NAACP Youth and College Division leader Tiffany Dena Loftin penned a piece for Blavity the importance of millennial voters in the upcoming midterm elections:
“School is back in session for the NAACP’s Youth and College Division, members are entering the school year after a tough and emotional summer. While young folks should have been enjoying summer jobs and internships, spending time with family, relaxing and enjoying friends, many were instead faced with weekly doses of trauma.
Trauma that was often personal and disturbing enough to motivate us to become active and register as voters.
This summer, #LivingWhileBlack became a consistent theme of high-profile close encounters with police, often for no other reason than possessing a deeper shade of melanin. From Parkland to Vegas, to families being separated at the border.
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From Chikesia Clemons being dragged to the ground at the Waffle House in Saraland, Alabama, to mass gun violence in the streets of Chicago. The trauma hasn’t stopped.
Oftentimes people ask me, as the NAACP Director for Youth and College, “why don’t Millennials vote?” To that I say, you can’t use lies to persuade young people to vote; you can’t bribe them, you can’t even try to catch them with catch phrases…Playing into fear, threats or “our ancestors died for your right” aren’t the reasons young people pay attention and vote…”
Read the rest of the article at Blavity.
