Original subtitles

[gunshots]

We're talking about millennials here

and their scatterbrained attention deficit disease.

Millennials, we all get it.

They're somewhat annoying, to say the least.

[man] A recent survey suggests six out of 10 millennials

cannot change a lightbulb.

[man 2] What the hell is wrong with your generation?

Generation Snowflake.

- [overlapping shouting] - Black Lives Matter!

[man] I know millennials who are outstanding.

A couple of 'em even voted for President Trump.

[screaming]

[woman] Well, it looks like it's time

for millennials to grow up.

With 32.1% of millennials living with their parents.

We are not leaving! We are not leaving!

- They're lazy. - Lazy.

Lazy entitled narcissists.

[Michelle Rodriguez] Am I, like, a millennial?

Bitches.

Yes, sorry, [bleep].

I mean, like, who decided that I'm part of that generation?

Some anthropologist somewhere

who's just like, "Yeah, that's the line.

[sighs] It's official."

I don't know what to tell you, I'm horrible at this stuff.

I don't like telling people what to do.

You ever googled me? [snickering]

I'm like the example of like, "it's okay to [bleep] up."

[camera clicking]

'Cause I'm trying not to dictate

what millennial is, you know what I mean?

Let me take that from the top.

So, what are we gonna do?

The media would like you to believe the story

that millennials are a bunch of lazy narcissists.

Which is ironic, because it's up to us

to fix all the problems the world faces today.

From international migrant crisis,

to wealth inequality, to climate change.

That's why it's time to set the record straight

about our generation.

This film is about our true and untold history...

How we fix climate change

and how we win back our future.

MAN: CiCi Battle, take one, marker.

Are the cliches about millennials...

- Uh. - Lazy?

- Uh-huh. - Narcissistic?

- Uh-huh. - Entitled?

- Uh-huh. - Self-absorbed?

Okay.

Do I think we're lazy? No.

Do we care about the things that everyone

thinks we should care about? No.

Do we think we're narcissistic?

Mm, you know, everybody got a little piece of that in them,

you know, that's okay.

What people try to do to millennials

is what was done to them.

I think there's multiple things that I've overcome.

I am a Black woman living in a world

that in every turn tells me that I'm not enough,

and tells me that I'm not beautiful.

I'm the director of Young People For,

a national long-term leadership development program

for young folks.

But specifically how we do leadership development

is through the lens of social justice.

So, everyone who comes through the program

develops something called a blueprint for social justice,

which is their campus or community action plan

how they wanna build a better now.

The suicide rate for LGBTQIA+ youth,

it's two to seven times higher than straight youth.

I was almost lost to that statistic,

and I just don't want to see that happen anymore.

So, I think the work that I do, making sure that the identities

of queer and trans people of color

that come from low-income backgrounds are reflected,

so that my people don't have to face what I did.

[CiCi] Young people already have the answers,

but what's missing is the access, opportunity,

and specifically the resources to help them get there.

I think that our world seeks to separate us and divide us,

whether through systems of oppression

or the structures that are built into our policies,

even the ways that our neighborhoods are set up.

And so, there's something really radical

about bringing people together around a common interest.

I teach young folks, and I think that everyone

should have some type of role

within the youth, whether it's a coach,

or a counselor, or a teacher, after-school teacher.

I know for sure that young folks

are always going to be the voice of change,

because they're the ones coming with the fresh ideas.

[CiCi] As a Black woman in this country,

my survival is tied to access to education

and access to fair housing.

My survival is tied to reproductive justice.

I can't choose not to care

because millennials, we're living the issues,

and this is our reality.

The MLKs of the world are here already.

You don't have to be a certain age to be a leader.

The people who are feeling the issues have the answers,

and we need to step aside, let them lead,

and support them along the way.

[Dan Schawbel] Every generation has always

negatively stereotyped younger generations

and positively stereotyped their elders,

saying they're wise and willing to mentor.

And the difference now

is that social media and traditional media

has amplified the negative stereotypes.

I think the reputation

and the stereotypes

that millennials have gotten

has set a precedent for what people expect.

And so, millennials, it's up to them

to bust this stereotype.

[music]

[Renaldo Pearson] I attended Morehouse College.

It's the alma mater of notable freedom fighters

like Dr. King and Julian Bond.

Naturally, I took a deep dive

in civil rights movement history and ecology.

Understanding the civil rights history,

you know, juxtaposing it to Michelle Alexander's book,

"Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,"

you know, I've gotta get involved in the fight.

I didn't see enough folks who looked like me

at the decision table... Certainly not voicing

the outrage that I had about the system.

So, I got involved as a criminal justice advocate.

I said, literally, my grandparents

did not sacrifice their lives for the right to vote

just to see the vote of their grandchildren

purged a generation later.

And that kind of began my path on this road of activism

and political engagement.

I'm an organizer with Democracy Spring.

[man] There were mass arrests

along the steps of Capitol Hill today

as more than 1,000 protestors converged.

[woman] Several hundred people sat down

asking to be arrested.

This event is all about people

reclaiming their voice in government.

I got arrested, forced out, misdemeanor charge.

But that's a badge of honor,

and I'm gonna share it with my kids one day.

[music]

[David Burstein] Like the millennial generation or not,

have your frustrations or feelings about them,

the reason that people should really care

about this generation, is if you wanna understand

the future, you have to understand this generation.

[man] Attention, attention, everybody!

[Jason Dorsey] There's like 80 million of us.

We're the most diverse generation

in the history of the United States.

We're the largest generation in the U.S. workforce,

and we're pretty much gonna change everything.

[man] The police are not the problem.

The problem is the system.

Of course there are millennials that are entitled and lazy.

There are Gen X-ers that are entitled and lazy.

There are boomer... There are just people

that are entitled and lazy, so yes,

some millennials fall into that category.

But wouldn't it be a disgrace

if a quote-unquote "entitled generation"

continued to kind of go on this sleepwalking,

"yes, I will go do this till the age of 65" mentality,

and instead kinda said, "yeah, we're gonna use

that opportunity, that privilege, to give back."

[Ana Kasparian] The majority of millennials

identify as Independents,

and then about 27% identify as Democrats,

and 17% identify as Republicans.

So, there are a lot of similarities

among most millennials.

They're more socially liberal.

They want gay rights.

Equality among races.

They're more likely to want these things

as opposed to baby boomers.

[Lindsey Horvath] Millennials increasingly care less

about where you were born

or, you know, what religion you practice,

or you know, who's in your bedroom at night.

