First-time voters & the new president

Whenever I archer my students that the archetypal clip I was aged capable to ballot for president, I voted for John Kennedy, they look astatine maine with envy. They don’t deliberation they are ever going to person my luck, and President Trump’s inauguration is, I fear, lone going to summation my students’ first-time elector blues.

At Sarah Lawrence College, wherever I person taught for galore years, my students were glummer than I person ever seen them pursuing past November’s election. They could not judge the state would take a antheral who took pridefulness successful the relation helium played successful the overturning of Roe v. Wade and successful a wide circulated interrogation for “Access Hollywood” bragged astir grabbing women.

The students I met with successful my bureau the greeting aft the predetermination were exhausted from staying up each nighttime and successful nary temper for a pep talk. Their temper has not changed, and I consciousness it is adjacent much important than it was successful November to accidental thing to my students that speaks to the vexation they are feeling and the complaint that their generation’s liberal righteousness contributed to Trump’s victory.

I don’t usage my classroom, wherever students are a captive audience, arsenic a spot for putting distant my governmental views, but dealing with my students extracurricular of the schoolroom is simply a antithetic story. Their anxiousness astir the predetermination has deepened implicit the past 2 months (57% of assemblage students nationally don’t judge their 2024 ballot mattered).

The champion notation constituent I person recovered for addressing my students’ anxiousness lies successful a code a precise young John Kennedy delivered successful 1946 when, aft serving successful the Navy during World War II, helium ran for Congress.

The speech, which appears successful a remembrance of Kennedy, “Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye,” by 2 of his closest aides, Kenneth O’Donnell and Dave Powers, written with Joe McCarthy, tells america what personally mattered to Kennedy astatine this clip successful his beingness alternatively than what helium thought astir circumstantial governmental issues.

Kennedy talked astir galore veterans coming location from World War II amazed that they felt lost. “They miss the adjacent comradeship, the feeling of interdependence, that consciousness of moving unneurotic for a communal cause,” Kennedy declared. “We hide that dependence connected different radical is with america successful civilian beingness conscionable arsenic it was successful the war,” helium went connected to say.

What was indispensable to remember, Kennedy concluded, is “We are babelike connected different radical astir each infinitesimal of our lives.” And here, I believe, is simply a hopeful presumption of the aboriginal that my students tin instrumentality bosom successful arsenic they conflict to retrieve from an predetermination that has near them filled with doubts.

At this infinitesimal the endless investigation and scolding being enactment guardant astir what assemblage students were excessively self-absorbed to grasp astir the 2024 predetermination is not helpful. It’s similar asking idiosyncratic who has conscionable been successful a car clang to look astatine photos of the crash.

Kennedy’s toughminded optimism is simply a overmuch amended usher to the future, and we request to wage him renewed attention. In code and substance, helium strikes the close note. Those of america who thatch should backmost disconnected and let our students a betterment play successful which they spell astir their regular lives attuned to the bully they tin execute done their connections to each different and nine astatine large.

If Kennedy’s predetermination was a precocious constituent for maine and my generation, his assassination and the assassinations of his member and Martin Luther King Jr. were our debased points. We became a procreation deprived of the leaders we trusted most. It was tempting to fto despair instrumentality over.

Becoming portion of the civilian rights and anti-Vietnam War movements of the ’60s and ’70s created a consciousness of intent for us, but the activism of my assemblage procreation was ne'er successful my acquisition escaped from doubts implicit the hostility betwixt accepted authorities and protest. We, similar students today, needed healing clip — escaped from big digit pointing — to regain our equilibrium.

I don’t person a circumstantial New Year’s proposal for my students astir what their re-engagement with governmental beingness should look similar successful the aftermath of what for them and maine was a traumatic election, but I’m betting connected my students’ recuperative powers, supra all, connected their quality to debar being politically numbed by the predetermination postmortems inactive coming astatine them from each direction.

Mills, writer of “Like a Holy Crusade: Mississippi 1964 — The Turning of the Civil Rights Movement successful America,” is simply a prof of American lit astatine Sarah Lawrence College.