The Democratic Socialists of America Can Mobilize Gen Z'ers Like Me - BY CALLA WALSH

Found here. Our comments in bold. 

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This narcissistic young person, entirely convinced of her own moral superiority, seems to think she is the one we have been waiting for. Having nothing to offer except tired socialist slogans, lacking understanding of even the most basic political or economic concept, she prattles on for nearly 1500 words.

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Some of the defining life experiences that help develop political consciousness take place when we are adolescents. (Indeed, young people are impressionable and have not developed critical thinking skills. They form opinions based on limited life experience, and are easily swayed by quasi-clever, superficial arguments. 

If this young lady was more mature, she probably bit more circumspect and less arrogant.)

Senator Bernie Sanders (Ah, the Marxist standard bearer, and old dried up Socialist who has never done a single significant thing in his decades-long tenure in various government positions. 

What a role model.)

engaged in solidarity organizing with Koreans as a high school student during the war. Angela Davis (Oh, my. Quite a hero, she is.)

grew up surrounded by civil rights organizers in segregated Birmingham, Alabama, and was introduced to socialism in a high school history class. One of my local Boston DSA City Council candidates, Kendra Hicks, received a copy of Paulo Friere’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed at age 16. (So all the author's heroes were isolated from other political viewpoints, indoctrinated into leftist thinking at an early age, and began their activism without relevant life experience.)

I’m a 17-year-old socialist. (Indeed. As such we will not trust you to deeply think about these issues.)

For my generation, a fascist presidential administration, (We have not had a fascist presidential administration. Our first evidence of shallow thinking. The author does not understand fascism.)

pandemic, economic collapse, and a historic uprising for Black lives have shaped our worldview. These defining events and movements have caused Gen Z to become more disillusioned with capitalism (Our second piece of evidence of shallow thinking. The author does not understand capitalism.)

and the white-supremacist, bourgeois state than older generations. (The author has now begun to regurgitate bumper-sticker Marxist slogans. Note that older whites are the evil bourgeois.)

As the youngest delegate at this week's Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) National Convention, I urge members of my generation to mobilize toward building a socialist future. (There is no future in socialism, only despair and oppression.)

Disenchantment with capitalism and positive attitudes toward socialism are strongest among younger Americans, (Again, this speaks to the fact that youth are easy to persuade regarding bad ideas.)

but Gen Z faces a unique set of conditions that make us especially open to ideological radicalization. (That is, an extremist. At least the author is honest enough to admit she is a radical. That is no compliment.)

Polling shows that Gen Z adults, ages 18 to 24, already have a more positive view of socialism than of capitalism — presumably because our age group has also experienced the worst of late-stage American capitalism. (More likely, this generation has been subjected to intensive agitprop to the exclusion [or misrepresentation] of other ideas.)

The expansion of the academic industrial complex and the resulting student debt crisis have crushed our socioeconomic mobility. (No one forces you to take out a loan to earn a worthless degree in gender studies or basket weaving.)

Forty-eight percent of workers earning the federal minimum wage or below are 16 to 24 years old — (Which is exactly who should be earning minimum wage. People with no experience and no skills do not deserve to be paid more than what they bring to the table.)

and that wage hasn’t increased since I was five years old. Some may argue that young people don’t deserve a living wage because we don’t need to support ourselves, but countless teens work to provide for their families or pay for college, not just to earn spending money. (No, we argue you don't deserve it because you're not worth it. Statistically, only 4% of minimum wage earners support their families. 

And no one cares if you can't afford to go to college. Clearly you'd be better off not going.)

We have watched capitalism fail time and again, having experienced two of the country’s worst recessions, in 2008 and again in 2020. (Our third evidence of shallow thinking. Neither example has anything to do with capitalism, especially since we have not had a capitalistic economy for decades.

In particular, 2020 was due to direct government action. Government shut down the economy, forced people to stay home, and forced businesses to close. 

We have cast doubt on the author's thinking skills, and now we can confirm it. Is the author really this clueless that she doesn't understand what happened only a year ago?)

