Gen Z wants you to take political action, one TikTok at a time

Endless Thread

WBUR

Reddit, Technology

4.2 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 24 May 2024

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Gen Z is over it. The youngest generation of adults is inheriting a climate crisis, the ongoing fallout from a global pandemic, a polarized political landscape, and a tenuous economic reality. And many Gen Z members, a generation more likely to identify as progressive than conservative, are ready for something to give.

Enter: Gen Z for Change — a youth-led non-profit that brands itself as, "the place where the creator economy and progressive politics intersect on social media." The group leverages a hundreds-deep network of social media creators to spread calls to action over TikTok. They've also pulled on the programming expertise within their team to develop a caché of semi-automatic tools that take the guesswork out of engaging with their political agenda.

Their latest tool, "Ceasefire Now!!" takes these efforts one step further — resulting in, by Gen Z for Change's count, two million emails calling for a ceasefire in Gaza hitting the inboxes of elected representatives in Washington every day.

Show notes:

Gen Z for Change website
Is Gen Z Switching Political Direction? Not So Fast. (PRRI, 2024)
Gen Z for Change's Latest Action Sparked a Shift in How Yelp Handles Anti-Abortion Crisis Pregnancy Centers (Teen Vogue, 2022)
Kellogg says it will permanently replace striking employees (NPR, 2021)

Transcript

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0:39.8	W-B-U-R Podcasts, Boston.
0:47.0	Producer Kagan.
0:51.0	Producer Caitlin Herrup, Bringer of Tunnel Girl Stories,
0:56.0	purveyor of accounts we don't yet know of,
0:58.0	you are back on the Tik-Tock beat.
1:00.0	Yes, I am.
1:02.0	And what, pray tell, have you brought endless thread today?
1:05.0	Today, I bring you a story of political influence, online hijinks, of mass mobilization, and it's all from a place then where I spend a lot of time
1:16.3	You do not and that would be should we say it together
1:20.2	Tik-Tah! That's right. But it's not at all in the way you might expect.
1:26.2	I like this way of describing it because there is some mischief in this story but
1:30.8	there's also some good old- right into your Congress person to get them to
1:36.0	better represent you and in this story these two efforts are kind of connected.
1:41.2	Yeah they are and one sort of in many ways leads to the other.
	...

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