The Andrew ‘Yang Gang’ – Boomers and Millennials are natural allies

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month modern

Month of Modern sponsored a panel discussing “Are Millennials Killing the Suburbs?” The panel was moderated by Jill Grano.

Turns out Baby Boomers and Millennials have more in common than they think.

The other night I had a big “AHA” moment about presidential candidate Andrew Yang after listening to a panel discussion called “Are Millennials Killing the Suburbs?”

Yang is the Millennial guy who caught a bunch of flack from the mainstream cable TV talking heads for wearing an open collar during the first candidate debate.

He went on to own that criticism and there haven’t been any comments about it since.

I’m working on a co-living project that consists of co-op and cohousing on a very small site that encourages alternative transport modes like walking, bicycles, and mass transit. My colleague and I – we’re both Baby Boomers – were interested in what a panel of  Millennial architectural and design professionals would have to say about, not only their housing choices, but also their lives.

The panel discussion was organized by Month of Modern.

The suburban home has served as an important cultural icon in this country since its inception post WWII. It has held its place as an aspirational staple of the American dream. However, as millennials enter their peak home buying years, they are becoming homeowners later and at lower rates.

  • How has growing up in the 21st century affected this generation’s idea of the American dream, its desirability, and its achievability?
  • As the largest generation in US history, how will this affect our cities?
  • As designers, how should we rethink our work as well as and the structure of our workplaces? Baby boomers and Generation X have undeniably propelled the profession into the 21st century, but millennials will soon set the prevailing culture of both the workforce and built environment.

There were frustrations expressed by the panel members about the American Dream. They have chosen to redefine the American Dream and live in smaller spaces closer to their places of work. Those criteria were high priorities, particularly because, while all had pretty good jobs, were faced with other expenses like college debt and consumer debt – having to pay for food and rent with credit cards.

Enter entrepreneur Andrew Yang.

Yang is the only non-politician who has gained enough traction to stay on the Democratic candidate debate stage. Now I know why he is gaining so much traction.

andrew yang

I didn’t get Andrew Yang’s Universal Basic Income plan to distribute $1,000 to everyone over 18 years old, until I heard a panel of Millennials discuss reinventing the American Dream.

Yang’s plan to provide a monthly stipend to everyone 18 or older wasn’t particularly named during the discussion, but one Millennial panelist said that an extra $1,000 per month would be a welcomed hedge to help make ends meet without having to take on another part-time gig.

I didn’t quite understand Yang’s guaranteed income plan until I listened in on this panel discussion about how times are changing.

Here’s what Yang says, “By 2015, automation had already destroyed four million manufacturing jobs, and the smartest people in the world now predict that a third of all working Americans will lose their jobs to automation in the next 12 years. Our current policies are not equipped to handle this crisis. Even our most forward-thinking politicians are unprepared.

Demographics of Debt

These data are a little dated, but show how Yang’s Freedom Dividend will level the playing field as the size of the middle class continues to dwindle.

“As technology improves, workers will be able to stop doing the most dangerous, repetitive, and boring jobs.

“This should excite us, but if Americans have no source of income – no ability to pay for groceries, buy homes, save for education, or start families with confidence – then the future could be very dark. Our labor participation rate now is only 62.7 percent, lower than it has been in decades, with 1 out of 5 working-age men currently out of the workforce.

“This will get much worse as self-driving cars and other technologies come online. This basic income, funded by a simple Value Added Tax, would guarantee that all Americans benefit from automation, not just big companies.

“An additional $1,000 a month would provide money to cover the basics for Americans while enabling us to look for a better job, start a business, go back to school, take care of loved ones or work toward our next opportunity.”

Getting too far down into the weeds about funding and so forth will divert away from the premise and the needs that arise from the changing economy.

What do Baby Boomers and Millennials have in common? In 2012, data show that both generations have the highest debt loads – over 65 years, $9,300.00; and 25 to 34 years $10,400.00.

Both generations are trying to get by on less. Baby Boomers have the most accumulated and inherited wealth largely tied up in big suburban homes that they can’t sell as they downsize and enter the last third of their lives. Millennials are downsizing also, but out of necessity largely because of high levels of debt and untimely cash flow.

Some can’t afford to move out of their parent’s basements.

Boomers and Millennials should be natural allies. Andrew Yang may be the guy who can find that common ground.

1. Where were you?

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ground zero 2001

The Yankees hosted the Arizona Diamondbacks for games 3 to 5 in the 2001 World Series that was delayed because of the attacks on September 11th, a little more than a month earlier. I went to two of the games and visited “ground zero” in October 2001.

