Youth to Power by Jamie Margolin

Author:Jamie Margolin [MARGOLIN, JAMIE]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2020-06-02T00:00:00+00:00

Why Should Young People Lobby?

Let’s say that you alone have the power to choose what TV show you and your family watch every night for a year. This is a big decision that’s going to have a long-lasting impact, so everyone in your family will try to convince you to pick the show they want to watch. It’s not exactly a fair decision, because some members of your family are more powerful and have much better access to you than others. Your brothers and sisters are off at school all the time, and they don’t have much to offer you in return. They make up the majority of the population of your household, but because they have so much to do, have hardly any resources, and spend so much time away from you, they don’t really get the chance to make the case for their favorite show. However, your rich uncles have all the time in the world to spend with you. They make their case to you for their favorite show, make promises in return for choosing their show, and take you out to fancy restaurants and make you feel doted on and special. They make up a very small percentage of your household population, and their preference in TV show does not reflect the preference of the majority of your family, but they have the biggest influence on you.

So by now you can guess that in this scenario you are the politician. Your powerless siblings are the constituents, the common people who make up the majority of a country’s population but don’t get to spend a lot of time with their representatives. The rich, charismatic uncles are the professional lobbyists for big corporations and special interests. They have the resources to pamper the politicians and influence them.

This is what we’re up against. Even though the vast majority of the population does not have the same interests as professional lobbyists for big corporations, the ones who have the most access to our decision makers. The ones whispering in the politicians’ ears are Big Pharma (pharmaceuticals), Big Oil, Big Agra (farming), and corporations that are often the main cause of the issues we’re fighting against, like climate change. This gets worse and worse the higher level of government you go, so what we find in politics is a large disconnect between what politicians are encouraged to do and what the people they work for (us!) actually need them to do. Because representatives (in theory) do work for us—the people. At least in democracies, we the people vote them into power. Despite having money, corporations don’t have a vote, and this is what we the people have going for us.

If you are not already a voter, you are a future voter. If you are in an immigration situation or another hard place where you will not be given your right to vote any time soon, you have influence over voters around you. Children have more influence on their parents than anyone else, and those politicians need your parents’ votes.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.