In 2020, youth unemployment remained elevated far above the rate for the general population because young workers are concentrated in impacted industries such as retail, hospitality, and the precarious gig economy. Analysis by the Brookings Institution found that 16- to 29-year-olds make up under a quarter of the whole labor force, yet “they accounted for about a third of the rise in the unemployment rate between February and April” 2020. If you were like me, you didn’t even qualify for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance from the federal government.

When I regained employment after Massachusetts reopened, I witnessed capitalism’s lack of regard for human life firsthand. (Our fourth evidence of shallow thinking. Capitalism isn't an entity, and doesn't have the ability to regard anything.)

Going to work meant risking my life to perform labor because the ruling class had decided that dead frontline workers were just the collateral damage of their profit-motivated reopening. (No one forced her to go.)

I worked in a restaurant from July to November 2020, when it closed again because of COVID-19, (No, it closed because of an oppressive government's edict.)

and I joined DSA that October. (Waaait. I thought this is risking her life?)

My belief in socialism was strengthened during my time as a frontline worker, but it originated earlier, when I first became engaged in politics through climate organizing. I recognized capitalism as the root cause of the climate crisis (More bumper sticker slogans, not documented or even discussed.)

and realized that the environmental justice for which I was fighting posed a threat to capitalism’s very existence as a system of profit and exploitation. (More evidence the author doesn't understand capitalism.)

Looking at the world through the lens of class conflict and historical materialism (That is, looking through a biased worldview...)

has made everything I had never been able to explain make sense. (It didn't make sense before because no one bothered to accurately explain to her what capitalism is.)

So many of my questions can be answered. What continues to mystify me is how anyone my age can still have complete faith in capitalism, a system that is driving our planet to literal inhabitability. (More evidence the author doesn't understand capitalism.

No one "has faith" in capitalism. Capitalism isn't something to believe in, it isn't a system, it isn't a political manifestation, it isn't a cause to rally behind. Capitalism, quite simply, is the voluntary, legal, eyes-open exchange of value between two or more parties. Apparently no one has ever explained this to the author.)

The climate crisis is another unique condition that necessitates Gen Z’s commitment to socialism. (Continuing her sloganeering, the author is apparently unaware that there has never been a socialist economy that valued the environment.)

As DSA’s Ecosocialist Working Group explains, “The liberation of people and the planet are necessarily intertwined and dependent on the dismantling of our exploitative capitalist production process and the remaking of society to serve the needs of people and planet, not profit.” No other crisis in our history has posed such an existential threat and moral obligation for radical change in our economic and political systems. (The author now appeals to morality, left undefined. Whose morality? And why should we allow you to impose your morality upon us?)

Human survival will depend on revolution. (Yes, of course. Wholesale revolution, preferably. Bloody if needed. 

She's going to save the world. What hubris.)

Jonathan Jackson Jr., the nephew of Black revolutionary George Jackson, posits that “when it finally becomes more attractive for one to fight, and perhaps die, than to live in a survival mode, revolution starts to become a possibility.” (Irony alert. "Survival mode" is a feature of Socialism.)

Facing the climate crisis, we must understand “survival mode” under late-stage capitalism is more than just enduring a system of labor exploitation — it means enduring the results of this system; one that requires not only labor exploitation, but the endless exploitation of the Earth’s natural resources. (What color is China's air? Kinda gray, right?)

We will have to survive floods, heat waves, forest fires, and air pollution; watch our homes sink under water; the collapse of food supply chains; and power grids that give out. The working class will suffer while the rich will be able to move to higher elevations and build safeguarded homes. Organizing won’t be driven just by a desire to improve our quality of life, but by an impulse to save the human race. (Rise up, proletariat! Overthrow those evil bourgeois!)

Gen Z has already demonstrated our ability to organize and mobilize: It was young Black activists who led Black Lives Matter protests, and young allies who participated and made it likely the biggest movement in U.S. history. (Certainly they burned a lot of buildings and destroyed peoples' lives. Makes her proud.)