It was an unusually hot day in September. I must have been in a hurry because I didn’t bother to turn on the Today Show or the Morning Edition on Colorado Public Radio while getting ready for my commute to work in Denver.

This particular morning I took the Regional Transportation District (RTD) route 205 bus from the stop near my Boulder condo to the RTD Walnut Street station in downtown Boulder.

The bus stop was next to the convenience store where I stopped most days for a cup of coffee.

“Looks like it’s going to be a good one out there,” I don’t think the dark-skinned clerk understood a word I said about the great weather predicted for the day. He grinned and handed over my change. I clunked a couple cents into the plastic leave-a-penny take-a-penny tray on the counter and cut through the gas pumps to the bus stand.

From the downtown Boulder bus station, few passengers waited to catch the B Express bus to Denver. There’s no free parking. I was okay with transferring from a local bus downtown so as to get the seat of my choice, which was one with extra legroom toward the middle of the cabin a couple rows ahead of where a wheel chair would be parked – similar to the exit row seats on an airplane.

By the time we reached the last Boulder stop at the Table Mesa Park ‘n Ride, the seats were filled with commuters rattling their morning papers, cramming for college classes at the Auraria campus, reading books, listening to music on iPods, catching up on sleep.

This was well before laptops internet hot spots and smartphones. I was one of the few who had a cell phone. It was the size of a small box of Velveeta cheese. I didn’t think to call anyone.

“Did you hear what happened in New York,” the guy sitting to me asked. “No, I hadn’t heard anything.”

“An airplane crashed into one of the Twin Towers,” he said. “No, I hadn’t heard. What kind of plane?” The guy shrugged.

Other passengers murmured about the news and I overheard, “It was a small plane, like a Cessna.” Hmmm, small plane, nothing to see here, folks, and soon we all returned to being immersed in ourselves.

The bus pulled up to a stall in Market Street Station. We disembarked and made our ways up the stairs and escalators to the 16th Street Mall.

My connection on 17th Street was for the eastbound RTD 20 bus that dropped me off near my work in a converted single-family home in an older neighborhood.

I walked up the steps and creaked open the wrought iron screen door before winding my way up the stair case towards my office.

“You can go home if you want,” my boss greeted me at the top of the stairs. “Two planes hit the World Trade Center. There isn’t much more information but all the air traffic is grounded.”

“There was talk on the bus about a plane hitting one of the towers,” I said.

My colleagues had all gone. I had the longest commute to and from Boulder and the last to hear.

I walked back to the bus station and noticed the eerily quiet streets – no car engines, no airplane noise, not many people out and about. When I stood waiting for the light at Broadway and the 16th Street Mall, I glanced up at the Denver World Trade Center that I later learned was a similar target as its namesake in Lower Manhattan.

The bus back to Boulder was a-buzz with rumor, but I didn’t engage.

Braceros, Traqueros: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

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reagan quote immigration

Ronald Reagan signed immigration reform into law in 1986 that was sponsored by former Wyoming US Senator Alan Simpson. The law gave amnesty to 3 million undocumented people.

For the past 150 years, the US government, railroads and agricultural industries welcomed immigrant workers from Mexico. How did they end up coming to the United States in the first place?

Rather than keep immigrants seeking asylum detained, why not give them all temporary visas and put them to work. That’s why they trudged hundreds, if not thousands of miles to America.

I heard there are upwards to 50,000 asylum seekers currently being held around the country awaiting court hearings.

They’re fleeing danger in their homelands, need local sponsors and something to do once they are granted asylum. Anyone who thinks they are going to take their jobs, that’s just hyperbolic race-bait ranting.

What work needs to be done? Here are a couple ideas:

  • Rebuild crumbling roads and bridges
  • Building affordable housing

For the record, I’m not in favor of cutting illegal immigrants any slack. I was an illegal alien and kicked out of Mexico in 1991 for working in Zacatecas on a tourist visa from Jalisco.

My business partner and I were stopped by the federal police, held at machine gun point in the middle of nowhere between a small town of Sombrerete and Fresnillo.

One soldier questioned me in English, my partner in Spanish hoping we would give conflicting stories.

They tossed our pick up truck, groped through my luggage, put everything back and searched again. I think they were looking for drugs. Around this time, the United States and Mexico agreed to stifle cocaine and marijuana traffic. Zacatecas is just south of Colorado.

Luckily for me, they let us go.

I was caught using a Mazatlan tourist visa, but actually working in Zacatecas. I ended up getting my paperwork together and made formal application, along with $97.00 USD and obtained the equivalent of a green card.

A year or so ago, I listened to a presentation by Lu Rocha at a workshop organized by my grad school Center on Domestic Violence at CU-Denver.