And we care about who you choose to be as a person,

or how you're bettering yourself

in the community around you.

That's who you are as a human,

and that's what we wanna know about you.

[Jason] We recently did a national study,

and one of the questions was,

"How would you define yourself? Male, female, other?"

Right? And what we found is,

people that would define themselves

as male or female were much more likely

if they were a millennial to pick "other"

purely so their friends who would check "other"

did not feel excluded.

I mean, that's a massive shift.

How many boomers do you think are gonna go check "other"?

[Michelle] Speaking of baby boomers,

before we talk about where our generation is going,

we need to talk about where we came from.

Neil Howe is a sociologist...

Author, demographer, economist.

[Michelle] ...who studies how the cycles of American history

repeat themselves.

[man] Neil Howe, coauthor of the new book "Generations,"

what's it all about?

Well, "Generations" is a whole new way

of looking at how the past shapes the future.

Along the way, we discovered some outstanding patterns

in history that seem to be recurring.

We found, for instance, that every generation

belongs to one of four life-cycle types

that seems to repeat in the same order over time.

There are four basic types of generations.

There's the hero archetype, like the greatest generation.

There's what we call the artist archetype,

like the silent generation...

Heavily protected in their youth,

and they tend to be improvers.

There's the prophet archetype.

They're born right after the crisis

and they come of age as young adults

during the awakening.

And then, you have the nomad archetype,

which is like Generation X...

The totally individualist, left-alone kind of archetype.

These repeating archetypes take place

within a series of seasons

of history, and four turnings.

Turnings are the result

of this generational evolution,

this aging of generations up.

We define a turning as a period

that's about the same length of the generation,

and each turning is an era in which each generation

is moving into a new phase of life.

We think that turnings, just like generations,

repeat in cycles of four.

History suggests that third turnings

eventually end in fourth turnings.

The fourth turning is the end of the cycle.

So today, we are back in that era.

[clock ticking]

[Michelle] So, four generations is about 80 years.

And about every 80 years...

[alarm clock ringing]

there's a major crisis.

About 80 years ago,

America experienced an economic crisis...

and a man-made environmental crisis.

And then, we entered World War II.

[gunfire]

It was a bleak time.

[Neil] The fourth turning usually manifests

in a number of events and issues that come up

which represent a perceived threat

to the nation's very survival.

[Michelle] Forged from these hardships

came the G.I. Generation.

[gunshot]

The women built tanks and bombs.

The men fought in battles of epic proportions.

And together, they won the Second World War,

and they helped liberate the world from fascism.

They became known as a hero generation.

[Neil] We give each of these turnings names.

The first turning we call a high.

We think of a high as a period

when institutions are strong, individualism is weak.

Society feels like it's more than the sum of their parts.

The last period like this was the American high.

Basically it lasted from the end of World War II

up through John Kennedy's presidency.

[swing music playing]

[Michelle] While the silent generation

were still in their childhood,

the young G.I.s had returned from the war.

They married, and the privileged ones

settled in vast numbers into suburbs.

The white middle class was ballooning

and the American economy was booming.

And when things are going well, what do people do?

[sultry music playing]

They have lots and lots of...

[record scratching]

Babies.

Now, this was before the internet.

There wasn't much to do.

[Neil] The second turning is an awakening.

An awakening is a time when everyone

tires of all the social conformity,

so it's a turning toward the individual.

The last time we remember a turning like that

was obviously the late '60s, 70s.

[Michelle] As those babies became young adults,

the baby boomers were told...

Turn on, tune in, drop out.

♪ War, huh, yeah ♪

♪ What is it good for? ♪

[Michelle] They lived through the era of war in Vietnam...

the draft, LSD, love-ins,

and the shootings at Kent State.

Leave this area immediately.

[Michelle] Theirs was a time of extreme experimentation

and extreme disruption.

Throughout the late 1970s, birth rates dropped

due to the birth control pill.

[announcer] The pill.

[Michelle] And the divorce rate climbed,

the economy sunk,

and a smaller generation of children was born.

♪ War! ♪

Which became known as Generation X.

This was a time when our culture

looked down on having children.

Oh, shit!

What's wrong with my baby?

[screaming]

[Neil] A third turning, individualism is triumphant.

Institutions are disrespected, not trusted anymore.

These are all decades of cynicism and bad manners.

This would be like the 1990s, the 1920s, the 1850s.

They all have the same flavor.

[music]

[Michelle] And then, the values of those nonconformist

baby boomers took a complete 180.

♪ It's a brand-new day, I'm Mr. VIP ♪

♪ I'm gonna make some money, it's good to be me ♪

♪ Ooh, yum-yum-yummy ♪

[Michelle] They were done with acid and free love,

and were now into...

[sniffing]

The key to success.

[Michelle] ...cocaine and the free market.

A new era of hyper consumption and extreme materialism began.

It was time for the largest generation in history

to give birth to an even bigger generation

that would come of age in the new millennium.

And they would call us millennials.

[harp strumming]

Oh, it works!

[Michelle] Suddenly, people cared

about having kids again and raising them right.

- It's me. - [children] What?

[Barney] That's right!

A mirror will always show you somebody very special.

[music]

[man] Welcome to America's trophy culture.

[man] Everybody ready for some trophies?

[kids cheering]

These days kids get trophies for participating.

We lost almost every game this season.

[woman] It sets the bar pretty low.

[Michelle] But as we came of age,

cracks began to appear, and the media narrative

of the perfect world we were promised.

On this day in 1991,

Rodney King, viciously beaten

by L.A. police officers

at the end of a high-speed pursuit.

[woman] Orenthal James Simpson not guilty

of the crime of murder.

[Michelle] Subconsciously, we concluded that celebrities

play by a different set of rules,

and that fame makes you more important than others.

♪ Bones sinking like stones ♪

♪ All that we fought for ♪

The disconnect between the world

that we were raised to believe in...

I did not have sexual relations with that woman.

[Michelle] ...and the reality that we were inheriting...

Indeed I did have a relationship

with Miss Lewinsky.

[Michelle] continued to grow.

[man] ...believe 25 students have been killed.

[woman] Eighteen people have been killed,

six of them children.

[woman 2] There are 95 people inside,

of them, 17 below the age of 10.

[Michelle] But the moment that truly marked

the end of our innocence

was a moment so devastating...

it would leave a permanent scar on the subconscious mind

of an entire generation.

[loud rumbling]

[people screaming]

♪ Bones sinking like stones ♪

And if we look at the world that we were sold,

the world that we were promised...