Youth voters are turning out in record numbers and, in 2020, propelled Joe Biden to victory in key swing states. (And how old is that doddering fool?)

Our digital fluency provides us with a unique platform to organize, disseminate information, and share our beliefs. Social media exposes us to new ideas that antagonize our current belief systems, induce change, and push us toward ideological clarity. (No, ideological conformity, i.e. indoctrination.)

Thanks to the work of young BIPOC organizers, we also understand that the struggles to end white supremacy and capitalism are intertwined.(An admission that BLM is not about racial justice, it's about socialism.)

The Black Lives Matter movement’s focus on dismantling racial capitalism (There is no such thing as racial capitalism.)

demonstrates the political relevance of this framework. A 2020 Morning Consult poll found that 68% of Gen Z said the Black Lives Matter movement “has had a major impact on their worldview” (a percentage that jumped by 21 points from April to June 2020), and the vast majority of Gen Z took at least one action for racial justice during the height of the protests. Centering Black liberation in our movement for socialism is a moral imperative (Another appeal to morality...)

that will also allow us to engage young people who were politically radicalized by Black Lives Matter and counter the neoliberal co-optation of racial justice organizing. (Actually, she has it backwards. BLM and others are co-opting the racism issue, turning it to a white-hating, prosperity hating, self-hating disease.)

The tools to build interracial, intergenerational working-class power are here. If we, the generation whose souls have not yet been crushed by capitalism, (Capitalism is not an entity.)

choose to use these tools, we can shift the tide in favor of socialism — the only system that will guarantee us a livable planet and life unburdened from economic exploitation, crushing debt, and racial castes. (Undocumented, and false, claim.)

As a DSA member, I have engaged in electoral work, (The electoral system is part of the problem, isn't it? After all, socialism seeks to overturn the system and install its own version of utopia. The author thinks her involvement in the electoral system recommends her, but in actual fact she, by her actions, legitimizes the system she seeks to destroy.)

direct action, housing justice advocacy, and solidarity organizing with the labor movement, (!) 

Palestine, (!!!)

and abolitionist groups. My comrades (As opposed to friends)

of all ages have mentored (Indoctrinated...)

and empowered me to run to be a Boston delegate to the National Convention this year. I am excited to be a voting delegate, but I wish there were more teenagers beside me, not because we will magically transform the DSA as an organization, (Why does it need to be transformed?)

but because our voices matter in the socialist movement (A self-contradicting statement. Her voice does not matter in a system that does not value individual voices, and in fact censors and suppresses them.)

and there are unlimited possibilities to engage us.

From the moment we started school, members of Gen Z have been told that we would be the ones to save humanity from our current overwhelming conditions. (Someone lied to her. This self-aggrandizing rhetoric is growing tiresome.)

This concept of “Gen Z saviorism” serves to shift the responsibility to fix our world’s problems (Delusions of grandeur.)

from the shoulders of older generations and systems that caused these problems to younger generations who will be forced to bear the brunt of the impacts. (Remember her complaint about the white-supremacist, bourgeois state? Imagine how she would treat this "older generation," those who caused all these problems, if she ever got any real power.)

We are not saviors, (No, you are tools, useful idiots who will be cast aside once the older generation who funds you and pulls your strings waltz into DC and take their places as the Entitled Ones.

Remember when she wrote, human survival will depend on revolution. Yet she is not a savior.)

and we need to be activated in a socialist way. As passionate as I am about youth organizing, above all, I believe in the power of intergenerational organizing. We are counting on millennials, Gen Z, even Boomers to guide us into the socialist movement so we can work together to empower the working class. (Waaaiiit. Didn't she tell us that these very people are causing the problem?)

I urge the socialist movement to meaningfully invest in youth activation and the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity we have to mobilize Gen Z. And I urge my peers to join their local DSA or YDSA chapter and start organizing. The future belongs to young people, but there is no future for us under capitalism.