MIllennials – Memphis Flyer

Hello Millennials. Are you sick to death of that moniker yet? Are you weary of being lumped into a group of millions of people with whom you share little in common, yet are stamped with the same stereotypes as the Kardashians?

If you were born between 1983 and 2001, that makes you a Millennial — a pseudo-scientific name made up by a couple of guys who wrote a book to describe the generation between Gen X and Gen Z, which I never understood in the first place.

If every generation needs a stupid nickname, welcome to my world. Since birth, I’ve been referred to as a Baby Boomer, a childish and silly term that first appeared in a newspaper article. We were the spawn of soldiers returning from WWII, who wasted no time in being fruitful and multiplying.

Now, they’re also calling you “echo boomers,” and studies have attributed certain characteristics to your demographic. You are “digitally native,” you have a sense of entitlement, you’re narcissistic and disinterested in world affairs, you’re “selfie” absorbed, and you lack social skills because you text instead of talk. You’re attached to your devices. You are the trophy generation, where no one wins or loses and everyone gets an award just for participating. You’re driven by wealth, but you won’t save money. You eat out every night or order pizza. You have disdain for anything and everything that came before you. You won’t buy a car, and you live in your parents’ basement.

Here’s a clue: Aside from the tech stuff, many of the same things were said of my rebellious generation.

A Boomer sounds like someone who comes from Oklahoma. We were born between 1946 and 1964, ancient history to you. If you dropped a telephone back then, you could break your foot. We’re all between 50 and 70 now, and, although deeply divided on everything from politics to pot, we too were smacked with that same giant paintbrush as a studied and analyzed group. We were called the first consumer generation. Everything was handed to us. We were spoiled and self-indulgent. We rejected traditional values and resented authority. We were too idealistic, and we thought we were special.

Anything in there sound familiar? Maybe we have more in common than you have been led to believe. So, even though I’ve read that Millennials both abhor and ignore the past, please indulge your old Uncle Randy, and let me tell you a story about a poet-politician named Eugene McCarthy.

The Minnesota senator had come out early and vociferously against the Vietnam War, and in the election year of 1968, he was the first to challenge the president, Lyndon Johnson. Young people who opposed the war or were vulnerable to the draft flocked to his cause. His slogan was “Get clean for Gene,” which translated into thousands of hippies getting shaves and haircuts so as not to frighten the proletariat when they knocked on their doors with campaign literature.

Considering 1968 was the same year that the musical Hair opened on Broadway, this was a noble sacrifice. McCarthy was the guy who made LBJ drop out of the race and caused Robert Kennedy to jump in. We all know how that ended, but when convention time came around, “Clean Gene” lost the nomination to the establishment candidate, Vice President Hubert Horatio Humphrey, who hadn’t even entered the primaries. The convention ended in chaos and bloodshed, and the Chicago cops, in what was later deemed a “police riot,” gleefully cracked Boomer skulls in the street and got some hippie payback. And you thought Trump rallies were bad.

My generation betrayed you. We didn’t get our preferred candidate, so instead of going to the polls and voting for second best, we stayed home. The result was that Humphrey lost by one percentage point, and we gave you Richard Nixon, a loathsome and venal slug of a man who extended the war by four pointless years. His psychiatrist said that Nixon ordered bombing raids just to impress his friends. He was severely neurotic, viciously anti-Semitic, and racially insensitive, so, of course, he was re-elected.

Dawn Hudson | Dreamstime.com

Richard Nixon

Late in his second term, beset by scandal and skullduggery, Nixon took to the bottle. Late at night, he drunk-called his friends and wandered the halls of the White House talking to the portraits of presidents past. His behavior became so erratic that the Secretary of Defense sent out a general command stating that any order coming from the liquor-ridden Commander-in-Chief had to be cleared by him first. Imagine how different the world would look if my generation had just voted.

We were so upset about not getting our anti-war candidate, we overlooked the fact that Humphrey had been a champion of civil rights since 1948 and was the main author of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In the end, the nefarious Nixon won the election with 43.4 percent to Humphrey’s 42.7 percent. We gave you a mentally unstable president, subject to bouts of mood swings, and a petulant, thin-skinned sociopath bent on revenge against his critics. If all this sounds familiar, it should.