♪ When I grow up to be big me ♪

[Michelle] ...versus the world that we got...

♪ All of us are done for ♪

what is the underlying context of our generation?

The message that we received is...

[explosion]

you are not...

[Lily Comba] I have anxiety today,

just like doing simple things...

Going to an amusement park, going to a concert.

When the fireworks are going off at Disney,

why is my first thought, "Oh, this would be

a perfect place for a terrorist to attack"?

It's a very anxious way to live your life,

and that's just how, you know, our generation grew up,

is in fear, really.

[Michelle] While we were getting mixed messages

about the reality of the world at large,

something else was taking place.

[fanfare playing]

A new era was coming into being.

[dial-up modem chirping]

We found an antidote to being unsafe.

We found a way to fix that problem.

Connections, friends, being liked.

We found safety in numbers.

[Mark Zuckerberg] These are some of the moments

that I'm really proud of what we're doing, right?

I know that we're making a positive difference

in people's lives.

And I know a lot of you are gonna have questions

about this, so I wanna be clear that we have designed this

with privacy and safety in mind from the beginning.

[music]

♪ Post it, tweet it, share it, like it ♪

There's a lot of research that shows

that we are increasingly anxious, depressed,

fearful, unhealthy society.

And I think that technology's a big part of that.

A lot of reasons why so many millennials

suffer with the depression

or the anxiety, is because everybody

puts their highlight reel out there.

There's who they are in their day-to-day lives,

and then there's who they project themselves to be.

♪ Post it, tweet it, share it, like it ♪

♪ Share it, like it ♪

[Adam] You see a lot of people that spend their days

taking other people's lives in,

and just, this person's in India,

this person's got a new job, this person just got published.

This person's dating someone who's really attractive.

I look at that stuff and I'm like,

oh, man, my life sucks.

♪ Tweet it, share it, like it ♪

♪ Share it, like it ♪

[Christine] Because there's sort of this expectation,

especially thanks to social media,

that "Here I am with my selfie,

and I'm happy all the time, and my life is great,"

they're repressing a lot of their emotions.

And so, that's leading to a lot of depression.

So, if I'm feeling sad

and I don't have the tools and resources for it,

and I feel ashamed about it,

I'm gonna go to my doctor and talk about it,

and they're gonna give me medication, because...

[snapping] That's the quick fix.

[Preston Smiles] Because we've been so advertised to,

we're having to figure out how to be bigger

than our base desires.

Because we were drugged as children

and given labels like ADD and all of that,

we're having to navigate those things.

[Christine] One of the main reasons

this is the most over-medicated generations

that we're seeing is because they're constantly

comparing themselves to the outside world,

and they're terrified to make the wrong decision.

[Michelle] This was a warm-up for what was to come next.

Because we wanted to live as perfect avatars,

a lot of us dreamed of getting a college degree.

But that dream came with hidden costs.

[toy xylophone chiming]

[babbling, laughing]

My name's Carole,

and I have over $500,000

in student loan debt.

How am I gonna pay for your college?

I mean, honestly, like, the way that it was all presented

was, "This is normal, this is what people do."

Many of today's grads owe more than $100,000.

College tuition has gone up 234%

over the last 20-some-odd years.

[woman] Millennials mired in debt, it's massive.

[Adam] There isn't really a path for people

coming out of college now.

First of all, they've just spent $200,000

on an education that doesn't really prepare them

for the world of work, and puts them

in a pretty precarious position going into their 20s,

because they can't get a job, and they have all this debt.

So, they're forced to take a job they don't want.

[Preston] I think a lot of people have this

internal sort of conflict where it's like, your parents

are saying, "You have to go to school," right?

'Cause the parents... In the parents' mind,

they want the kid to be safe.

But that world doesn't even exist anymore.

[Alan Collinge] In the, say, mid '90s,

student loan debt stood at less than 100 billion dollars.

Just in the past 10 years, we've gone from 300 billion

to 1.4 trillion.

So, it is an exponential curve,

and it's reaching the vertical part

of that curve very quickly.

[teapot whistling]

[Carole] They won't refinance my interest rate

and they're insanely high.

So, that's 10 years of paying on these loans,

and it's still more than the cost of a house, so...

I mean, it's pretty criminal.

[Alan] 63%... so 27 million

of these 44 million borrowers

are currently unable to make payments

on their student loans.

[Dan] The effect that student loans have had

on the millennial generation, it's prevented them

from getting married,

starting families, buying houses.

It's really pushed back their adulthood.

[Alan] The stories that I've seen come across my desk

are extraordinary.

Many suicides where people just couldn't handle the pressure

of their debt.

- [baby fussing] - [Carole] My own personal debt

is definitely what holds us back

from being able to even consider owning a home.

Definitely not the American dream.

[laughing]

[David] People are saddled with, you know,

student loan debt in... in huge ways.

But we have to remember, that's only actually a fraction

of the country, 'cause it's only a fraction of the country

that's going to college.

[Tamara Draught] Having a college degree

is pretty much a requirement for achieving

any kind of middle-class security in our economy today.

And when I let people know

that only about one-third of even young people

have college degrees...

These are journalists... They're like,

"What? That's it?"

[Michelle] About two-thirds of our generation is stuck

in what's called the wage labor, or gig economy.

We face an impossible choice...

Get the college degree and the debt,

or don't graduate from college,

and get stuck in a dead-end job.

60% of people making minimum wage

are millennials.

If you work for tips... And many young people do...

You can legally be paid $2.13 an hour.

Today, what we have is the proliferation

of what I call the bargain basement economy,

and this is this massive, massive amoeba

of low-paying jobs with no benefits,

with erratic schedules,

that really outnumber professional occupations

by about 3-to-1.

[Michelle] The number-one job for a millennial man

in America today, college degree or no...

is driving a vehicle.

And where are those jobs gonna be in 30 years?

Driverless car.

[Michelle] As our generation became aware

of just how screwed up the system was...

a lot of us started to get involved.

Activism... we got political.

And for most of us,

our first taste of American politics

was filled with hope.

[music]

For many of us, 2008 was the first year

we could vote.

We were pivotal in electing a man

that embodied our generation's view of diversity.

[Barack Obama] Tonight, because of what we did

on this day, in this election,

at this defining moment, change has come to America.

[cheers and applause]

[Preston] When CNN announced that he won,

everybody just kinda sat there like, "Whoa."

[Corbin Bleu] That was the first year

that I was able to vote.

