Conventions. Millennialussion on women and their impact in the electoral politics. Actress and director Amber Tamblyn was among the speakers at the panel hosted by the atlantic and fashion website refinery29. This is 35 minutes. Hi, good afternoon. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the atlantic us cocktail caucus with refinery29. Thank all for being here. I hope youre having a good time this week, getting enough to treat and eat. Ner. D family emily lenz risingic is young women and the focus, Millennial Women. Perhaps of an older generation, refinery29 is a digital destination designed to help Millennial Women live, in their words, a stylish, creative, and inspired life. Millennials are a pretty big topic these days, as i think we can agree, and its no wonder they are currently the largest share of the current generation, surpassing baby boomers. Today, we are talking specifically about young women and the expectations they can have a pretty Significant Impact on this election. We have a great panel for you, willf course, we hope you tweet, facebook, instagram, snap chat, whatever it takes, and the theatlanticdnv. The executive director and founding staff member of a national nonprofit, which focuses on empowering young women with information. Pressley was first elected to the Boston City Council in 2009, becoming the first woman of color ever elected to the council. Joining us is actress amber templin, who starred in the sisterhood of the traveling pants movies and appeared on the hit Television Shows to an a half men and house after getting her start on General Hospital actress Amber Tamblyn. Guiding todays discussion, refinery29 plus executive editor forde,al news, kaelyn atlanticxec the Senior Editor alex wagner. Wagner as far as i know, the champagne is still flowing. For us t total is on stage, we can have chardonnay when were done. In the next hour or two, Hillary Clinton is going to be nominated as the first female to lead a major american political party. I think there could be no more relevant backdrop against which to discuss women in politics, specifically young women, so i want to start with one factoid from this election season that has stuck out glaringly to me among others, and that is the gulf among women in terms of who young women support and who older women have supported. Younger women in particular have overwhelmingly supported Bernie Sanders, and that has given rise to a whole conversation about why. So let me pose that question to you. Ever, maybe i can start with you. What was that all about . Tamblyn is this panel three and a half hours . Ms. Wagner its actually seven. Tamblyn theres so many aspects to this, and it has to roxane feminism or as gay would call it, that feminism. Women who hate their identity, people who believe they deserve more, people who believe they deserve less. There is such a conflicting experience with the female experience, and i think so much of it has to do with, you know, a lot of the older generations are seeing something and are probably more used to having hillary around and have seen her time,longer period of have seen her successes, her mistakes, all of it, so they have made a longerterm judgment towards her that i think younger women have not really experienced yet. Has a lot to do with the divide between the two and both sides are, as we have seen, extremely passionate about what they believe in and he each side sees both what they hate, and what they love, what they urine, what they hunger for. Yearn, what they hunger for. Wagner theres a debate about what feminism means. Do you think it is different for older women and younger women . I think it is different for every woman. We continue to talk about any constituencies or groups as a monolith and define them by one issue. If you just look at millennials as a continuum of millennial experience and how diverse that is and what a wide bandwidth that is, yes, there are millennials that are very concerned about college being affordable, but in the same bandwidth, there are for loanls looking forgiveness who have already gone to college. There is an incredible complexity and diversity that needs to be unpacked, and we have got to do a better job at challenging elected officials and media to not talk about any to make a monolith and sure that the diversity of our stories and narratives are being told. I want to know what is happening women,ack millennial. Rans Millennial Women i want to know the totality of that experience. We are missing that diversity of andy and narrative, campaigns will engage us as a monolith and around one issue. Mishory i think to that point, about 30 of millennials are young parents. When we are talking about the wide range of issues facing young people, we did talk about issues facing students, and student debt is a huge issue, do not get me wrong. It is incredibly important for young women for a variety of reasons that i can get into, but also issues around family economic security, young women starting to think about having a family or already have those are millennials. Those are young folks now. If i could add one more thing when we talk about , africanl young women american, asian, latina Millennial Women supported hillary more because their issues are different, and i think that goes to the point about the diversity and the tendency to speak about millennials not only as a monolith but ignore the fact that they are the most diverse community. And im from generation x. I think i am the oldest person of here. That may or may not be true. I look older than you. The experience, and it goes to the conversation about identity and community for a lot of these young women, college is not even on the table because they are struggling to get to through the School Systems they existed in where college did not become an opportunity. In the no resonance conversation about college debt. I think it is always important for us to not only unpacked but to be very thoughtful about the fact that the medial millennials as upwardly mobile is not representative of a vast population, and because of that, we have to have a much more complex conversation about not only feminism because i think that is part of it, but how they live that in their lives and political choices. Ms. Forde the bureau of labor statistics shows the average millennial is living with a partner and does not have a bachelors degree. Candidatesow can like Hillary Clinton speak to that vast and interesting experience that millennials have rather than seeing them as that monolithic group . What do they need to do . Be abrams i think it would by starting to have conversations about where people where we would like them to be. I am from the south and we actually are. We exist. And we vote for hillary this year. Fight for 15 is a wonderful soundbite, but it is difficult in right to work states where we can barely get them to above 5. 