New political alliances that go beyond age and national divides

 

As the United States heads into a new political era filled with uncertainty, old traditional political partnerships are making way for new alliances: Intergenerational alliances.

“Your life is your activism. If you don’t choose it, it gets chosen for you.” declares Vernice Miller.

Vernice (an instructor and director in the Communication and Theatre Arts Department at John Jay College -part of the City University system in New York City) sees herself as coming from an earlier generation of activists who feel shocked by the outcome of the recent presidential election.

“My first thought after the election was ‘I don’t feel safe’… I get the feeling this is one big reality TV show to [Trump] and I don’t know if he knows the difference between what is real and what’s television. He ran [his campaign] like a reality show, and he’s staffing the White House as if the reality show continues…”

Since the election, in order to turn this frustration into action, Vernice has embarked on a new political project with a younger generation of activists.

The project is a new video series based around the idea that political action shouldn’t be an occasional vote during an election cycle. It needs to be an ongoing and integrated part of your everyday life.

Kobi Skolnick, the creator of the video series, describes the concept as “the positive daily actions that can be taken to effect political change.”

Here in New York City, an epicenter of diversity, politically active citizens have been doing a lot of soul searching since the election. In this searching, these New Yorkers have been able to tap into the diversity of their experiences -often from their countries of origin outside of the U.S.- which helps to provide a sort of roadmap for positive steps they can implement. These steps, they believe, may help prevent the erosion of rights that they fear, based on their experiences outside of the United States.

Irem Tümer, a young activist who is a Fellow at the United Nations Population Fund, and who has been living through 14 years of Erdogan (Turkey’s semi-autocratic leader) says, “I think the next 10-20 years will be very difficult…. but as opposed to Turkey, I think Americans are good at getting stuff done.”

As these cross-generational partners reflect on the past, they are also looking to the future for indications of how society might be differently arranged. Irem believes there is a clear political trend: “It’s like the last scream of more traditional nation/state boundaries, even though we know that its death is coming.”

The partners involved in this new video series tend to already be involved in education and outreach. Jen Gowers, Managing Director of Literacy at Ascend Public Charter Schools, has been putting in place new school programs into her school’s curriculum. “My teacher friends just keep asking, what can I do, what can I do?” She tells them, “the work that you’re doing IS the work!” and in fact, Jen says, the administration has decided to implement a new program that “asks [the students] how to spot fake news.”

The shock that many Americans experienced in witnessing a politician express hateful sentiments openly in public (for example, Trump’s assertion: that Mexicans coming into the U.S. are rapists; his eagerness to label Islam as a threat; etc.) does not shock all New Yorkers. This diversity of experience is something that helps inform Kobi Skolnick, who grew up in an orthodox Israeli household, and was taught to hate Palestinians.

“Deep hate for me is nothing new”, says Kobi.

At age twelve, Kobi joined an extremist group that routinely engaged in antagonizing Palestinians. “Hatred and violence is in all of us. We shouldn’t be afraid to say that.”

But Kobi has learned to channel these experiences into positive directions where it helps inform him on how best to empathize with hate, and how to foster common ground among adversaries.

In Kobi’s role as the Director of Leadership Development at Leadership for New Emergence, here in New York City, he conducts seminars in conjunction with United Nations Population Fund to help to empower youth activist leaders across the globe. Kobi has also worked in conjunction with National Geographic to host ‘dual-narrative’ tours through Israel/Palestine which gives a multi-sided perspective on the current state of the politically tense region.

How all of this new American political reality will play out in the future is, of course, anyone’s guess but these New Yorkers have a lot of ideas about what might help, and they’re now more engaged than ever in putting these plans into motion. In spite of a very tough election cycle, many of these activists are still quite hopeful that the new political reality might actually kick-start a new wave of engaged citizens.

Jen, who also holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University, and an M.A. from Harvard, sees the election as cause to double-down on the bet she made when she decided that her platform for changing the world for the better was going to be public education. Jen is confident that public education is, “one of the last public places where everybody can work together for the best positive outcomes for our children”. She hopes that the ideas contained in the new video series will resonate now more than ever with citizens.

“Maybe people will be even more receptive to the need for it now”, says Jen.

The video series, due out before inauguration, will be titled ‘Lead Forward’ and it will be found at new-emergence.com