NLF Highlights-Published by the Murphy Institute
CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies
Highlights for May 13th
This installment of New Labor Forum Highlights brings a sneak peek at the May 2019 issue just before it rolls off press. In the cover article, linked here, Nick Serpe assess whether millenials, indeed, constitute a political category. Not since the 1960s has a cohort of young people felt so drawn to a radical critique of American society. Back then it was a college age population growing up in a period of post-war prosperity. Today, it’s a somewhat older cohort in their mid-twenties to thirties, coming of age in far more austere circumstances. In both cases, however, a sizeable fraction of American youth did and are now again concluding that something is profoundly wrong in the “homeland.” Demographics don’t lie. But what we make of them is not so straight-forward. Generational analysis is a tricky business that Serpe explores to unravel the enigma.
 
Also linked here, you’ll find a poem from the May issue by Javier Zamora, who left El Salvador as an “unaccompanied minor,” wholly dependent on the aid of an MS13 member to cross the U.S./Mexico border. Zamora survived the dangerous passage and the tenuous existence of an undocumented child in the U.S., and has gone on to become an award-winning poet.
 
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Table of Contents
  1. Beyond Generational Politics: Do Millennials Constitute a Political Category?/ Nick Serpe, New Labor Forum
  2. "Second Attempt Crossing"/ Javier Zamora, New Labor Forum
Beyond Generational Politics: Do Millennials Constitute a Political Category?
By Nick Sepre, New Labor Forum

On March 1, 2018, the Pew Research Center issued two reports on generational demographics in the United States. The first report is a set of parameters: Pew announced new boundary years for each generation because it had “become clear to us that it’s time to determine a cutoff point between millennials and the next generation.” Millennials, by their new measure, were born between generations “are now as wide as they have been in decades.” Millennials were more willing than older generations to acknowledge the continuing existence of racism, expressed more positive attitudes about immigrants, were less militaristic and nationalistic, and were more likely to support a “bigger government” that provided health care and welfare.

Second Attempt Crossing
By Javier Zamora, New Labor Forum

In the middle of that desert that didn’t look like sand
and sand only,
in the middle of those acacias, whiptails, and coyotes, someone yelled
“¡La Migra!” and everyone ran.
In that dried creek where forty of us slept, we turned to each other,
And you flew from my side in the dirt.

Black-throated sparrows and dawn
Hitting the tops of mesquites.
Against the herd of legs,

You sprinted back towards me,
I jumped on your shoulders,

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