25, which is georges actual minimum wage 5. 15. There has to be a conversation about the exact issues facing them. Someone like ayanna who has the ability to talk in boston about the issues endemic to the boston community. Elected officials have to speak, basically take hillarys message and in still it to the communities we can reach. Our responsibility as elected officials is to know those issues and be able to create a resident conversation. Ms. Mishory young women role in college at higher rates but might be facing higher debt burdens to pay back their loans when they are not earning as much and what we found in a lot of our research is the folks that are struggling the most with didnt debt are folks who actually did not complete that bachelors agree. When we talk about issues, if you really nuanced, did not complete, getting back on track, so it is again thinking about the nuance of what people are facing. Ms. Pressley i would also add that while there is this effort to engage this constituency, it does have to do with this being a transactional relationship. If there was not the ceiling or haveata supporting i been in government for 23 years. Young professionals this was not a constituency that we worked to engage, by which i mean the establishment, so to speak, because it was a flux demographic. It was incredibly unpredictable. Engage with canvassing and on social media and on so many different platforms, but it was an unreliable case the truancy. Very inconsistent in terms of. Urning out at the polls ultimately, if you want to know how we ensure the voices of all millennials are being heard and that campaigns and candidates are doing their Due Diligence and addressing people in their totality and not reducing them gs andicatures and hashta one issue, we need millennials at every level to engage and vote. People are quick to refer to the generation of discontent, and i dont know that that is necessarily a bad link. Sometimes it is that discontent, t being uncomfortable its not apathy. They are so informed they are disenchanted. Ms. Wagner i know exactly what youre talking about in terms of spending capital on young people. Do you think this election has changed that perception . Especially with Bernie Sanders anyway he has been able to thevate young voters and narrative that they will come to a protest, but on november 8, they will probably not show up for you has that changed with this last campaign . i just came from the Youth Council caucus you Council Caucus sorry, a gathering of young people at the convention center, and what struck me was and i am a member of the much vilified media. I think we have gotten a significant part of it wrong when we talk about young people. Here was a gathering of young people. Many were burning senders supporters. They had taken to the streets. They had been part of the call and response of Bernie Sanders at large rallies, but they also understood that Hillary Clinton was the nominee and in order to sort of move the ball forward on a host of issues, they would not only have to vote for her but ultimately become some part of that institution that they. Nderstand so much of the youthful indignation is founded on outsider status. Is that changing . Can we get more young people to actually be in office and not just vote for people in office . Mblyn oh, yeah. I think what everyone has said on this panel so far is right on. Na speakswhat ayan about. A great example is i will bring this up quickly, the idea of white feminism and the idea of white women taking care of imr white women my age 33 in my community and not really looking at what other women in my community that are well and alled as supporting each other and rising to the occasion together. Because i call myself a minority as a woman, it does not mean i am actually seeing the larger issues, the bigger ofues, and i think so much that being disenfranchised or angry and why so many of my friends my age of color were for of ae sanders was because lot of that feeling, feeling like originally hillary had left. Hem out they were feeling that anger and frustration, which spoke to, again, a larger level of, like, inclusion and talking about what everyone needs. I think there is a real sense of women want a say, Millennials Want a say, but they are rounding up and all women are for women and we are supporting each other and that is what citizen is, but sometimes the actions do not reflect that. I have seen a lot of change in that regard, and because i am even sitting here talking about it right now, that is so important. That is such a big, important step to the next place that allows us all to go. Even though we come from different backgrounds as women, we can all get behind the same candidate or the same idea because now we are all being representative. We are actually all being cared for and what you need as the ritual types of women within the community of womanhood. Yes, and im glad you are using the word community. I have great hope for our future because what i see in millennials is the recognition of intersection alley. If you look at movements like black lives matter or the green movement, activism around Climate Change and those issues when you are in these meeting spaces, they are incredibly diverse, so i am very encouraged that we are acknowledging our destinies are tied. I think ultimately what needs to