While the next civic ethos consensus will eventually impact many aspects of public policy, we are already witnessing the emergence of a new common
ground in one previously contentious area — social issues. For at least 50 years, such questions have sharply divided the country and served as an effective campaign wedge, especially for conservative politicians. But all of this is changing.

The millennial generation’s strong beliefs in inclusion and equality are remaking America from the bottom up into one of the most tolerant and egalitarian nations in the world. This transformation is occurring across a range of specific concerns:

1. Immigration. Millennials are America’s most ethnically diverse generation. Four in 10 millennials are nonwhite and one in five has an immigrant parent. This makes the need to bring undocumented immigrants into the mainstream of American life not just a political imperative for those seeking to attract millennial and minority votes, but critical in connecting with millennials emotionally. Large majorities of millennials believe that immigrants strengthen American society (64%) and help the U.S. with their hard work and talent (59%). Seventy-eight percent of the generation say that people who came to the United States “illegally” should be allowed to say. Across all of these specific issues, millennial support for immigration is significantly higher than that of all older generations.

2. Gay rights.  Between 2001 and 2013, Americans moved from being opposed to gay marriage by a margin of 57% to 35% to support for it by 49% to 44%. While all generations have become more tolerant on this issue, it is the arrival of the millennial generation that has driven this remarkable change, one that the Pew Research Center calls the “largest change in opinion on any policy issue” during the past decade. Pew attributes most of the increase to millennials, 70% of whom now favor gay marriage. Already about a dozen states have legalized gay marriage, with more states and even the federal government likely to follow suit within the coming decade.

3. Marijuana. Two-thirds of millennials (64%) now support legalizing marijuana, forming the basis for a national majority on this issue for the first time ever. Just as in the 1930s when the rising clout of the GI or Greatest Generation spurred the repeal of Prohibition, the emergence of another civic-oriented generation, millennials, will lead to a lessening of penalties and community disapproval for the purchase and use of a previously banned substance in the years ahead. What many Baby Boomers dreamed of doing about marijuana back in the 20th century, millennials will accomplish in the 21st.

In several decades as millennials reflect on their achievements as teens and young adults, they will realize that by creating a new civic ethos, they helped the United States finally resolve and put to rest controversies over social issues that had divided the country since the 1960s. The result will be an America more open, tolerant, and inclusive than ever before. Because millennials love their parents, they will likely forgive them for the time and energy spent endlessly arguing about matters such as immigration, gay rights, and marijuana, even as millennials wonder what all of the shouting was about in the first place.

Originally published 
 at PolicyMic

Baz Luhrmann’s 3D interpretation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s iconic novel about the Jazz Age has critics raving about its visual effects and its capture of the cultural zeitgeist of the Roaring 20s. Many critics however have suggested that he jumped the shark by adding rap music from Jay-Z, Will.I.Am, and others to the movie’s musical score. But for those who know their generational history, the linkage is not only appropriate, but right on key.

F. Scott Fitzgerald was the poet laureate for what Gertrude Stein named the “Lost Generation,” born in the twenty years before the turn of the 20th century. Entering young adulthood, members of the generation were awestruck by the changes the industrial revolution had wrought in America and eager to find a new path to success in the affluence of the Roaring 20s. The Lost Generation’s music was jazz — considered a dangerous new genre by many older Americans. Born in the bordellos of New Orleans, Jazz and its emblematic dance, the Charleston, encouraged its fans, dressed in daring new colors and styles, to lose their inhibitions in the energy of its syncopated rhythms. The orgiastic parties in Luhrmann’s new film captures this sense of a country gone wild with new riches, searching for a new morality to match more modern times.

The parallels to today’s Generation X are obvious, and not entirely coincidental. Born between 1965 and 1982, this small, frequently criticized generation rejected contemporary mores and unleashed a torrent of economic and personal risk-taking. Whether it was the celebration of Wall Street greed in the 1980s or the dot.com boom of the 1990s, Gen-X’ers saw new opportunities to make money without sacrificing their lives to the drudgery of corporate life. Their music was rap — another supposedly dangerous new genre, born in the urban ghetto, filled with misogynist and sadistic lyrics sung to a pounding rhythm that created a new global culture built around its hip hop beat and its unique style of dress.

It is hardly surprising then, that when Jay-Z was asked to score the soundtrack for The Great Gatsby, he immediately saw the connection between his own life and that of the novel’s central character. Jay-Z agreed to be the executive producer of the soundtrack, telling Luhrmann, “The thing about this story is that it’s not a question of how Gatsby made his money, it’s is he a good person or not? … And all these characters, do they have a moral compass?”

Reaching back into history, the creators of the new movie saw the similarity between the Lost Generation and Generation X, both of which rejected society’s strictures and boldly pursued a hedonistic, personalized path to the future. F. Scott Fitzgerald ends his novel with the immortal line, “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” But the past also contains another lesson for the cohorts born in the wake of such nihilistic generations.

Most of America’s GI Generation, called its greatest generation by Tom Brokaw, only felt the riches of the Roaring 20s during their childhood. They came of age in the poverty of the Great Depression and the terror of World War II. Yet they conquered both, went on to live happy, middle class, conformist lives and built most of the corporate and governmental institutions that we live with today.

Like their GI generation counterparts, millennials, born 1982-2003, have found themselves trying to find jobs after entering the workforce in the middle of another economic downturn, the Great Recession. The young lives of millennials were shaped by the terror of 9/11, shootings at schools and movie multiplexes, and bombings at marathons. Yet millennials remain the most optimistic, upbeat generation in America today, confident of their ability to work together to change the world for the better.

