Burriel googled the term, and after reading a summary on Wikipedia, he found himself on the official Democratic Socialists of America website, and then on the page for the national YDSA, the youth-oriented arm of the organization. The more he read about the groups’ goals and core principles—which include platforms for Medicare for All, tuition-free college, and a Green New Deal—the more he liked the sound of democratic socialism. For Burriel, it was that simple: He agreed that health care was a human right, that politicians should take action on climate change, and that cost shouldn’t be a barrier to receiving a college education. Here was a political ideology that reflected all those things.“I’ve also learned about a lot of these problems through Bernie Sanders’s [2020] campaign,” Burriel told me over the phone late last year. When we first spoke, Sanders was still trailing Joe Biden in the polls. “When I looked into the problems, I realized the best solution was democratic socialism.”“When I looked into the problems, I realized the best solution was democratic socialism.”
“Even people as young as high schoolers are dealing with the realities of capitalism and realizing if they stand up and fight against that, they can secure a better future for the next generation.”
“Young people are likely going to be heavily conditioned by the experiences they see their parents going through in a time like this,” she continued. “Many are probably watching their parents go out and expose themselves [to the virus]. Suddenly something like universal health care starts looking like a necessity.”Some teens have already been moving left of prominent democratic socialist politicians like Sanders, whether or not they call themselves socialists. David Oks, an 18-year-old who helped run former presidential candidate Mike Gravel’s 2020 campaign by turning the 89-year-old’s Twitter page into a socialist meme account, said he and many of the young people he knows support the decriminalization of sex work, a policy Sanders has only said is “something that should be considered.” And in the wake of Sanders’ suspended campaign, young people are already looking forward to the candidates who will follow in his footsteps and propose even bolder policies than he did.“Many are probably watching their parents go out and expose themselves [to the virus]. Suddenly something like universal health care starts looking like a necessity.”
Ella Morton, who is Keller’s co-chair on the YDSA coalition and the head of Corvallis High School’s YDSA chapter, said she doesn’t strongly identify with the “economic part” of democratic socialism—that is, the “hardcore theory element of socialism,” she explained to me on the phone one evening, on the day she took the PSAT for the first time. Morton said that while she knows socialism is, at its core, about a struggle for economic justice, what resonates for her most about the political ideology is its emphasis on community bonds. She also told me she’s averse to reading Marx, whom she believes would “ruin democratic socialism” for her.“It’s a lot of white guys who are Marxist socialists,” Morton said. “If I wanted that type of socialism, I would follow Bernie Sanders.” (At the time, Morton supported Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren for president.)Socialism may boil down to a mood, or a structure of feeling, rather than a politics to adopt wholesale, for members of Gen Z. Though they might hold inconsistent positions—as so many of us do—zoomers grasp the core essence of socialism, and are finding that it provides them with an intuitive way of making sense of the world. Viewed in this light, a 15-year-old who is skeptical of Marx and Sanders but identifies with the socialist label isn’t necessarily evidence of the ideology’s dilution: Instead, she might be proof that socialism has become synonymous with a love of justice, and a desire for positive social change.Many zoomers may still find individual socialist policies more attractive than the broader socialist politics that lie underneath. And many more will find little attractive about either. But students who belong to the country’s burgeoning YDSA chapters aren’t demanding their peers’ political purity—mostly, they’re asking their classmates to keep an open mind, and learn alongside them.“What we want is workers to have power and for everyone to be able to live a healthy life without fear of lack of medical care or housing,” Keller said. “Socialism is very popular if you break it down.”Socialism may boil down to a mood, or a structure of feeling, rather than a politics to adopt wholesale, for members of Gen Z.