Having our first African American president

was a huge milestone for us as a generation.

[Alexi Panos] We had a movement,

an uprising with Barack, a movement of people

who were sick of the old politics

could come together and say, "Let's utilize this voice

"that we have called the internet,

and let's reach people like me who never cared to vote."

2008, I think for everybody across the board,

it shook everything up,

and we got to see the power of the internet,

and we got to see the power

of the millennial generation in action.

Yes, we can! Yes, we can! Yes, we can!

[Obama] For even as we celebrate tonight,

we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring

are the greatest of our lifetime.

[woman] The stock market is now down...

[woman 2] Let's talk about the speed

of which we are watching this market deteriorate.

[man] 'Cause we're now down 43%.

[man 2] We haven't seen anything like this

probably since the Great Depression...

[Michelle] From the 1929 Great Depression

to the 2008 Great Recession was almost exactly 80 years.

[clock ticking, chiming]

Neil Howe has a name for this type

of recurring crisis.

He calls it a fourth turning.

We think that America entered a fourth turning in 2008.

It's a time of death and rebirth

of institutional life.

All of these entropy trends toward individualism

and lack of sort of organization

eventually culminate in sort of a crisis for society.

[Erica] I remember driving through the neighborhoods

of these massive, like, single-family homes

that all these affluent Black families had lived in.

They were all foreclosed.

Suddenly, like, families that I had known

were either homeless, near homeless,

and these were families that just a year or two before

weren't even close to the brink.

[woman] 11 million homes that their mortgage

is more than the value of their home.

We're doing a... Serving an eviction on you.

You have to get a change of clothes, stuff like that,

and take off in about 15 minutes.

Well, I have my son upstairs and he's sleeping right now.

Okay, you need to wake him up.

In the 1930s we had bread lines.

Venture out before dawn in America today

and you'll find mortgage lines.

[Roza Calderon] I came to the U.S. as a refugee

from El Salvador.

I was two years old and the war was rampant.

My mother, who actually worked as a secretary

for the military government,

she knew that the only place

that we would be able to have an opportunity

to actually make it was here in the U.S.

She risked her life, she risked never seeing us again

to cross the border to give us that opportunity.

When I was actually starting my family,

I realized that we couldn't afford to have a child.

Both my husband back then and I made $10 an hour each.

We could not even afford daycare.

I've been trying to pay for school,

I've been trying to pay for my mortgage,

I've been trying to get a better education

not just for myself, but for my daughter.

[woman] The vote comes just as nine

of the nation's biggest banks

reported losses of 82 billion dollars

while paying bonuses totaling 33 billion dollars

to employees...

Banks that took taxpayer bailout money.

One of the things that happened to me

and millions of other Americans

was that we not only lost our jobs,

we lost our homes, we lost our families,

we lost our spouses.

And we lost our sense of security.

Even though Obama represented hope and change,

there was zero accountability

to those who crashed the housing market.

Not one executive went to jail over it.

The people united will never be defeated!

The people united will never be defeated!

Whose street? Our street!

Whose street? Our street!

[woman] The protests are spreading

from cyberspace to streets all around the country.

[overlapping shouting]

I have done nothing wrong!

[man] There is high unemployment

among young Americans

'cause this economy is having such trouble,

and young people are having a difficult time...

[man 2] Let me break it to you...

- But young people... - All you have to do

is take a shower, and they can get a job

if they went to college.

[Ana] Occupy Wall Street was an important movement

that I believe was undermined by the mainstream media.

[woman] Here's what I saw.

It's not just a bunch of dancing hippies protesting.

There are all kinds of people there...

Babies, teachers, cheerleaders,

Uncle Sam-ta, and... that.

Seriously? What are they protesting?

Nobody seems to know.

[man] The federal reserve system

is printing money out of thin air

to bail out the banks

so they can buy your foreclosed home.

[Renaldo] Nonviolent direct action

is civil disobedience.

It is putting your body on the line

to do what John Lewis calls

getting into good trouble.

Civil disobedience, nonviolent direct action,

is not the liberal or conservative thing to do.

It's the right thing to do

when unequal and unjust laws stand in the way.

[music]

[Jay] A lot of people argue that Occupy was a failure.

But actually, it was incredibly successful

insofar as it helped acquaint the country

to the conversation about the 99% versus the 1%.

The Occupy organizers, a number of them

started to rethink, "How do we bring about social change

through electoral politics?"

This platform became the people for Bernie.

[crowd cheering]

How many people here are dealing with student debt?

Raise your hand. Whoa.

[Christine] Bernie Sanders really spoke

to a new generation of voters.

[Nina Turner] When you look at the sea of people

that he attracted, you did see the millennial generation

out there in full effect.

That generation is sending a signal

to Gen X and to the boomer generation

about the type of future they want to inherit.

[woman] Welcome to the stage activist and acclaimed actress

from the "Divergent" series, Shailene Woodley!

[Shailene] I'm 24 years old, and for many years

I was the farthest thing from calling myself political.

Can we just acknowledge how beautiful this day is?

Look at how lucky we are!

I know it's hot, but it's beautiful!

I'm so grateful to be here.

A lot of people feel like their voices don't matter.

- Does your voice matter? - [crowd] Yes!

[Shailene] I felt like I didn't have a voice in politics.

And I spent months doing a crash course,

educating myself, learning, being inspired

by people around me who were political.

And what I've realized is that all the suffering I see,

all the oppression I see,

all of the fear and the sadness,

every single thing that I care about

eventually end up in politics.

So, whether I like it or not, I have to be political.

[man] The single largest campaign event

of the 2016 presidential election.

[woman] Senator Bernie Sanders!

[crowd] Bernie! Bernie! Bernie!

Bernie! Bernie! Bernie! Bernie! Bernie! Bernie!

Bernie! Bernie!

And now, to Vermont.

How do you cast your 26 votes?

[cheers and applause]

[crowd chanting] Bernie! Bernie! Bernie! Bernie!

I move that Hillary Clinton be selected

as the nominee of the Democratic party

for President of the United States.

[cheers and applause]

[Michelle] So, what really happened in 2016?

Well, a couple of things.

First, the polls showed that Bernie had a better chance

of beating Donald Trump than Hillary did.

So, why didn't Bernie run as an Independent?

After all, he definitely had the support.

The short answer is America is a two-party system,

and that system has been invaded.

Take a good look at your beloved candidates.

They're nothing but hideous space reptiles.

[crowd gasping, screaming]

It's true. We are aliens.