At its core, this election is between one candidate who’s sane and one who is not. There is one candidate with knowledge and experience and one who is delusional and thinks he’s Captain America. The choice is pretty simple.

Even though Millennials think the hippies were ridiculous and their parents are trapped in an analogue world, there is a lesson to be learned here. Don’t take anything for granted. Your side has to get more votes than the snarling, snapping mad dogs on the other side. This includes the “Bernie or Bust” people who are the modern day equivalent of the die-hard McCarthyites, who sat out one of the most consequential elections of our lifetime. Don’t make the same mistake the Boomers made.

Your knowledge is superior to ours on most things. But if Millennials fail to learn the lesson from this egregious Boomer blunder and decide that taking Facebook “who were you in a past life” quizzes are more important than the ballot box, we could turn around and find a lunatic in the White House.

Randy Haspel writes the “Recycled Hippies” blog, where a version of this column first appeared.

Having lived in five other states before landing in Memphis, Jenni Kowal follows one rule: Arrive with few expectations.

“I’ve only been in Memphis for a week, but it feels like years,” Kowal, 24, said. “I came here for the people. I knew from [friends] that Memphis was a great place but also a troubled place. There is a lot of heart here. It is the most diverse place I’ve ever lived in and provides a lot of opportunity to serve the community because there is a greater need here.”

Kowal is among a slew of millennials who are relocating to the Bluff City. Memphis falls only behind Atlanta, Georgia, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as the third-most popular city for millennials to purchase a home in 2016, according to research from Realtor.com. With a median list price of $164,000, affordable housing makes life easier for debt-strapped twenty-somethings.

From Overton Square to the potentially soon-to-be revitalized Mud Island Park, redevelopment has bolstered economic growth in the Mid-South. Sprawling obstacles, however, can’t be overlooked. Almost 30 percent of Memphians lived in poverty in 2014, according to numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau. More than 13 percent of those ages 16 to 24 don’t work or attend school. To boot, the U.S Department of Agriculture defines Memphis as a food desert — only seven of the 77 high-poverty neighborhoods in the city are within reasonable reach of a full-service supermarket.

Those statistics can be improved with elbow grease. Danielle Inez understands this. Through her organization Millennials for Memphis, Inez aims to engage the more than 200,000 millennials living in Memphis. Millennials have surpassed baby boomers as the largest generation. By focusing on government engagement, community development, and economic empowerment, Inez hopes millennials can give the city a makeover over the next five to 10 years.

“I want to see a much more developed network of neighborhoods that also share resources,” Inez said. “Our inner-city neighborhoods — from the Mound to South and North Memphis — all have a degree of attractiveness that is almost hidden from entrepreneurs. I’d like our city to make better use of technology. [We need] more neighborhood hotspots, easier online tools for basic government obligations, more integration, and support for mom-and-pop businesses.”

Committed residents spent decades developing Cooper-Young into a vibrant neighborhood. Likeminded urban planning should go hand-in-hand with millennials buying homes in the city, said University of Memphis social work professor Elena Delavega.

“The problem exists when we create exclusive zones that are prohibitive to the poor and completely push them out of their neighborhoods,” Delavega, the co-director of the Mid-South Family and Community Empowerment Institute, said. “Ideal communities are mixed communities that include a wide range of people of all races and income levels. Economic integration in neighborhoods benefits the poorest people living in communities.”

Sam Leathers

Nate Packard

Millennials face a pivotal opportunity in defining the city’s next step, according to Inez. Nate Packard, a Memphis artist, echoes the sentiment. Memphis is malleable, he said, waiting to be carved.

“New York and Los Angeles are oversaturated with young creatives looking to make a name for themselves,” Packard, 23, said. “Competition is high, but success is much less common. Being in Memphis, a city with a much less competitive nature, lets me focus on my work. It gives me a greater chance to be noticed for that work.”

The Memphis narrative has shifted from self-criticism to pride and hope, said Leslie Gower, the vice president of marketing and communications for the Downtown Memphis Commission. Millennials are capitalizing on the momentum.

“Millennials like to be change agents,” Gower said. “They are looking for ways to advance, connect with, and contribute to their community. Downtowns are magnets for millennials. In five to 10 years, we will see more people working downtown — particularly start-ups, creatives, and entrepreneurs. We’re finally becoming ambassadors of our own city and sharing our story. People outside of Memphis are taking note.”