<\/a>Standing in the rain outside a polling place today, touting my spouse\/candidate for U.S. Congress–Arthur Lieber– I struck up a conversation with a young guy doing the same for two other Democrats–Tracy McCreery and Jill Schupp. His name is Rasheen Aldridge, and he was a ray of sunshine on a wet Election Day.<\/p>\n

We talked for more than an hour, only stopping when the occasional voter showed up. It took only a few minutes for me to realize how remarkable this 20-year-old really is. And, if there are a lot more young people like him, a cynical old liberal like me can feel some renewed hope for the future.<\/p>\n

We covered a lot of territory in our conversation. I learned that Rasheen has been fascinated by and engaged in politics for a long time. His mother ran\u2014twice\u2014for a seat on the City of St. Louis\u2019 Board of Alderman, but lost. As a young teenager, Rasheen knocked on doors for her and helped out at the polls. I learned that, when he was just 8 or 9 years old, he found himself fascinated with vote counts, public-opinion polls and statistics that revealed political trends. By the time he was a teenager, he was already a political wonk.<\/p>\n

More recently, he has helped organize minimum wage protests among fast-food workers. Last year, he lost his job at Jimmy John\u2019s sandwich chain\u2014presumably, he says, because of his political activism. He was fired for being three minutes late to work\u2014an infraction that is not supposed to result in termination, unless you\u2019ve been written up for similar violations three times, he noted. People rallied around him and staged protests to try to get Jimmy John\u2019s to reinstate him, and that\u2019s when he met one of the Democratic candidates for whom he was poll-watching \u2014Tracy McCreery, who stood by him at one of the protests. \u201cThat meant a lot to me,\u201d he said<\/p>\n

Now, his early obsession with politics is evolving into a course of study: He\u2019s a student at St. Louis Community College, where he\u2019s working toward a major in\u2014naturally\u2014political science. He\u2019s conversant with a lot of political issues: We talked about Claire McCaskill, Todd Akin\u2019s 2012 \u201clegitimate rape\u201d gaffe, the sad prospect of a Republican takeover of the U.S. Senate, and the unfair, biased coverage of Barack Obama\u2019s presidency.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think some people think Ebola is just another name for Obama,\u201d joked Rasheen.<\/p>\n

He gets it. He gets what politics is about, and what voting is about. He gets it in a way that too many younger citizens don\u2019t, and that older activists\u2014as much as we hammer away at it, have trouble getting across\u2014because we\u2019re\u2026.old. He\u2019s working the polls, said Rasheen, because \u201cpolitics has an impact on our lives,\u201d adding that the people we elect make laws that affect everything we do\u2014and too many people just don\u2019t see that.<\/p>\n

I love hearing that from a young person.<\/p>\n

But what really got me about Rasheen was what he told me about his engagement in local issues\u2014specifically, the situation in Ferguson, MO. He doesn\u2019t live in Ferguson. But he cares, and he\u2019s doing something positive about it. He told me that he has been in Ferguson for almost all of the 80 days since the Michael Brown\/Darren Wilson incident, attending peaceful demonstrations and trying to raise awareness of the injustices of the current police and courts system.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s president of a group called Young Activists United, which is trying to get African-American students engaged in the political process. Right now, in anticipation of whatever announcement comes out of the St. Louis County grand jury\u2019s investigation of the Darren Wilson case, he\u2019s leading the group\u2019s effort to stage peaceful demonstrations after the announcement. As we spoke, he took several phone calls from people wanting to know where the next meeting was, how to get the word out, and what the next step was going to be. [Yes, I eavesdropped a little. Sorry.]<\/p>\n

Spending that hour or so with Rasheen was the best part of my day. I can only hope that there are a lot of other Rasheens out there, doing the political trench-work, not giving up, staying engaged, using their considerable energy, intelligence and talent to effect change, encouraging others to join up, and pushing for a better system. My generation tried, but from the looks of things on Nov. 4, 2014, essentially failed.<\/p>\n

Rasheen\u2019s story tells me that the torch has been passed and is in good hands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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