When the green light from Gatsby’s dock fades from view as Luhrmann’s film ends, audiences need to remember that thanks to generations like 20th Century GIs and 21st Century millennials, the country’s future is bound to be bright once again.

Originally published
at  PolicyMic

Reflecting their overall attitudes about spending their hard-to-come-by money, Millennials look more for value than “pizzazz” in a new home. Seventy-seven percent told BHGRE they preferred an “essential” home over a “luxury” model. And more than half (56%) believe the technological capabilities of a house are more important than its “curb appeal.”

Millennials are known for their fascination with technology. The BHGRE survey demonstrates that tendency in reference to their home buying decisions. Almost two-thirds (64%) would not want to live in a home that wasn’t “tech-friendly.” Not surprisingly, almost half (44%) focus on the technological sophistication of the family room rather than other rooms in the house in making that determination. In fact, almost as many (43%) would rather turn their living room into a home theater with a big screen TV than use it in more traditional ways. Even in the kitchen, a solid majority (59%) would rather have a television screen than a second oven (41%).

Another constant concern of Millennials, security, is also reflected in their technology preferences. Almost half (48%) named a security system as one of the technological essentials in a home and about a quarter (28%) would like to be able to control such a system from their smart phone.

In addition, befitting the generation that first popularized social media sites such as MySpace and Facebook, most Millennials want a house that can be customized to their individual preferences. Forty-three percent want their home to be less a “cookie cutter” offering and more capable of allowing them to put their own finishing touches on it. Almost one-third (30%) would prefer a “fixer upper” to a “move-in-ready” home, and seventy-two percent of those surveyed thought they were at least as capable of making those repairs as their parents. Almost all (82%) of this supposedly “entitled” generation say they would find a way to handle the cost of these repairs themselves rather than borrowing the money from Mom or Dad.

Millennials also take their concern for the environment into account when choosing a home. Almost half (45%) don’t want a home that wastes energy. Reflecting this, an energy efficient washer and dryer topped their essential technology wish list (57%). A smart thermostat was important to 44% of those surveyed, placing it third on the list of Millennial housing essentials.

These preferences aren’t the only reason that Millennial homes will reduce the nation’s carbon footprint in coming years. Millennials see their home as a place to “do work,” not just a place to return to “after work.” Already one in five Millennials say that “home office” is the best way to describe how they use their dining room. The generation’s blurring of gender roles as well as its facility in using digital technologies means that Millennials will likely work as much from home as “at work,” as they share child rearing responsibilities based upon whose work responsibilities require which partner to be away from the house during the day.

The cumulative impact on America’s energy consumption from this shift could be dramatic. A study by Global Workplace Analytics suggested that, if half of American worked from home, it would reduce carbon emissions by over 51 million metric tons a year—the equivalent of taking all of greater New York’s commuters off the road. Eliminating traffic jams would save almost 3 billion gallons of gas a year and cut greenhouse gas emissions by another 26 million tons. Additional carbon footprint savings would come from reduced office energy consumption, roadway repairs, urban heating, office construction, and business travel.

By the end of this decade the Millennial generation will comprise more than one out of every three adult Americans (36%). Just as the Baby Boomers influenced the housing market when they started buying homes and raising families, the Millennial generation’s overwhelming size will place an indelible stamp on the nation’s housing market. Its numbers will produce a boom in demand for housing that will help heal this critical sector of the nation’s economy.

This may effect boomers and other old generations. Every seller of houses will have to adjust their offerings to accommodate Millennial preferences for the type of home in which they want to raise a family. The end result will be more family friendly neighborhoods where homes serve as the hub for their owner’s economic activity, simultaneously lowering the nation’s carbon footprint and improving the civic health of its communities.

. This follows as their media and political preferences have helped shape how we entertain ourselves and who is the president of the United States.   A 2012 survey indicated that seventy percent of Millennials would prefer to own a home in the suburbs if they can “afford it and maintain their lifestyle.” Now a new survey of 1000 18-35 year olds conducted for Better Homes and Garden Real Estate (BHGRE) by Wakefield Research provides a much more detailed picture of the type of home Millennials believe best fits their needs and desires.

Reflecting their overall attitudes about spending their hard-to-come-by money, Millennials look more for value than “pizzazz” in a new home. Seventy-seven percent told BHGRE they preferred an “essential” home over a “luxury” model. And more than half (56%) believe the technological capabilities of a house are more important than its “curb appeal.”

Millennials are known for their fascination with technology.  The BHGRE survey demonstrates that tendency in reference to their home buying decisions. Almost two-thirds (64%) would not want to live in a home that wasn’t “tech-friendly.” Not surprisingly, almost half (44%) focus on the technological sophistication of the family room rather than other rooms in the house in making that determination. In fact, almost as many (43%) would rather turn their living room into a home theater with a big screen TV than use it in more traditional ways. Even in the kitchen, a solid majority (59%) would rather have a television screen than a second oven (41%).

Another constant concern of Millennials, security, is also reflected in their technology preferences. Almost half (48%) named a security system as one of the technological essentials in a home and about a quarter (28%) would like to be able to control such a system from their smart phone.

