A wonderful, hopeful article. A summary:

"In previous years, dissatisfaction led to inaction," said Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, the director of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts.

GenZ was woken up earlier

But in 2018, with the March For Our Lives, "fed-up" members of GenZ took action in numbers, leading to the highest voter turnout in a quarter century during the 2018 midterms.

"Jaclyn Corin had gone through active shooter drills and classroom evacuation plans. But she was still shocked when one of the deadliest school shootings in history took place in her own community.

"Corin, then 17, survived the Marjory Stoneman Douglas School Shooting in Parkland, Florida, in 2018. Seeing her school's name alongside other locations of tragic mass shootings -- Columbine School, Sandy Hook Elementary School, and the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado -- would define the rest of her life.

Traumatized by gun violence in America

"We were the generation that grew up post-9/11 in a country filled with violence," said Corin, who is one of the founding members of March For Our Lives, a student-run gun violence prevention organization founded in the wake of the Parkland shooting.

"Born between the years of 1996 and 2010, GenZers have grown up in an era where gun violence is frequent, immigration is a hotly debated topic and the deteriorating climate is acknowledged as a crisis. They are now coming of age during a global pandemic that is disproportionately affecting black and brown communities, and as protesters take to the streets to call out racism and police brutality.

"One in 10 eligible voters this November will be a member of GenZ.

"Certain members of GenZ, including Corin, are adamant that the time for revolution -- in the streets, online and at the polls -- is now. They believe that they are uniquely positioned to affect change because of social media and the way it unites the generation."

The most racially and ethnically diverse generation yet

" Some experts suggested that GenZ is particularly accepting because of the way that diversity has been normalized within their generation since birth.

"That is part of the reason they've been filled with so much empathy," John Della Volpe, director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School's Institute of Politics, told CNN.

"And while GenZers have grown up in an increasingly more diverse environment, they have also come of age amid political division and violence."

'We are the social media revolution'

Henry Jenkins, a communications professor at the University of Southern California and the author "By Any Media Necessary: The New Activism," told CNN, using the March For Our Lives as an example.

Jenkins noted that while the March For Our Lives movement began in an affluent, mostly white community in Florida, March For Our Lives organizers made the effort to connect with members of the Black Lives Matter movement, and those who face police violence and gun violence in their everyday life as the movement went national.

"We are able to amplify ourselves," said Nia White, a 17-year-old growing up in Brooklyn, NY. "We are in the social media stage where it's like, everyone is for everyone. Whether it's on Facebook, Instagram, etc. we make sure these messages go viral. This movement is more than me. It's more than any of us now. It's worldwide now."

Photos: Global Climate Strike organized by teenagers. I arrived early at the school. Waiting for school buses to arrive. Kids from elementary to college-age marched. Sept. 2019.

[cnn.com]