But what are you going to do about it?

It's a two-party system.

You have to vote for one of us.

He's right, this is a two-party system.

Well, I believe I'll vote for a third party candidate.

Go ahead, throw your vote away!

[evil laughing]

[Michelle] America's two-party system

sets up a lose-lose scenario for third party candidates.

Here's how it works against them.

If we take the entire electorate

and boil it down to 100 voters,

those on the right vote for a Republican

and those on the left vote for a Democrat.

Those in the middle... The 5 to 10%

who might vote either way,

actually end up tipping the election.

But let's see what happens when we introduce

a third party candidate.

If their progressive, the progressive vote is split,

and the conservative wins.

If the third party is conservative,

the conservative vote is split, and the progressive wins.

In this system, the winning candidate

usually wins with less than half of the winning votes.

If Bernie had run as an Independent,

he would have split the progressive vote

with Hillary Clinton,

and both of them would have lost.

Thank God that didn't happen.

The second thing that happened in 2016

was that even though 80% of millennials

were registered to vote,

only 50% of us showed up to the polls.

Why is that?

Disenfranchise... to deprive of a legal right

or some privilege, especially the right to vote.

They didn't have to physically take away our right to vote

or prevent us from voting.

All they had to do was convince us not to care.

In total, 102 million people did not vote in 2016.

In other words, our two-party system

actually disenfranchises

almost half of the voting population.

But there is another way.

In other countries, like Australia and Ireland,

they use ranked choice voting.

Here's how ranked choice voting works.

Instead of choosing just one candidate,

you rank candidates in order of preference.

So, let's say your first choice is mathematically eliminated.

Your vote automatically goes to your second choice.

Ranked choice voting is important

because the majority of Americans actually agree

on the big issues...

and America is actually a purple country.

Ranked choice voting would give us something

we desperately need to be a true democracy...

A third or even a fourth party...

unlike the current system which always pulls us apart.

And that's exactly what happened in 2016.

[applause]

[Hillary] I know how disappointed you feel,

because I feel it too.

And so do tens of millions of Americans

who invested their hopes and dreams in this effort.

This is painful, and it will be for a long time.

But I want you to remember this.

Our campaign was never about one person,

or even one election.

It was about the country we love,

and about building an America that's hopeful, inclusive,

and big-hearted.

This loss hurts, but please,

never stop believing that fighting for what's right

is worth it.

[cheers and applause]

[Michelle] Even though the 2016 millennial voter turnout

was weak, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote

by almost three million votes.

That means that almost three million more people

voted for Hillary Clinton than Donald Trump.

[crowd] USA!

[Michelle] If you're wondering how the candidate

who lost the general election became our president...

Nobody knows the system better than me.

[Michelle] ...let's go back to answer

a very important question.

Why didn't the popular vote count?

[man laughing]

Well, due to an outdated pro-slavery contraption

called the electoral college in America,

we vote in districts.

After each census, which occurs every 10 years,

representatives at the state level

redraw the district lines.

To keep themselves in power, these representatives

use advanced software to cut out dissenting votes.

It's called gerrymandering.

It is the very thing that makes many of our votes not count.

After Obama was elected in 2008,

red states worked hard to elect officials

who would redraw key district lines in 2010

to lock out progressive votes.

Then, in 2013, an important part

of the Civil Rights Act was overturned

by the U.S. Supreme Court,

making it okay for mostly white Southern districts

to turn away people of color from polling places.

So, now you know why 2016 was such a cluster[bleep].

In the wake of the election, a youthful mix of rage

at a broken political system

and the desire to do something grew.

The Me Too Movement...

Time's up! Time's up!

To the Women's March...

We are here for the women of the world!

To Black Lives Matter.

- Hands up! - Don't shoot!

- Hands up! - Don't shoot!

- Hands up! - Don't shoot!

- Hands up! - Don't shoot!

I can't breathe! I can't breathe!

Black Lives Matter! Black Lives Matter!

[Michelle] But there was one area of resistance

that didn't quite get the attention it deserved.

[Shailene] When you enter Standing Rock Reservation...

you see the beginning of the revolution

that we are all a part of.

[crowd] We are not leaving! We are not leaving!

[Michelle] This was about an oil company

that wanted to put a pipeline over Native American grounds

which we had granted to Native American people

as a result of treaties.

[Shailene] This is a pipeline that originally was meant

to be built in Bismarck, North Dakota.

And when the people... Mostly white...

Found out that this pipeline, when it breaks,

would compromise the integrity of their drinking water,

they chose to move the pipeline

to half a mile north of Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

[Michelle] It was there in North Dakota

that a handful of Native American millennials

began a peaceful protest.

I saw young people coming together,

young people really being at the forefront

of this movement, having a voice.

Indigenous rights and environmental justice

are so tightly tied together

because when these projects happen,

they happen in our backyards.

They happen in indigenous lands

where we still are.

We're still dealing with the effects of colonization.

We're still dealing with land theft,

with resource theft constantly.

[Shailene] This is bigger than a pipeline, you guys.

This is about humanity.

We all look different, we all believe in different things.

But we all recognize that water is not a privilege.

Clean water is a right.

We gained support from people all over the world.

You know, this is a very clear issue

of people defending water.

[people shouting]

[phone ringing]

[man] Corson County Sheriff's Department.

[woman] I need to report an assault.

There are malicious-style police

firing at point-blank range with high-powered mace.

[man] Ma'am, yeah, if there's police there,

then it has...

[woman] The police are the ones

attacking innocent, unarmed people.

We have elders here, we have children here,

we have all ages here.

Nobody is armed except for the police.

Who protects the people from the police?

[Tara] I've seen people brutalized by police officers

defending a pipeline, defending corporate interests,

seeing a counterintelligence agency being deployed

to infiltrate unarmed citizens

and paint us as jihadist terrorists.

[Shailene] I'm being arrested.

I hope you're watching, mainstream media.

[woman] We're protecting the water,

they're protecting oil, that's what's happening.

[man] The big question tonight is how is the incoming

Donald Trump administration going to handle this project?

It's no secret President Elect Trump

and his cabinet are pro-oil and pro-pipeline.

[Donald] This is with respect to the construction

of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Nobody thought any politician would have the guts

to approve that final leg.

And I just closed my eyes and said, do it.

[scattered applause]

[Tara] For every single person that was there

and for everyone that followed that movement,

they got to see firsthand what corporate interest looks like.