In addition, befitting the generation that first popularized social media sites such as MySpace and Facebook, most Millennials want a house that can be customized to their individual preferences. Forty-three percent want their home to be less a “cookie cutter” offering and more capable of allowing them to put their own finishing touches on it. Almost one-third (30%) would prefer a “fixer upper” to a “move-in-ready” home, and seventy-two percent of those surveyed thought they were at least as capable of making those repairs as their parents. Almost all (82%) of this supposedly “entitled” generation say they would find a way to handle the cost of these repairs themselves rather than borrowing the money from Mom or Dad.

Millennials also take their concern for the environment into account when choosing a home. Almost half (45%) don’t want a home that wastes energy. Reflecting this, an energy efficient washer and dryer topped their essential technology wish list (57%). A smart thermostat was important to 44% of those surveyed, placing it third on the list of Millennial housing essentials.

These preferences aren’t the only reason that Millennial homes will reduce the nation’s carbon footprint in coming years. Millennials see their home as a place to “do work,” not just a place to return to “after work.” Already one in five Millennials say that “home office” is the best way to describe how they use their dining room. The generation’s blurring of gender roles as well as its facility in using digital technologies means that Millennials will likely work as much from home as “at work,” as they share child rearing responsibilities based upon whose work responsibilities require which partner to be away from the house during the day.

The cumulative impact on America’s energy consumption from this shift could be dramatic. A study by Global Workplace Analytics suggested that, if half of American worked from home, it would reduce carbon emissions by over 51 million metric tons a year—the equivalent of taking all of greater New York’s commuters off the road. Eliminating traffic jams would save almost 3 billion gallons of gas a year and cut greenhouse gas emissions by another 26 million tons. Additional carbon footprint savings would come from reduced office energy consumption, roadway repairs, urban heating, office construction, and business travel.

By the end of this decade the Millennial generation will comprise more than one out of every three adult Americans (36%). Just as the Baby Boomers influenced the housing market when they started buying homes and raising families, the Millennial generation’s overwhelming size will place an indelible stamp on the nation’s housing market. Its numbers will produce a boom in demand for housing that will help heal this critical sector of the nation’s economy.

This may affect boomers and other old generations. Every seller of houses will have to adjust their offerings to accommodate Millennial preferences for the type of home in which they want to raise a family. The end result will be more family friendly neighborhoods where homes serve as the hub for their owner’s economic activity, simultaneously lowering the nation’s  carbon footprint and improving  the civic health of its communities.

A remarkable, but mostly unnoticed, 2012 study found a powerful correlation between a community’s civic health and its economic well being. The analysis by the National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC) and its partners found that the density of non-profits whose purpose was to encourage their members’ participation within the community  correlated strongly with the ability of a locality to withstand the effects of the Great Recession. The same analysis revealed that those municipalities having the greatest amount of “social cohesion,” defined as “interacting frequently with friends, family members, and neighbors,” also showed greater resilience in ameliorating job losses during economic downturns, independent of the density of their non-profit sector.

The numbers are startling. States with high social cohesion had unemployment rates two percentage points lower than their less connected counterparts, even controlling for demographics and economic factors. A county with just one additional nonprofit per 1,000 people in 2005 had half a percentage point less unemployment in 2009. And for individuals who held jobs in 2008, the odds of becoming unemployed were cut in half if they lived in a community with many nonprofit organizations rather than one with only a few, even if  the two communities were otherwise similar. Given these results, every community interested in improving its economic vitality should be devising strategies to increase the civic health of their locality.

One way to accomplish this goal is to attract members of the hyper-connected but locally-focused Millennial Generation (born 1982-2003).  People in their thirties—a group Millennials are just entering but will soon dominate—and early forties, the age when people are building families and careers, constitute the essential social ballast for any community, city or suburb. For the rest of this decade as well as the next, Millennials will comprise the cohort entering this key phase of life, contributing both economic stimulus and a new sense of community wherever they choose to live. Fortuitously, the same organization (NCoC) that produced the original report has just released a new study suggesting several strategies cities could use to attract America’s most community-oriented generation.

According to this year’s study, more densely populated communities face a major challenge in attracting civic-oriented Millennials. This is contrary to much of the conventional wisdom about both millennials and “community.”  It found that members of the generation who reside in denser urban communities are less likely to engage in the type of service activities that nonprofits are designed to encourage. Except in the South, Millennials living in suburbia or more rural settings were more likely to engage in service activities with their peers than their urban counterparts. In fact, the worst community participation rates by far were found among Millennials in the country’s Northeastern cities.

A recent analysis by demographer Wendell Cox of Millennial living patterns validated these findings. He found that those major metropolitan areas with the least density gained the lion’s share of increases in populations of 25 to 34-year-olds in the first decade of this century. Another, as yet unpublished study by Cox, has found that the same holds true for 20 to 24-year-olds.

To fix that problem and increase their economic resiliency, more densely populated communities should actively encourage the formation of military veteran’s groups and other nonprofits that foster citizen participation and leadership skills. Other types of nonprofits that the earlier NCoC study suggested would help improve a city’s civic and economic vitality are sports clubs, labor unions and those that offer job-training opportunities. By providing such nonprofits with the space and resources to attract and engage America’s largest and most diverse generation, communities can gain the economic benefits that service organizations, such as Kiwanis and the Elks, brought to their communities in the past.
A recent review of the seven best cities for Millennials to obtain an initial foothold for their economic future placed greater Seattle at the top of the list. It was followed by Dallas; Minneapolis; Athens, Georgia; Ithaca, New York; Oklahoma City; and Phoenix.  Most of these communities combine relatively lower levels of density with lower rates of unemployment making them especially attractive to Millennials.

