Watching the new Red Lobster CEO excel at his job and also know how to accept feedback is amazing. As someone who voluntarily left corporate America and read that a lot of Gen Z and Millennials would rather work at a cash register than climb a corporate ladder, it doesn’t surprise me. Young people are exhausted. And to add to that exhaustion, we’re getting paid less to help people who get paid more, and they don’t even know how to work technology. Young people can see the burnout before it happens and just step away. It’s not quitting, it’s respecting their own mental health.

When it comes to politics, baby! In my experience in Pittsburgh last summer as someone who did youth organizing, I know that the youth are not drinking the same Koolaid that was poured and mixed by the generations before them. They saw generations before them struggle after doing what they were told, and somehow the numbers came back conservative or disinterested. I heard so many young voters say they weren’t registered because no matter who they voted for, they would still feel forgotten.

The older people may have organizing experience, but unfortunately, the youth don’t seem to care about that. How are you connecting with the younger generations? How are we as leaders holding the door open for the younger folks? If we have to lead forever, we’ve failed our jobs as leaders, and we’re no better than the right (which is a cult). Leading forever is not sustainable. Screaming forever and organizing forever sounds exhausting. Allow a young person to lead, organize, and most importantly, get it wrong. The fear that young people might get leadership wrong is the thing holding movements back. Being afraid to step aside or being so used to being in charge because “young people don’t understand” is a decades-old fight and is why we are where we are.

I’ve been attending protests. I’ve been to quite a few protests before this administration and noticed that younger people aren’t coming out. It’s because organizers are talking at them and to them, not with them. Protesting is a luxury that not everyone has, as some people have responsibilities to just survive. If we’re fighting for term limits in office, we should also be holding people accountable and insisting on term limits on the ground.

Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die. – Herbert Hoover