WNYC is engaging in a year-long set of conversations with young voters, the high school class of 2016, who are just turning voting age, and voters fifty years senior, getting ready to retire. "Young people don't vote!" you say. That may be true, but we should care anyway. The high water mark for young voters in modern history was 2008, when 44 percent voted, compared to 70 percent of voters over 65. But some of the most vital social movements of our day, like Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter, were fueled by young New Yorkers. What young people say today lands in the zeitgeist tomorrow.
This is our first installment, gleaned from three months of conversations with seniors at Curtis High School in Staten Island, Millennium Brooklyn High School, and Bronx Collegiate.
1) They get almost all of their information from news sources that mostly didn't exist the last time there was an open seat, in 2008. And they know that's not a great idea. Facebook, mostly, but also Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Buzzfeed. They're certain of the information they see, but uncertain about it's provenance. "Which is horrible," as Yaritza Gonzales of Bronx Collegiate High School said, "Because a majority of it is not made up, but, like tweaked, so that it can grab our attention, and we focus on it more. But that isn't where we should be getting our information from, but for some reason we do." A Pew study backs that up: 60 percent of millennials get their political news from Facebook. That number, by the way, doesn't decrease much as you get older: half of Gen X'ers get their political news from Facebook, and fully 40 percent of baby boomers do.
2) There are three candidates in their world: Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, and Hillary Clinton. They don't even know anyone who is talking about other candidates.
3) They understand Trump's appeal. "I know a lot of people who do support Trump, but none of them are my age. They're all probably — over 40" said Alyssa Orcuilo, of Staten Island's Curtis High School. "I come from a conservative family," Alyssa explained, her relatives are union people, city workers, firefighters, and, especially, cops. "It's not like they support Trump to the extent they would vote for him...It has to do with taxes and paying them and having a steady job, I guess. That's something I'm not able to understand yet."
4) They reject Trump's appeal. Most New York City high school kids aren't white. They're children of immigrants. Ten percent are Muslim. "My dad doesn't really know anything about politics," said Millennium Brooklyn High School's Jelani Williams, whose parents are from the island of Grenada. Jelani's mom works for the city, and his dad's a doctor. "He likes Trump because he seems like such a radical guy." Williams said it was painful for him to see a clip of a Trump rally where a Muslim woman wearing a hijab was kicked out, with Trump's approval. But, he said, "nothing about that appeals to my dad. Because he's so popular, that's the only reason my father likes Trump. But he's also a bonehead — I'm talking about Trump, obviously." Williams said his father is attracted to Trump's celebrity and his success. "He has so much money and he has so much influence."
5) The've been exposed to vast reams of negative information about Hillary Clinton. She's in favor of ethnic cleansing in other countries, one student swore. There's a picture of her "on the internet" shaking hands with Osama bin Laden. She's "sneaky." Even when it comes to issues like gun control, where Sanders' record is more wobbly than Clinton's (in 2008 she flirted briefly with a mildly pro-states' rights position, whereas he opposed, until a week ago, assigning liability to gun manufacturers), what they remember is the Clinton bobble.
Still, the most prevalent and sticky criticism among these about-to-be voters, is what they see as her changing position on gay marriage. "A couple of years ago, like, I don't know, 2003, she said something like she was not for gay marriage at all," said Curtis High School's Rosemery Duran, "And now if you see anything at all involving Hillary it's a rainbow slapped on it trying to like say, oh yeah, gay's ok, go with Hillary, whatever."
6) Negative information about Hillary Clinton is especially sticky. When I tell these kids that Bernie Sanders didn't come out in favor of gay marriage until 2009, after his state passed a gay marriage law, and that President Obama and Vice President Biden were — like Hillary Clinton — opposed to gay marriage in 2008, and only came out in favor while running for re-election in 2012, the students only assigned negative intent to Clinton. When I asked Ewan Shannon, a slight, white, fervent Sanders supporter, about President Obama's switch, he responded: "Well, I think in that case, it's different because when you're in the seat of the presidency, you realize what the masses — what people are saying to you. Being the president, you get your feet wet, and so, here' the thing, I know what the real deal is now."
7) Young women don't relate strongly to the historic nature of Hillary Clinton' s candidacy. Though students said they felt pride that Barack Obama was the first black president, not one of the students I spoke with said they were drawn to vote for Hillary Clinton because she'd be the first woman president. Hillary Clinton has been an ever-present political figure their entire political lives. She started running for office in New York before most of them could walk. "I am straight up a feminist," said Millennium Brooklyn's Chrystal Maria. Her mom's a home attendant, but Chyrstal, like most Millennium students, is college-bound. She's a writing tutor who wants to dedicate her life to working on all the ways women are oppressed. "But she’s not a great candidate, on top of that, voting for her because she’s a woman is white feminism, not intersectional feminism." On Staten Island, Lule Karpuzi disagreed, but mildly. "I think women's rights is important and Hillary Clinton, she has a lot of experience being Senator and the First Lady. She tried to make health care like, what's the word? Universal. But that didn't work for whatever reason. I don't know. She's all right."
8) They think Hillary Clinton tries too hard to relate to them. "Like, whipping the Nae Nae," Chrystal said. "She's doing all these things and trying to get us to say, hey, she's like us. No."
9) They really like Bernie Sanders. They believe he is free of corporate influence, will make college free, will make marijuana legal, and is "trying to say, get along with other countries to make America, like, a country that is not about war, it's about peace," as one Bronx Collegiate student put it.
10) The main Sanders' message that sticks: FREE COLLEGE. My family is kind of struggling with money on its own," said Nathaniel Ceballos, a soft-spoken Millennium Brooklyn student, a Puerto Rican from Williamsburg. "My parents didn’t go to college immediately, my mom is still in university and I want to go to college so I don’t have the same problems that they have in the future and I want to surpass them, because that’s what they want from me."