One way for denser urban centers to compete with such localities is to gain a broad mix of educational attainment among their younger populations, thereby increasing their social cohesion and, ultimately, economic resiliency. This is because Millennials without a high school diploma are least likely to trust their neighbors but most likely to help those very same neighbors on a regular basis. Meanwhile, Millennials who attend college become more trusting of their neighbors wherever they end up settling, but less likely to help them out. In order to build both a trusting community and one where friends and neighbors help each other out, communities need to provide a broad range of jobs requiring various levels of education and encourage Millennials to stay in the place where they grew up or return there upon graduation.

Communities interested in enhancing their social cohesion should take a close look at the example set by the civic leaders of Kalamazoo, Michigan. Under its Kalamazoo Promise program, families that enroll their children in the local school district get help with college tuition on a sliding scale based on how many grades of education the child completes in the city’s schools. The strategy, which has led to greater demand for housing within the school district’s boundaries as well, encourages the development of a community with a wide range of educational success among its residents.

The most recent study also found that once Millennials complete their schooling and begin to settle down their civic engagement increases. In fact, those 29 and under who are married and have children are more likely than those over thirty who do not have a family to participate in activities, such as helping neighbors, that in turn lead to greater social cohesion.

One strategy for encouraging college educated Millennials to settle in the community where they grew up, may lie with making the cost of college locally more affordable. For example, in contrast to many states that are shortsightedly reducing their subsidies of in state tuition, North Dakota issuing some of its increased tax revenue from the state’s explosion in energy production to limit tuition increases for their residents and increasing the amount of needs-based tuition aid and scholarships for those who decide to attend any college in the state.
Building better communities requires encouraging the human interaction and connectivity that make a municipality more resilient in times of economic difficulty. Building this type of social capital comes naturally to Millennials, the nation’s most connected generation.   Non-profits that attract younger people should be actively encouraged to set up shop in cities and localities across the country. Programs that support educational attainment and employment opportunities for Millennials should be viewed as another essential element of economic strategy.  Today, community’s economic health is inextricably intertwined with the type of civic vitality that local Millennials can generate.

Baby boomers, growing up in what appeared to be the never-ending prosperity of the 1950s and ’60s, were at various times amused, mystified, and infuriated by the economic caution of their GI or Greatest Generation mothers and fathers, often labeling the penny-pinching of their parents “Depression mentality.”

Now, a half-century later, many of those same boomers, perhaps with a greater degree of understanding this time, are watching their own “millennial-generation” offspring (born from 1982 to 2003) develop the same habits of frugality and restraint that the millennials’ great-grandparents did in the 1930s and ’40s. This change in attitude and behavior will impact America’s consumer spending and the way businesses and advertisers will need to approach their customers for decades to come.

The notion that millennials are willing to curb their spending might surprise some who have said the generation is self-centered and entitled, but it shouldn’t. The reasons for millennials’ financial prudence are clear: Like the GI generation, millennials grew up in a time of relative prosperity, only to face a major economic downturn just as they were emerging into adulthood and the workforce.

Throughout the Great Recession that began in 2008, youth unemployment was almost
always nearly double that for the entire adult population. In January, when the nation’s unemployment rate was 7.9 percent, it was above 13 percent for those 16 to 30 years old.
In addition, millennials are not only the most highly educated generation in U.S. history, but also the generation with the most-ever student debt. A 2010 Pew report on America’s generations indicates that a majority (54 percent) of millennials had attended college, the first generation to have done that. Unfortunately, college costs and the loans millennials have assumed to pay those costs have risen sharply as well. In 2011, college seniors graduated with an average loan debt of $26,600, up 5 percent from just a year earlier.
As a February Pew report indicates, factors like these have shaped the consumer and financial behavior of millennials across a range of areas, from where they live, to how they travel and how they spend:

Where Millennials Live

More than a few observers have labeled millennials a generation exhibiting an extreme unwillingness to “launch” into full-fledged adulthood. One major reason for this is the economic pain visited upon the generation by the Great Recession. As many as three in 10 people ages 25-34 reported still living with their parents in 2011, something that might have benefitted both millennials and their parents from an economic and cultural perspective but still stigmatized many in this generation among older adults.

Even when millennials have been able and willing to strike out on their own, they have frequently rented rather than purchased their homes, causing some to label them “Generation Rent,” a designation first used in Great Britain, but one that seems to apply to many young Americans as well. As a result of remaining with their parents or renting, according to Pew, homeownership among 25- to 34-year-olds fell from 38 percent in 2001 and 40 percent in 2007 (years when virtually all in that age range were members of Generation X) to 34 percent in 2010.

This is not likely to be the final word on the subject; a 2010 Pew survey of millennials showed that they ranked homeownership behind only being a good parent and having a good marriage as an important value. But when millennials do move toward homeownership in overwhelming numbers, because of their “recession mentality” they are likely to be more cautious about the size and cost of their home and the type of mortgages to which they commit than previous generations have been.

How Millennials Get Around

As illustrated in the 1973 classic film, American Graffiti, at least since the time that today’s senior citizens were teenagers, obtaining a driver’s license and eventually a car and then cruising the city or hitting the highway has been a romantic rite of passage for young Americans. Millennials have become the first generation since the GI Generation for which this is no longer clearly the case. Between 2001 and 2009, young people reduced their average driving per year from about 10,250 miles to around 7,900 miles, a decline of about 23 percent. Economics is certainly a part of it: According to Pew, 73 percent of households headed by an adult younger than 25 owned or leased a vehicle.