To understand that their rights as citizens

mattered less than the rights of a company,

and that was a huge win for changing people's minds

and opening their eyes to what's really happening.

[Ana] I think that the protests at Standing Rock

represent a cross-section

between two huge issues that we have,

not only in this country, but throughout the world.

There's the issue of corporate power

and corporate influence, and of course,

the issue of climate change

and what we're doing to our environment.

[Xiuhtezcatl Martinez] Anything we care about

in our lives, whether it's gender equality,

racial equality, or indigenous rights,

clean water, access to good education,

healthy international relations...

Like, if we look at these different things,

climate change touches all of them.

If you look at industrial developments

since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution,

our society, we know how to build pipelines really well.

We've built a lot of 'em.

We know how to build coal plants,

and power plants, refineries.

We know how to grow an economy based on fossil fuels.

So, the question now is not whether we can,

but how long until we transition

to the next phase?

There's really a fight between what's right

and what's easy.

I think the biggest question is whether we'll do it in time.

Yeah, I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't think we could.

[Chase Iron Eyes] Our liberations are tied up

and dependent on each other.

We're playing both sides of this drama.

I have to play this side, and some people

are born in and playing this other side.

But we have to realize that there are these common forces

which are causing that drama in the first place.

The entire petrol chemical industry,

that entire complex forces us

to participate in our own destruction

and causes this cognitive dissonance.

This isn't just about Standing Rock.

This is about the entire future of humanity and Mother Earth.

We're all in this together.

[Michael] The places that our members

have worked to protect are under threat

because of climate change.

And our air quality is threatened

because of climate change, and the stability

of our entire civilization is at risk.

[Corbin] That is the biggest issue

that my generation faces,

it's the environmental crisis.

We are in a do-or-die situation,

where we have to choose right now,

what are we going to do?

[woman] The biggest wildfire...

[woman 2] The worst drought to hit...

And I think now it's a question

that all of us have to ask ourselves.

Are we willing to save our species?

Because that's what it's coming down to.

- [clears throat] - [man] All right.

- So, we're ready to roll? - Rolling.

[music]

- [Bill Maher] You're 16. - [Xiuhtezcatl] Mm-hmm.

You may be the youngest person on our show.

Setting records, that's what's up.

I stand before you today

representing my entire generation.

You've made three speeches, right, at the UN?

- That's correct, yeah. - Wow, that's three more

than I've made. [laughter]

[Xiuhtezcatl] I saw that climate change

was gonna be the defining issue of our time.

Hello, my name is Xiuhtezcatl, I'm six years old, I'm a boy.

So, for the last nine years, since I was six years old,

I've been on the front lines

of climate and environmental movements.

Climate change has got to go, hey, hey!

In 2015 myself and 20 other young people

filed a lawsuit against the federal government

for failure to act on climate change.

A federal judge ruled in your favor.

It's going forward now, right?

- So, congratulations. - Appreciate that.

[Xiuhtezcatl] We created a model

of what it would look like if we put power

into the hands of young people.

We can if we unite together as one people, one voice.

We can do it.

And if we actually listen to their voices

and elevated their voices.

Now, who wants to make a better future

for us and our children?

[cheers and applause]

Young people will need to play a really critical role

in leading these movements forward

if we wanna see the kind of change

that the world is gonna need to go through.

We just gotta make sure it happens quick enough.

♪ Till the day we die, everything I have ♪

♪ And everything I've proven to be ♪

♪ Everything the revolution could be ♪

♪ I can bleed onto a page, claim that I'm the king ♪

♪ I believe that you can realize your dreams, stop ♪

[music stops]

We know that we have the solutions

to climate change.

We need to build the political will

to make those solutions go from ideas into reality.

[Michelle] Scientists tell us that what happens

during the coming decade will determine the fate

of our climate, and possibly our species.

[Neil] The fourth turning is, in a way,

the winter of history.

Today, we've entered another one

of these fourth turning eras.

The mood in a fourth turning is more urgent.

Social chaos, civil war... I mean, these are the issues

that arise in a fourth turning.

Institutions are torn down and rebuilt from the ground up

in a way that would have seemed unthinkable in other eras.

There seems to be such a threat economically,

geopolitical threats.

[man] The U.S. and Iran on the brink.

[Neil] The first lesson of history

to be aware of is that all of the total wars

in American history all took place

during fourth turnings.

[man] North Korea fired yet another

ballistic missile overnight.

[Neil] This is a sobering lesson for history,

because at a time of intense solidarity,

when you feel that the survival of your community's at stake,

anything's on the table.

On our last fourth turning,

we recruited all of the top scientists in America

to work on a weapon of mass destruction,

and which we then deployed.

[explosion]

You think about the Civil War.

If we had had such a weapon, would we have used it?

I think the question answers itself.

Of course we would have.

[Michelle] Unfortunately, history tells us

that things will probably get a little worse

before they get better.

It also tells us that Western civilization

is very cyclical.

About 240 years ago there was a generation

who stood up against a foreign tyranny

and fought the Revolutionary War

that created the United States.

Eighty years later, there was a generation

of white land owners and Black slaves

who fought together in the Civil War

to end slavery once and for all.

Eighty years after that, the G.I. Generation

faced huge challenges.

They helped defeat the fascists.

They won the Second World War.

Eighty years.

Eighty years.

Eighty years.

Huh, it's been about 80 years.

[Neil] On our last fourth turning,

Sinclair Lewis wrote a book in 1936

called "It Can't Happen Here."

It was about the rise of fascism in America,

and it was about a leader who believed

in winning is everything,

and America has to do whatever it takes,

however dirty it is, to get itself back on top again.

It created a kind of world that I would say to millennials

could best see embodied in the movie version

of "Hunger Games."

Obviously, a very dystopian,

credibly negative turn of history.

This is why we need to take care,

we need to have wise leaders.

[Jennifer Lawrence] Hello. Hello, New Orleans!

[cheers and applause]

So many of us have come from across the political spectrum.

[cheers and applause]

Across ideologies, across parties,

it's time to unite to fix our democracy.

[Neil] A positive turn, of course,

is that everyone does their role well.

And millennials keep the nation on track

toward a better future.

[man] This is our moment, and it's time

to unrig the system. Welcome.

By getting to the heart of how corrosive an effect

money has on our politics,

and really regaining that voice, and trust,

and confidence of the people, that's how we can begin

to get back to a government of by and for the people.

[man] We need people in their 40s, 30s, and 20s

to take over our country.

All due respect to people 50 and over,

we've had our way.

