has young people like me so excited? “Change” means so many things. Are, the hopes of the little girl who goes to a crumbling school in Dillon really the same as the dreams of the boy who learns on the streets of L.A, as Barack Obama says?
Who better to examine this question than a young person with time on his hands? As a recent graduate from Brandeis University, I have just that kind of time. Who better to talk to young voters than another young voter? (Have you seen CNN try and profile the young people? It’s like a 70 year-old white-suit-clad Tom Wolfe trying to fit in at college parties for his book I Am Charlotte Simmons.) For these reasons, I have decided to hit the road and document what my fellow young voters are doing and thinking in regard to this election.
Across the country I will frequent bars, talk to people staying in hostels, attend small-town campaign headquarters, seek out house parties, hang out with camp counselors, and mow lawns with landscapers. Really, this is just a good excuse to take that road trip I have always dreamt about, but I also plan to learn a few things along the way.
As I travel, I plan to combine new and old media. Not only will I be keeping this blog (some of which will be syndicated on The Huffington Post), but I will be freelancing for as many small town newspapers as I can. I will profile children of immigrants, of bankers, of farmers, of former hippies and Reaganites. I’ll drive the blue and red highways, in search of my generation—this “New Greatest Generation” as Robert Putnam (author of Bowling Alone and Harvard Professor) called us (thanks!).
By the end of my trip I will be completely broke and the owner of a defunct car, but also hope to have provided a window (however small it may be) into a diverse youth culture that has become a true driving force in the country’s political direction.
“The Great Divide is where the two sides of the country separate, but it is also where they meet,” Greil Marcus writes in his book Mystery Train.
As Marcus would say: This trip and those who follow are meant to cross not only the continental divide that bisects the country, but the divide between Republicans and Democrats, men and women, North and South, young people and the press, and—by freelancing at small town papers along the way— print and digital media. In the next four months, I hope to see just how great these divides really are.