By 2011, that number had fallen to 66 percent. As a result, among the households of those under 35, the percentage with outstanding vehicle debt declined from 44 percent to 32 percent between 2007 and 2010. But financial reasons are not the only ones explaining the decline of the car culture among millennials. Car Connection, a publication focusing on automotive research, points to changes in communication technology (the millennials’ preference for social networking lessens the need for face-to-face contact), location (millennials increasingly living in urban and suburban areas where cars are not as necessary to get around) and “eco-friendliness” (millennials are the most environmentally conscious generation) as reasons why millennials drive less than older generations did when those cohorts were the age that millennials are now.

All of this suggests that in the years ahead auto manufacturers and advertisers will have to focus on the values that millennials will bring with them when they buy cars—a desire for high-tech, environmentally friendly, cost-efficient autos that can be customized to the individual preferences of the owner to the greatest extent possible.

How Millennials Buy

In perhaps no other way have millennials imitated their GI Generation great-grandparents financially more than in their attitude toward accumulating debt (other than the student loans that have been forced upon them just to go to college). Pew research shows that the number of young households carrying a credit-card balance has dropped from 50 percent in 2001 and 48 percent in 2007 to only 39 percent in 2010. During that same period, the average credit-card debt declined from $2,500 to $1,700 among those households. As a result, the debt-to-income ratio (outstanding debt compared to annual income) has fallen from 1.63 in 2007 to 1.46 in 2010 within the households of 25- to 34-year-olds. By contrast, among older households it continued to rise slightly during those years (from 1.08 to 1.22). This suggests that for many millennials conspicuous consumption may be a thing of the past. Members of the generation are likely to carefully plan their consumption, avoiding credit whenever possible, buying only those things they truly believe they need, and seeking the best possible value for the things they do purchase.

John Gerzema and Michael D’Antonio, in their 2010 book, Spend Shift, described how, in the “post crisis” world, consumers would seek products and services that provide both “value and values.”) The millennial generation is driving this change. Businesses and advertisers would be wise to follow where millennials are leading.

The producers of this year’s Oscar show, Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, deserve credit for attempting to overcome the challenges of putting on a show that has to appeal to multiple generations, even if the results were decidedly mixed. By choosing Seth MacFarlane to host the show, the Academy took some risk that his type of snarky humor wouldn’t offend viewers from older generations too much. In the end, MacFarlane managed to skewer every politically correct Boomer shibboleth, potentially costing the Oscars viewers next year should he return. But, in exchange, his reputation and the presence of major millennial stars brought the production major gains among viewers in the key 18-49 year old demographic.

Seth MacFarlane’s sense of humor is grounded in his Generation X sensibilities. Left to fend for themselves while growing up in a time of failing institutions and economic stagnation, X’ers pride themselves on their ability to poke fun at the establishment’s pretenses in order to shock it into paying some attention to their own generation, the most criticized of all of America’s current generations. Whether it was singing about the women in the audience who have exposed their breasts in movies; or having his creation, Ted, insist that Jews control Hollywood; or ending the show with a tribute to Boomer’s worst nightmare, losers; MacFarlane showed off the wit that has made him rich and the attitude that ensures none of his own movies are likely to win an Oscar.

The Academy also had an opportunity to celebrate millennial stars Sunday night, from the precocious Quvenzhané Wallis, born at the end of the generational cohort in 2003, to Anne Hathaway, born at the beginning of the Millennial generation in 1983. The rising star in the millennial firmament today is Jennifer Lawrence who earned her Best Actress Oscar for her leading role in Silver Linings Playbook, a quintessential millennial movie about overcoming family and personal dysfunction with a (spoiler alert) happy ending for doing just OK in a dance contest. Lawrence’s now infamous face plant on the steps up to the stage to accept her award also captured the “not yet ready for full adulthood” nature of her generation. Dressed in a very grownup gown that even attracted the hands of a grandfatherly Dustin Hoffman on the red carpet to properly “flounce” its train, Lawrence couldn’t quite pull off the “look at me, I’m all grown up” act in her moment of triumph. But her unpretentious and self-effacing come back line upon reaching the podium spoke volumes about the refreshingly different attitudes and behavior this generation brings to the Oscar party.

If the Academy embraces millennials’ optimistic, team-oriented spirit, it may find a way to satisfy all the generations in its audience without offending anyone. The Oscars should be a celebration of the movie industry’s ability to entertain America in a way no other medium can. With more films like this year’s crop and a hip host, the Academy might rescue its reputation for unrelenting hostility to the future and win over the hearts and minds of the key demographic it yearns to attract.

Millennials (born 1982-2003) are America’s most civic-oriented generation, since their GI Generation great grandparents. They believe in collective, local, direct action to solve their community’s and the nation’s problems. However, a recent report on the state of Millennials’ civic participation indicates that the generation’s interest in taking part in political activities is constrained by the underlying skepticism of many Millennials about the transparency and fairness of the country’s current political system. To address this problem, the Roosevelt Institute’s Campus Network (RICN) has just issued a set of recommendations on how to create “Government By and For Millennial America,” that should serve as a roadmap for anyone interested in increasing the civic health of America’s largest and most diverse generation.