My generation is the first generation

in the history of the country that's gonna leave this country

in worse shape than we found it.

Regardless of where our politics fall,

at the grassroots, the American people

don't deserve to pay taxes to a system

that is rigged against them.

[bleep] that.

[cheers and applause]

[Josh Silver] The movement to unrig the system

has to include everybody.

It's got to include Independents,

it's got to include conservatives,

it's got to include progressives.

Why? Only 25% of the American people

self-identify as liberal.

That leaves 75% of the country off the table.

This is not radical stuff.

This is all within reach if we can address

the structural problems with our democracy.

[Michelle] If you want to change a broken system,

you have to change the structure of that system.

Structural change is a term borrowed from economics.

It means change so vast

that it literally redefines the fabric of society.

A great example of structural change

comes from the unlikeliest generation...

the silent generation.

[people chanting]

Turns out they weren't so silent after all.

♪ Oh, this little light of mine ♪

In the 1960s, the silent generation

led the charge around civil rights.

It culminated in the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

The reason the civil rights movement was so successful?

It had a singular objective.

The right to vote.

That kind of definable objective

is one of the most powerful tools

in achieving structural change.

My fellow Americans, I am about to sign into law

the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Its purpose is to promote

a more abiding commitment to freedom,

a more constant pursuit of justice,

and a deeper respect for human dignity.

Thanks a lot.

[overlapping chatter]

[Michelle] And then, our parents' generation,

the baby boomers.

They passed the 26th Amendment,

giving 18-year-olds the right to vote.

Because if they were old enough to be drafted

and forced to fight and die for their country,

then they're old enough to vote.

[Richard Nixon] The right to vote

of all of our young people between 18 and 21.

11 million new voters that's a result of this amendment

that you now will see certified by the GSA.

[Michelle] In essence, our parents

gave us the right to vote.

Real change is possible.

Our constitution isn't written on stone.

It's written on a piece of paper.

And if you read that piece of paper,

when things go wrong, you write some more stuff.

To achieve full structural change,

you've gotta deal with politics.

[Steven Olikara] For every person who cares

about cleaning up a river, that's great.

Organize your friends, clean it up.

But then ask yourself, why is that river

dirty in the first place?

And when you get down that conversation,

you realize that's a policy question.

[Dwight Bullard] My mom used to make the argument,

that even going to the bathroom was political.

The idea that waste management is a thing, right?

That is a government entity.

When you press that lever to flush the toilet,

it has to go somewhere.

And so, when you think about it in that sense,

that the air we breathe, the water we drink,

has someone either pulling or pushing

to make some change better or worse for you,

you as a person need to get engaged.

And so, especially people at the age of 18,

I mean, the ability to vote and exercise that right to vote

is so critically important.

[Josh] We have a desperate need

for young people to seek elected office.

There's so many people who think,

"Oh, I couldn't get elected,

I don't have money, I don't have name rec..."

It's amazing what elbow grease and determination can do.

It happens all the time.

[Norah] She's the first member in Congress

born in American Samoa, the first Hindu,

and one of the first two female combat veterans.

Congresswoman, good morning, thanks for joining us.

Thank you, aloha, good morning.

You are new to Congress and you have recently...

[Tulsi Gabbard] If I had listened to all of the people

who told me when I was 21 years old

that I was crazy and I should never even think

about getting involved with politics at that age,

then I wouldn't have run.

You know, at that time, there was no political training

for young people to go through.

It was really like, get on my computer,

build this eight and a half by 11

black-and-white page that I took to the copy shop

and printed out a few hundred copies,

got in my car with a bottle of water

and went out to start knocking on doors.

I was terrified. [laughing]

[Michelle] Congresswoman Gabbard

was one of the first millennials

to break into the political system.

But by the 2018 midterms...

The future belongs to all of us!

[Michelle] ...a wave of millennials

on the left and the right

had decided to run for office.

And not only did they run, but many of them won.

In fact, of the 93 members elected to Congress in 2018,

almost one-third of them were millennials.

It's all part of a nationwide trend...

Young people running for office.

A record number of millennials are running for office.

West Hollywood Mayor Lindsey Horvath joining me now.

Until I was elected, everyone on the council

was over the age of 50.

[man] Women, people of color, Muslims,

members of the LGBT community, they're all signing up

to get their names on the ballot.

[woman] Chase Iron Eyes, who is an attorney

and an activist in the Native American movement,

he's running for Congress in North Dakota.

What we're witnessing right now is a movement.

[Michelle] And a disproportionately high number

of them were women.

[woman] This is the year of the woman.

One of those women, Ayanna Pressley.

[Ayanna] The Seventh Congressional District

is the most diverse

and the most unequal, and I'm running

to do something specifically about that.

[woman] All while a mother and pregnant with twins.

Republican candidate for U.S. Congress,

Christina Hagan.

[Christina] Being a young woman, a millennial,

a conservative, those are all unique things

in our political process.

[man] Roza Calderon, she is the Democratic candidate

for California's Fourth Congressional District.

[Roza] You know, I'm a single mom,

and so I thought there's no way.

People like me we're not supposed to run,

we're not meant to run.

But I kept thinking, why not me?

Why not an average regular person

who understands the struggle of the people to run?

[woman] Rashida Tlaib, the first Muslim woman

in Congress in the country.

[man] Twin sisters are both running

for Michigan County Commissioner seats.

- Good morning. - So, how did one

become a Democrat and one become a Republican?

We are trying to move things forward,

and we can't do it when we're fighting

against each other.

[Michelle] Even President Trump noticed that something big

had changed in Congress.

We also have more women serving in Congress

than at any time before.

[cheers and applause]

USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!

Very good.

And congratulations, that's great.

[Michelle] But perhaps the most surprising thing

that happened in the 2018 midterms was this.

- I can't let you know... - Oh my God!

She's looking at herself on television.

We wanna begin with some breaking political news.

A 28-year-old Democratic Socialist

beating a man who some saw as the next Speaker of the House.

[man] At 29 years old, she will become

the youngest-serving congresswoman ever.

[Alexandria] Running for Congress,

it was never something that I thought I'd be able to do,

because our system is not designed

for working-class Americans to hold office.

Working 18-hours days, and little things

like trying to afford health insurance

when you're a waitress, showed me what it's like

to be an American in a way

that I don't think most public officials understand.

[Michelle] Her values were simple and clear.

[Alexandria] I believe that healthcare is a right.

I believe that our climate is in a crisis right now.

I believe that every single American

should have the opportunity to attend college

or trade school.

