Freeing millennials from nervous bystanders: their parents

When I realized I had nothing to do in June and August, I decided to canvass with my friends to inform people about the new voter ID law and see how many people needed help getting IDs. To get an accurate snapshot of Durham, I chose to canvass the 8th precinct, an economically and racially diverse area centered on Morehead Montessori. As my goal was nonpartisan, my group was, too. Voter education is a universal aim, or at least it should be.

My family is rather political: I tagged along as my father canvassed for Obama in 2008, I volunteered for David Price in 2012 and I canvassed and registered voters for Kay Hagan last year. So I was shocked that many of my friends’ parents objected to their children canvassing with me.

They all objected on safety grounds. I can understand how parents might be nervous at first. The idea of having your child knock on doors can be worrisome, although Girl Scouts do it all the time. Then, however, they rejected the idea because of the neighborhood. Although it is a moderately poor area, it is a house-proud and safe neighborhood. Furthermore, when canvassing in a more economically prosperous and stable part of the precinct was suggested, it, too, was rejected on safety grounds.

In one case, racial violence was the concern. Unfortunately, this is a real threat, although not in a historically black, mixed-race neighborhood with an African-American teenager and whiter-than-Wonder Bread teenager working side-by-side.

There has been a lot of talk about how millennials aren’t politically involved (18-to-29-year-olds made up 13 percent of the electorate in 2014 while they are 16.8 percent of the population). There has also been much talk about “helicopter” or overprotective parenting. But there has been little overlap in these two related discussions.

There is a massive problem with being too cautious, and that is when being too cautious prevents us from doing good in the world. As Malala Yousafzai said, “Sometimes we wait for others and think that Martin Luther should raise among us, Nelson Mandela should raise up among us and speak for us, but we never realize that they are normal humans like us – and that if we step forward we can also bring change just like them.”

To canvass is to take these matters into your own hands, to roll up your sleeves and get involved in the most important process in the world: the political one. It is to raise up the people, to get them to take a stand, to help them make the decisions that affect them. There is no more righteous, noble or patriotic a task, and it is one that teens should be encouraged to do, not prevented from doing.

It is natural for parents to be nervous when their children are in a place they have never been before. But what is natural is not always what is right. Parents cannot and must not let it control their lives or the lives of their children.

Every person has a role to play in the world. Every person has the capacity for greatness, the capacity to do good in the world. Those who do not go out and do good fail to do so not because they are bad people or different from those who do. They fail to do so because they allow the nervous bystanders in their heads to shout down their bolder actors. And so, dear parents, to you I ask, to you I beg, do not become another nervous bystander in your child’s head. In this day and age they already have enough of those.

This story was originally published July 3, 2015 at 1:25 PM with the headline "Freeing millennials from nervous bystanders: their parents."