In its most recent report on the civic health of adult Millennials, the National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC), in partnership with CIRCLE, Mobilize.org and Harvard’s Institute of Politics(IOP), pointed out that Millennials’ volunteering and community service rates are much higher than that of their parents when they were in their twenties. Not surprisingly, they also lead the country in using social media to advance their participation in civic life. But when it came to voting, only half of Millennials eligible to vote did so in 2012 — a rate not much different than for 18-29 year olds in the ’70s and ’80s. Even though Millennials slightly increased their share of the overall electorate last year as compared with 2008 and provided President Obama with the margin he needed to win re-election, many members of the generation remain unconvinced that government understands and cares about them.

In an IOP survey of 18-29 year olds taken before the 2012 election, 43 percent of those whose responses suggested they were unlikely to vote said it didn’t matter who was elected because “Washington was broken.” Of those IOP considered unlikely to vote, 31 percent thought none of the candidates represented their views and a quarter of them said both major parties were pretty much the same. While Millennials strongly believe in an activist government, less than a third believe their voice is represented in today’s democratic processes.

The RICN’s report advocates a series of policy initiatives designed to change those impressions.

To make voting easier and hassle free, the report advocates online registration be adopted in all the states, not just the fourteen using such a system today. California, which adopted this approach in time for the 2012 election, registered over a million voters, 61 percent of who were under 35, online in about two months. In order to accommodate this potentially large increase in the electorate, the report also advocates increasing the time and hours of early voting, making Election Day a federal holiday, and ultimately allowing people to vote online. The report also suggests an independent commission create a “Democracy Index” to measure the efficiency and openness of each state’s election mechanisms, using objective measurements of participation rates and process efficiencies.

But the report’s recommendations are not limited to just the process of voting. It contains a wealth of ideas on how government could be a better “steward of the common good,” lawmaker and innovator.

Some of its most innovative ideas deal with expanding the space in which democracy operates in order to create more places for “collective self-determination and political education.” This could be done at the neighborhood level as is currently taking place in Seattle and Los Angeles, at more open local school board meetings, or through participatory budgeting processes at the city and county level of government. The report also advocates that states should establish and routinely use online town halls to increase the opportunity of citizens to participate in policy deliberations. The Congressional Management Foundation found that such opportunities increase public approval of the elected officials who sponsor them specifically and participants’ civic engagement generally.

The RICN’s report clearly reflects the values and beliefs of the Millennials who drafted it. Their recommendations also provide a glimpse into the future of American democracy, since more than one out of three adult Americans will be members of this generation by the end of this decade. Rather than waiting for Millennials to stage a hostile takeover of our democratic processes, those in power today should proactively seek to accelerate the transition from a governmental and political process that is at historical low levels of public trust to a democracy that is in line with the vision and ideas of America’s next great generation.

Besides his history-making embrace of full equality for gays and lesbians, the most surprising part of President Barack Obama’s Second Inaugural Address may have been the emphasis placed on dealing with the challenge of climate change. The president devoted almost three whole paragraphs, more than for any other single issue, to the topic. His remarks suggested that America’s economic future depended on the country leading the transition to sustainable energy sources and that “the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.”

Different generations reacted differently to the speech. The President’s rhetoric seemed like standard liberal fare to many Baby Boomers (born 1945-1965), who either vehemently agreed or disagreed with what Obama had to say depending on their political ideology. But members of the Millennial Generation (born 1982-2003) were in almost unanimous agreement with the way the President defined the context of this challenge. It was as if he was channeling the thinking of Millennials such as David Weinberger at the Roosevelt Institute’s Campus Network (RICN) who wrote, almost a year ago, “Millennials view environmental protection more as a value to be incorporated into all policymaking than as its own, isolated discipline. We are concerned with economic growth, job creation, enhancing public health, bolstering educational achievement, and national security and diplomacy. Young people recognize that each of these concerns is inextricably tied to the environment.”

President Obama was also right, from a Millennials’ perspective, to emphasize the need for America to become a leader in sustainable energy technologies. Seventy-one percent of Millennials believe America’s energy policy should focus on developing “alternative sources of energy such as wind, solar and hydrogen technology; only a quarter believes that it should focus on “expanding exploration and production of oil, coal and natural gas.” Similarly, the RICN’s “Blueprint for a Millennial America,” a report prepared by thousands of Millennials who participated in their “Think 2040” project, placed the development and usage of renewable sources of energy at the top of all other environmental initiatives.

The participants’ proposed solutions to the challenge, however, were not focused on the kind of top-down change so common to Boomers. .Instead the proposals  emphasized taking action at the community level. No one, the RICN blueprint said , should be asked to “make sacrifices without fully considering the cost to communities” whose “texture” is most likely to be impacted dealing with the challenge.

Many politicians fail to notice this unique Millennial perspective. Members of the generation disagree sharply with their elders on the best way to address environmental challenges, preferring to tackle them through individual initiative and grassroots action rather than a heavy-handed top down bureaucratic approach.

Of course,  Millennials are the most environmentally conscious generation in the nation’s history. Almost two-thirds of Millennials believe global warming is real and 43% of them think that it is caused by human activity, levels much higher than among all other generations. But, as Weinberger also wrote, “While environmentalists of years past were primarily aiming to bring clean air and clean water concerns into the national policymaking calculus, environmentalists today are far more worried about solving global problems like climate change by using local environmental solutions.”