We see that this is not a pipe dream.

Every other developed nation in the world does this.

Why can't America?

We will not rest until every person in this country

is paid a living wage to lead a dignified life.

[Michelle] And perhaps most importantly,

she wanted to do something radical...

To use government policy to combat the climate crisis.

[Alexandria] Climate change and our environmental challenges

are one of the biggest existential threats

to our way of life.

[man] The Green New Deal

calls for a 10-year national mobilization

to bring greenhouse gas emissions to zero,

meet 100% of energy needs by renewable sources.

Our climate is in a crisis right now,

and that for our economy and for our children,

it is time to move over to a renewable energy economy

by 2028.

[Michelle] It should come as no surprise

that the Green New Deal was met with heavy-handed opposition.

What is this Green New Deal? Answer?

Radical, environmental socialism.

When we outlaw plane travel,

we outlaw gasoline, we outline cars.

There's another victim of the Green New Deal, it's ice cream.

Wants to go after flatulent cows, so what are they saying,

- we're gonna ban hamburgers? - No more steak.

I guess government-forced veganism is in order.

[Michelle] You have to wonder if that opposition

has anything to do with where our elected officials

typically get their funding.

[Alexandria] If I wanna run a campaign

that is entirely funded

by corporate political action committees,

is that... is there anything

that legally prevents me from doing that?

No.

Are there any limits on the laws

that I can write or influence?

- There's no limit. - So, there's none.

So, I can be totally funded by oil and gas,

I can be totally funded by Big Pharma, come in,

write Big Pharma laws, and there's no limits

- to that whatsoever? - That's right.

[Michelle] But AOC, as she's now called,

isn't the only young leader who wants to use government

to stop climate change.

[woman] A 15-year-old Swedish climate activist,

Greta Thunberg, has called for a global climate strike today.

[crowd] Climate justice!

You are not mature enough to tell it like it is.

Even that burden, you leave to us children.

But I don't care about being popular.

I care about climate justice and the living planet.

And if solutions within this system

are so impossible to find,

then maybe we should change the system itself.

We have come here to let you know

that change is coming, whether you like it or not.

[woman] Her speeches have inspired children

around the world to take to the streets.

[crowds shouting]

[music]

[man] An estimated one million young people

across the globe struck today, walking out of their schools

to protest the threat of climate change.

[Greta] Why should we be studying for a future

that soon may not exist anymore?

[Neil] 'Cause we often think that, "Oh my gosh,

we just don't have the leader for these times," right?

But my sense of history is, whoever came up to plate

was impelled by the very nature of the times

to make the right decision.

- Climate! - Justice!

[chanting continues]

[Xiuhtezcatl] When people ask, What gives you hope?"

Like, that's what gives me hope.

[inaudible]

There are youth worldwide that are in positions of leadership

that are leading the way for other young people.

This is a creative, innovative, fast-paced generation

that is making things happen, and at the forefront of change.

[Neil] There's a sense in which the turnings

create the leaders, not the leaders

create the turnings.

That is to say, the mood creates the opportunity

for a certain kind of leader

to make a great leader out of someone

who in another period would have been a nonentity.

What I know for sure is young people

have the answer.

Older people have the answer too.

[Neil] I often get asked the question, you know,

"Can we avoid a fourth turning?"

And I guess my answer is, we often want to avoid things,

and we're always sorry of the consequences

of trying to avoid it.

Occasionally you need a fire, occasionally you need something

to purge out stuff that doesn't fit anymore.

It calls forth qualities

which otherwise remain dormant in us.

Making us bigger, better, sometimes larger

than we otherwise would have been.

[Preston] So, my greatest hope is that we come together

in unprecedented ways.

And let's figure out a way to work together

despite our differences.

If we can do that... When we do that...

Not if, when we do that, the whole world shifts.

♪ This is a revolution ♪

This whole revolution thing that we're talking about,

it really is a consciousness

that says that we will make the impossible possible,

no matter our generation, our race, our gender,

our sexual orientation, our religion.

We're fighting for an America as good as its promise.

[Shailene] We're here for a reason.

That reason is to unite, and that reason

is to put truth, and integrity, and justice,

and kindness, and love at the forefront

of every single thing we do.

Only love can defeat hate.

So, if there are things going on that we don't like,

take that energy and fuel it in a positive way.

But it's not gonna happen unless you step up

and do something about it.

[Alexi] Yes, we might be on our cellphones a lot.

But guess what, a lot of us are creating movements

on those cellphones.

Whatever it might be, we are literally the ones

changing the world right now as we speak.

[Steven] This is real change I'm seeing

on the ground right now, but people don't see it yet

because it doesn't make the headlines.

It's not sensational and conflict-driven.

It's real progress.

[Neil] We need to keep in mind who we are as a people,

and preserve those values into the next turning.

And the next first turning,

which I think will probably happen

at the very end of the 2020s, that'll be the time

when the generation after millennials,

this new homeland generation, they will be coming of age.

My friends and I might still be 11,

but we know what is right and wrong.

We say, no more!

[Neil] Millennials are beginning to move

into real leadership roles for the first time.

This will be the new golden age,

because we will have successfully,

finally by dint of this great collective struggle

solved so many global problems, environmental problems,

that will last for the next couple

of generations after that.

[Xiuhtezcatl] Every generation leaves something behind

to be remembered by,

and we are at a tipping point right now.

We are being called upon to use our courage,

our innovation, our creativity,

and our passion to bring forth a new world.

[Renaldo] And with that, I'll leave you

with these words from Rabbi Maimonides.

"The world is equally balanced between good and evil.

Your next act will tip the scales."

[cheers and applause]

[Michelle] We're the most educated, gender-fluid,

entrepreneurial, mobile, text-savvy,

the most connected, politically independent,

most radically diverse,

as well as the most globally aware generation

in history.

The mission of our generation is simple.

Use every tool we have, including our political system,

to fix our climate and save our future.

We don't need approval or permission

to change our future.

We only need each other.

The hero of our generation is our generation.

♪ This is a revolution ♪

♪ We are rising up, we are rising up ♪

♪ This is a revolution ♪

♪ We are rising up, we are rising up ♪

♪ This is a revolution ♪

♪ We are rising up, we are rising up ♪

♪ This is a revolution ♪

♪ We are rising up, we are rising up ♪

♪ This is a revolution ♪

♪ Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh ♪

♪ This is a revolution ♪

♪ Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh ♪

♪ This is a revolution ♪♪

[music]