happen is we have to support transitionings in from activism into policy so that we can see real systemic and sustainable change. Mishory when young people are registered to vote, they actually turn out at a similar rate as older voters, so i think there is a lot of be done around the structures of voting so people can engage in a traditional way. I think that will impact that engagement as well. Can i ask you a sort of engagement question . Im assuming that if your subset of the electorate votes more often and you are more of a participant in the democracy, you are more likely to actually run for office. Is that accurate . Ms. Mishory i dont know that. I do think if young people are voting and more engaged, their elected officials will pay more attention. We do a lot of work with how young people are engaging, showing up at their congressmans district office, talking about the issues they are facing. We actually go through advocate training. The other people we work with our thrilled. They want to be engaged. They want to be showing up. No one has ever walked us through a process of how to do that. That is something we worked a lot on and i think there needs to be more work done on that. Ms. Tamblyn i remember i worked the polls not like that. Not like that. Took you a minute, alex. 17, i did the sign in, which was all i could do. I could not vote yet, but im a member sitting there, marking off peoples names in los angeles at the precinct where i was working and thinking that this seems so terrifying. How does someone sign up for this . There is so much information and i think that is a real fear as well, the sense of how you even begin. There is so much language about voter disenfranchisement and all of the scary things that come with that, like i will not be able to vote like going to walk in and someone will be like, did you know there is a warrant for your arrest . Abrams if theres that much anxiety around voting, how about deciding to run . Talk about the motives and the catalyst around that. Ms. Pressley i grew up in a family that was very politically i grewd ms. Abrams up in a family that was very politically motivated. We were working poor, and i grew for my system that pay parents to go to college and also kept them from being able to achieve things that they should have been able to be achieving. My parents were very involved in the community. Found them deeply inefficient. Inefficient. For me, the conversation was how you maximize this effort, and i actually started out wanting to be a bureaucrat, not to be in politics. I was a lawyer for politicians. The more i did that job, the more i realized you needed someone who actually worked for government to run for office. The nexus of politics and policy required that you know how policy works. Too often, people who are in successive offices, who unlike has neverke ayanna had to do the work, or in my case, understanding that is not the end of the story but the beginning. But the idea you have to put and have experience to get to the highest office in the land that is not particularly invoked in some crowds right now. I let a program that train young people of color to do campaigns, to do finance, to do communication, to be campaign directors. Part of it is reaching out to millennials and showing how to demystify the system so they can understand it. If you can do this job, you can do that job. To ambers point, we did the research for Voter Registration that i was part of an found that it is not apathy. The biggest reason for people not to vote is fear of the process. It is making sure that young people understand the process are engaged in every facet so they can demystify it for their colleagues. That also helps encourage their families to vote. The best predictor of a voter is if their parents vote. Pressley i was going to say, speaking of intersection analogy, one of the other things i find encouraging, without in one widelennials swath is i do see more of that inequality. City visiting schools often, and i will always anda student what they do, i say i help people and if anyone wants to guess, you people are in boston, the girls hands do not go up and all the boys hence shoot up and they fivesay like 2 billion, thousand. Boys are not afraid to be wrong. If you need any further confirmation of that, look at donald trump. He really does not care, right . Boys are not afraid to be wrong. Girls and women do not want to be wrong, and that is a barrier to them running for office. An entitlement does not have to be a bad word. We have negatively connotative it does not have to be a bad word. Girls and women do not operate with that same sense of entitlement, so we will see an 18yearold young man that will challenge and entrenched incumbent and a 28yearold, 32yearold woman who has raised the dead children, who served on multiple boards, who has been in service of a Community Women run on a cause and a mission, and i do not want to cast aspersions, but men usually run on resume. I am encouraged that within millennials, i do see that greater equality. They see young women do not suffer from the same level of intimidation. They feel an entitlement to the same opportunities. Ms. Forde what are the tools we need to give young women . Well, we have a big group. What do we need to give them in terms of building campaigns and making that groundwork . Talk about up and down the ballot, too. Everybody wants to be the quarterback on the super bowl day, but it is really important to look at local offices also and have women of and down that spectrum. First and foremost, it is not rocket science. You have seen politicians. My younger sister came to visit somed said it was like people want to wrassle. Foremost, demystifying the complexity of the job. Your job is to read, ask questions, make decisions. We do that every day. The second point, though, is money. Women are afraid to ask people to give us money. You dont get to keep it, so do not be afraid. If you do keep it, you should be afraid because you will be serving five to 10. That means that women have to understand, especially Millennial Women, it is not that expensive. I