She gave a history of the Latino/a/x/ labor force in the United States that dates back to the construction of the transcontinental railroad in the 1800s and propping up the war efforts between 1942 until it’s repeal in 1964.

Immigration issues have been in the news lately. There’s talk of expanding the number of immigrant detention centers in Texas reminiscent of the three war relocation camps set up during World War II to detain and intern Japanese mostly from the West Coast.

daca sign

POTUS 45 repealed DACA put in place by President Obama in 2012 as a stop-gap measure to protect kids of undocumented residents.

The Reagan administration signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986 which heightened border security but also granted amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants. This was a bi-partisan effort led in the US Senate by Wyoming’s Al Simpson.

Red and Blue presidents and congresses failed to act on immigration reform until Obama in his lame duck term issued the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrives (DACA) executive order which cut some slack to kids brought to the US by their undocumented parents. It was a compassionate Band Aid.

POTUS 45 used his bully pulpit, but failed to overturn DACA. Congress continues to be at a standstill, more so now because the House flipped Democratic in 2018.

Immigration reform is a wedge issue for Republicans. They are against immigrants, generally, because of they supposed are “taking of American jobs.” Are all Republicans cleaning toilets, picking beans, or loading dishwashers over at Denny’s in fear of losing their jobs?

At the same time, American business is reliant on immigrant laborers who perform low-end work that regular Americans won’t do which is a throwback to the transcontinental railroad construction and World War II worker shortage.

traqueros

The Transcontinental Railroad was completed by laborers from Mexico.

Traqueros – In 1881 Governor Luis Terrazas of Chihuahua drove a silver spike completing a rail line linking Mexico and United States which allowed immigrants transport to the United States and coincided with the West’s construction of the transcontinental railroad.

Mexicans were the dominant immigrant labor laying track in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Despite low wages compared to their native born coworkers and discrimination, immigrant Mexican laborers became permanent residents, not by law but by fact. By the time of the Great Depression, workers moved to the cities in search of other low-skill work.

Bracero Program

The US Department of Labor and the Immigration and Naturalization Service collaborated on the Bracero Program at the start of World War II. Braceros were allowed in to the US to provide help on farms during wartime.

Braceros – The bracero program (Spanish for manual laborer) began in 1942 and operated as a joint program of the State Department, the Department of Labor, and the Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS), as it was known then, in the Department of Justice.

Laborers from Mexico were promised better living conditions in camps, including housing, meals and toilet facilities. They eventually were paid a minimum wage of 30 cents / hour. The pact also stated that braceros supposedly would not be subjected to discrimination and exclusion from “white-only” areas.

During World War II, the bracero program intention was to fill the labor gap, particularly in agriculture. The program lasted 22 years and offered employment contracts to 5 million braceros in 24 U.S. states—becoming the largest foreign worker program in U.S. history.

The bracero program caused problems on both sides of the border with labor shortages in the northern states in Mexico and resulted in illegal immigrants who remained in the United States. Millions of Mexican Americans attribute their roots to their fathers and grandfathers who crossed the border as braceros.

DACA MASS WALKOUTDACA – Circle back to DACA kids. They are the modern day traquero/a/x and bracero/a/x. They are people who arrived in the United States under the radar as children.

Like the braceros and traqueros, while they should have returned to Mexico, those families have remained – while looking over their shoulders – without documentation and became productive members of their communities.

The DACA kids ended up with high school and college educations, contribute to society in professional jobs, have families of their own with kids in local school systems. They pay taxes and volunteer in their communities.

DACA kids aren’t Manson women who ran underground and assumed new identities.

When the Bracero Program was ended in 1964, the positive outcomes were better working conditions for farm workers thanks to advocacy by activists including Cesar Chavez and Delores Huerta. There were no immigration laws that turned traqueros back to Mexico.

DACA was a short term fix when Obama acted because Congress didn’t. The immigration issue has come full circle from 1986.

Whether Congress and POTUS 45 get their acts together on immigration reform will be a defining moment for the Republicans like it was for Republicans and Ronald Reagan.

Until then let’s figure out how to engage asylum seekers in useful ways while they awaiting their hearings.

simpson reagan signing“We have consistently supported a legalization program which is both generous to the alien and fair to the countless thousands of people throughout the world who seek legally to come to America. The legalization provisions in this act will go far to improve the lives of a class of individuals who now must hide in the shadows, without access to many of the benefits of a free and open society. Very soon many of these men and women will be able to step into the sunlight and, ultimately, if they choose, they may become Americans.” Ronald Reagan on November 6, 1986 upon signing the Immigration Control and Reform Act.