Adapting a Millennial approach to dealing with global warming would mark a major change for the Administration. All four of Obama’s first term environmental policy heavyweights were Boomers, whose preference for top down dictates was evident in almost every decision they made. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar established new controls on off shore oil drilling that satisfied neither side. Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu tried to jump start the development of renewable energy technologies in the United States by funding startups with dubious chances of marketplace success. And most conspicuously   EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s plans for regulating smog were rejected by the President. Fortunately ,  all of them have  announced plans to leave their posts. They will follow in the footsteps of environmental czar, Carol Browner, who left two years ago after a less than stellar performance during the Horizon Deepwater drilling disaster.

There is talk within the administration of subtle changes in policy.  The departure of this quartet of ideologically-driven Boomers gives the President an excellent opportunity to appoint a new team to execute his vision for meeting the environmental challenges of our time.

President Obama’s  new team will have to continue to link the need to develop U.S. energy production to both environmental concerns and economic development. It will need to couch the call for progress on reducing carbon dioxide emissions in the context of strengthening, not weakening, local communities and preserving the nation’s natural resources. Just who the president  finds to take on this politically nuanced task will say a great deal about his sensitivity to his Millennial Generation supporters’ attitudes and beliefs. It will also foretell a great deal about how successful he will be in matching the lofty rhetoric of his Second Inaugural Address with today’s political realities during his final term in office.

As demonstrated in the presidential exit polls and rehashed in countless articles and blogs since the election, Barack Obama’s decisive reelection victory over Mitt Romney was a triumph for a still-emerging, majority Democratic Obama coalition, which we said in a pair of preelection Next America articles would define a new civic ethos, or consensus on the role of government, for the nation.

The president even more forcefully reiterated his civic ethos vision–that America and its individual citizens advance only when “We, the People” work “together”–in his Inaugural Address. Now, a recent Pew Research survey indicates that in doing so the president is speaking clearly to the policy preferences of his side of America’s two new 21st-century political party coalitions.

The Democratic coalition is centered on the millennial generation (young voters 18 to 30), women (especially single women), minorities, and the highly educated, and is geographically focused in the Northeast and West.

All of these groups gave at least 55 percent of their 2012 presidential votes to the president. In fact, without the support of 60 percent of millennials, Obama would have lost the election. For some parts of the coalition, support for the president’s reelection verged on unanimity.
More than nine in 10 African-Americans voted for him, as did about seven in 10 Asians, Hispanics, Jews, and single women.

On the other side, the groups in the Republican coalition were equally loyal to Mitt Romney. Solid majorities of men, whites, seniors–especially those living in the South and Great Plains and Rocky Mountain states–voted for the GOP candidate.

But the first policy area–gun control–on which these coalitions have clearly reemerged to reshape the political landscape, is one that wasn’t even discussed during the campaign. Social Security and Medicare have long been considered “third rail” issues in U.S. politics–matters so contentious and controversial as to be untouchable by any rational officeholder or candidate.

Over the past two decades, gun control has been such an issue for Democrats. Obama studiously avoided the topic during his first term. In 1994, Bill Clinton saw his party lose control of both chambers of Congress for the first time in 40 years after passing a ban on assault weapons. He recently warned his fellow Democrats to be very careful in their approach to this subject.

But the tragedy in Newtown, Conn., made it impossible for the president to ignore the issue, even if he was so inclined, and earlier this year Obama proposed several congressional actions, including expanded background checks for arms purchasers, a resumption of the federal assault-weapons ban, and limiting the capacity of ammunition magazines, as well as 23 executive orders to deal with firearm usage.

The president enters the fray this time with the full support of his coalition on this issue and, as suggested by his Inaugural Address’s reference to the safety of our children, is willing to mobilize and use that coalition on behalf of his proposals.

Pew’s basic gun-control question asks respondents if it’s more important “to protect the right of Americans to own guns or to control gun ownership.” In a mid-January 2013 survey—fielded a month after the Newtown shootings—a 51 percent to 45 percent majority favored emphasizing control on gun ownership rather than protecting the right to own guns.

Two years earlier, a 49 percent to 46 percent plurality took exactly the opposite positions. It is the rise of the Obama Democratic coalition that underpins this new majority support for gun control.

The majority of women, millennials, African-Americans, Hispanics, and college graduates, as well as those who lived in urban and suburban areas and those in the Northeast and West, all support controlling gun ownership over protecting gun owners’ rights.
As in the 2012 election, the Obama coalition is opposed by a coalition of males, whites, those with incomplete college education, and rural residents, the majorities of whom prefer to protect gun owners’ rights.

It is uncertain how many of Obama’s proposed gun-control measures will ultimately be enacted by Congress and what form they will take in the legislative process.
The Pew survey indicates that gun-ownership-rights supporters are more politically active; 42 percent of them, as compared with 25 percent of gun-control advocates, have contributed money to an organization, contacted a public official, expressed an opinion on a social network, and/or signed a petition about gun policy.

However, one of the most often repeated, but inaccurate, memes of the 2012 campaign was that Obama’s reelection chances suffered from an “enthusiasm gap” that would retard participation by the president’s supporters. By Election Day that gap had fully closed.

Gun control is only one of the legislative initiatives promised by Obama for his second term. In his Inaugural Address, he briefly referred to immigration reform, climate change, protecting the middle class in entitlement adjustments, infrastructure development, education, and revamping both voting processes and the federal tax code.

The president seems intent on mobilizing his coalition to enact his policy agenda. If he is successful, the nation will see the enactment of an array of domestic policies as sweeping in its scope as Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, but aligned this time with the ideas and beliefs of another president and his winning 21st-century coalition.

