This article is a follow-up to an earlier Berkeley Political Review article entitled “Blue Generation: Gen Z and the Democratic Party.” In the 2024 presidential election, Democratic candidate Kamala Harris underperformed President Joe Biden’s vote share in 2020 nationally by three percentage points. Harris’ underperformance is more striking when looking at individual states, even states […]
Tag: youth
Silencing Knowledge: The Ignorance Behind Book Bans
At the age of four, we are sent off into an entirely new world filled with education. We move grade to grade, learning about our passions and eventually what we want to do in life, largely credited to the content we digest and are given in classrooms. However, children of the new generation and those […]
“Stairway To Heaven” is Our Generation’s Political Anthem
We all know Led Zeppelin. 1970s British band. Founders of hard rock. Oh: and political commentators. Well, not exactly. Compared to their peers, Led Zeppelin generally avoided political themes in their songwriting. Pink Floyd decried all war with “Us and Them,” the Beatles critiqued Communist China in “Revolution,” and the Rolling Stones’ “Street Fighting Man” […]
Blue Generation: Gen Z and the Democratic Party
By a two-to-one margin, young voters (between the ages of 18 and 29) backed the Democratic Party in the 2022 midterm elections. This significant split for the Democrats, coupled with the second-highest turnout among the 18-29 age bloc in a midterm election, played an essential role in avoiding an expected and historically-consistent wave of losses […]
Amber Guyger: A Symptom of White Supremacy in American Policing
By now, almost everyone has heard the infuriating details of the murder of Botham Jean. As off-duty police officer Amber Guyger tells it, she mistakenly walked into Jean’s apartment and shot him dead, thinking him an intruder in her apartment. The idea that an African American man can be sitting idly in his own home, […]
The (Limited) Case for Lowering the Voting Age
With a national walkout attracting 3,130 schools and a March For Our Lives rally which gathered hundreds of thousands of people, the momentum for gun control reform after Parkland seems unprecedented. Yet what is most perplexing to people is not how this movement came to be, but who it is spearheaded by. It’s not politicians, […]
America’s ADHD Nation
Image source: The Japan Times After a summer filled with doping scandals, barred athletes, and the Rio Olympics, Russian hackers exposed American gymnast Simone Biles in September for taking prohibited medication during the games. No scandal came of the revelation because the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) pre-approved Biles of her Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) medication. […]
The Young and the Homeless
Written by Marine Chalons As the busiest street in Berkeley, Telegraph Avenue is a window into two worlds. Everyday thousands of students march up the street until it dead-ends in Sproul Plaza, where the nation’s finest public university awaits them. But to others of the similar age, Telegraph is not part of the daily commute. […]