ArcaMax

It was the first year millennials ended up as a Halloween costume. There were tights with boots, oversized hats, scarves, statement necklaces that may or may not have included an owl. They called the outfits "Millennial optimism."

Us millennials docked points for wearing jeans that hung in any sort of way aside from being a skin-like peel.

The costume became a reflection on the morning of Nov. 4, when I woke up to a video of a representative of Gen Z explaining that if voting felt like this in 2008, they might understand our optimism a little better.

I understood what she meant. In 2008, I was young enough to believe that electing Barack Obama meant the country had turned a corner. We had helped make history. We could change things. Hope felt like a reasonable response to the evidence in front of us.

My millennial optimism is there, but it's buried under the weight of what we've been dealing with, and it's going to take some shovels of work to get it back out. As a whole, we have spent the last decade burying it under years of political chaos and institutional cowardice: the daily assault on democratic norms, the people who were supposed to stand up and didn't, the steady lowering of expectations until basic decency started to look like an ambitious platform.

And yet, we kept trying. In fact, more millennials started getting into politics, like me.

This weekend, I'm meeting with constituents at a neighborhood watch meeting. In her email confirming the meeting, the resident said she wanted to learn "what things I oversee and what types of issues you can help with."

It's a fair question, and the honest answer is that I don't oversee as much as people might think. City government is policy made in tandem with other people, through a process. I am not able to fix a street single-handedly because someone brings it to my attention.

However, I did get our Public Works department crew to pull some weeds through a pointed request. That sounds small, and it is. But if it's an area we want to highlight as an opportunity, clearing the weeds is the very least we can do. Can't argue against that.

Sometimes, it's the little things

Generally, the lack of knowledge of how the government works breeds disillusionment, especially when we imagine a role has more levers than it actually does. We expect one elected official to make a problem disappear, and when they can't, plenty of people then conclude the whole system is useless when that doesn't happen. The harder truth is that change usually takes more people, more time, and more persistence than the job title suggests.

But there are levers. Democrats won control of both chambers of Congress. They can investigate, block bad appointments, challenge abuses of power, and put forward a vision for what the government can do for the people. We want universal healthcare. We want ICE dismantled. I want Democrats to say plainly what they believe people are owed, then fight for it with the urgency they brought to winning these seats.

Our own urgency shouldn't be stilled either. Two days after the election, I called my senators and told them to get rid of Chuck Schumer as a leader. To be sure, one constituent call will not rearrange the Senate, but winning does not mean they can keep doing business as usual.

I am relieved Democrats won; I am also waiting to see what they do with the power they've been given. Even if some of us can't summon the old Hope and Change feeling on command, we can insist that a win should lead somewhere. Together in this wave, we should not stop paying attention, because we expect them to earn the hope people handed them to see the change they want.

Cassie McClure is a writer, millennial, and unapologetic fan of the Oxford comma. She can be contacted at cassie@mcclurepublications.com. To learn more about Cassie McClure and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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