As published
at NDN.org

President Obama’s comprehensive proposal for preventing gun violence in America is to be commended. The focus for policy makers shouldn’t be to try and sort out which of his ideas are politically feasible but rather which ones will work to accomplish the goal of preventing gun violence of all types, while preserving the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms.

Linking the ideal outcome to a focus on the pragmatic steps we can take now to make progress toward the ultimate goal is how the Millennial Generation (born 1982-2003) approaches this type of challenge and, in this case, it holds great promise for actually fixing one of the most intractable problems facing the United States.

As with many other social issues, Millennials have a much more liberal perspective on solutions to gun violence than their older siblings–members of Generation X, who grew up when Ronald Reagan was president. By a 55% to 36% margin, Millennials favor taking steps to control gun ownership over protecting the right to own guns. Only seniors, normally more conservative on these types of issues, approach this level of support for government action to make our cities and neighborhoods safer. By contrast, Generation X, born 1965 to 1981, is the one generation which , even after Newtown, believes it is more important to protect gun ownership rights than to control the use of firearms (by a 48% to 42% margin).

A recent report from the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force sponsored by the Roosevelt Institute’s Campus Network (RICN), underlines both Millennials’ support for taking on the issue and their focus on pragmatic steps to do so. Starting with its title, “Young People’s Concrete Policy Recommendations to Address Gun Violence Prevention in America,” the report analyzes each side of the debate solely in terms of what solutions are likely to work. The recommendations correctly focus on steps to decrease access to semiautomatic weapons and any ammunition clip with more than ten rounds. It strongly endorses the creation of comprehensive databases that would have to be accessed for any gun transaction to take place, with a special emphasis on ensuring the names of those with serious mental illness are included in the database.  With special insight, the report, by a group of progressive Millennials, properly dismisses the distracting idea of making the current debate about culture or media coverage, as opposed to taking action.

There is plenty of evidence in the nation’s successful efforts to reduce crime to suggest that this Millennial approach to the problem will work. As Simon Rosenberg, has pointed out, violent crime, with the sole exception of gun violence,  particularly in country’s largest cities, has dropped dramatically since 1993. The principle reason for that decline was the introduction of the CompStats process by Bill Bratton as police chief of New York City, which led to a  77% decline in crime  in that city alone since then.  Vice President Al Gore’s reinventing government initiative, recognized the efficacy of this program and spread knowledge of Bratton’s approach to  police chiefs  across the country. This is one of the key reasons why there has been a continued decline since then in the nation’s crime rates. Despite economic hard times, major increases in our juvenile population as Millennials became teen agers, and a series of other societal developments that traditional sociologists and criminologists had predicted would cause an increase in crime, the progress continues.

CompStats uses current, accurate information to analyze where crimes are being committed and by whom. The goal is to get bad guys off the streets and to flood high crime areas with police resources. The gun violence analogy to this simple and effective approach would be to keep people who lack the intention or ability to use guns responsibly from buying firearms and to heavily penalize those who use them irresponsibly. A comprehensive assault weapon and ammunition clip ban of the type the RICN advocates has proven to be effective in other countries in limiting access to guns, and a fully developed and federally mandated background check for all gun transactions should be instituted to  keep the wrong people from being able to buy guns.

This still leaves the problem of existing weaponry, but buy-back programs both in the US, and elsewhere, have been effective in further  reducing gun violence. The attempts of  NRA supporters to short circuit such efforts by trying to buy the guns being offered instead of letting the police destroy them testifies to the ultimate effectiveness of this approach to reducing  the nation’s stockpile of unnecessary weapons. And the success of the state of Virginia, a gun lover’s and seller’s paradise, in reducing gun violence by making it clear that criminals who use guns will be prosecuted to the maximum extent of the law has proven its value as the right public policy approach to go after those who should never be allowed to use a gun.

CompStats and the RICN report provide one further valuable lesson to keep in mind as the debate over President Obama’s proposals heats up. When Bratton first introduced the concept to his leadership team, its members told him he could never accomplish his initial goal of reducing crime in NYC by 40% within three years. Their argument was that since the police had no control over the causes of crime—poverty, ethnic and racial tensions, or educational levels–it was not possible or even fair to hold the police accountable for its reduction. But Bratton made it clear that it was not necessary to address the underlying causes of bad behavior to reduce it substantially by simply focusing on the individuals committing crimes and eliminating places where they might be tempted to do so.

Similarly, it can and probably will be argued ad infinitum whether or not violent entertainment creates a fascination with guns that leads to gun violence. And an equally unproductive debate can be held over the media’s role in glorifying those who commit such acts. But no matter who is right, there is no reason to have that debate delay the country from doing something to keep guns out of the hands of those who would use them improperly. With technologies much less sophisticated than what is available today to sift and sort big databases, Bratton’s CompStats process was still able to pinpoint where to direct efforts to take bad guys off the street and dramatically change the safety of our cities.

The nation’s consciousness has been stirred by the slaughter of innocent children in Newtown, Connecticut. But as Newark Mayor Cory Booker correctly points out, gun violence takes the lives of more than thirty people, about as many who died at Virginia Tech,  every single day. Now that Newtown and the President’s proposals have focused the nation’s attention on the problem of how to end such senseless slaughter, attention must be paid to the Millennial Generation’s ideas on how to meet this challenge. More than any other generation, it is their future that is at risk if we fail to do so.