Ticked off millennials are taking on the Democrats

[thucythucy]

47. I think your view of the past

is a little rose-colored.

"...low paid, part time, contract jobs" sounds like the first two or more decades of my adult life. Strong unions? I worked mostly in human services--there were NO unions. Now there's the SEIU (of which I'm a proud member) organizing state and private human service workplaces. Back then there were NO benefits, including no sick time, no health insurance, no paid vacation time. I spent several years working in a residential facility (I won't honor the place by calling it a "school&quot for severely, multiply disabled kids. Staff--paid minimum wage or just over--often had to bring in at their own expense items like toilet paper, shampoo, soap, deodorant, or see the kids do without.

"...decent education was a reliable ticket..." Hardly. I had a BA magna cum, my first four jobs were minimum wage, sometimes more than one job at a time to make ends meet. My degree still counts for shit...glad I went to college though.

Add in that gender discrimination was legal, sexual harassment at the workplace almost a given (with no legal recourse), a well locked closet for LGBT folks, intense racism... Racism remains I think the most intractable problem, and yet Bernie has had the most trouble, it seems to me, enlisting support in the minority communities.

Finally, as a person with a disability myself, I wouldn't trade today for the pre-ADA world for anything. That was a real revolution. Prior to the ADA, wheelchair access, braille signage, interpreter services for Deaf people -- all were either nonexistent or provided at the "charitable" whim of an employer or agency. Imagine being Deaf, unable to speak or read lips, and finding yourself in an emergency room trying to understand what was happening. Imagine using a wheelchair and being absolutely unable to leave your own home for lack of access, or being twenty-something and having to spend your life in a nursing home because outside access was non-existent.

I'm not saying younger people today don't have significant problems, and that older generations don't bear any responsibility (just as the generations that preceded mine were derelict in their own ways). But to imply that life back then was a bed of roses for the majority of people--especially non-white, non-able-bodied, non-straight non-males--is simplification to the point of dangerous distortion.

Not to mention, if you or anyone else thinks any of your problems will be addressed by a Trump presidency, well, what can I say? Delusions like that have a very nasty way of biting one in the proverbial ass.

Best wishes.