During a town hall on Tuesday, Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC) was asked about how Democrats can correct political 'disillusionment.'
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00:00I am also a public school teacher, and so I talk a lot to young people, people my age
00:07and younger, and a lot of my students are scared, and they're more affected by not only
00:15the attacks of this administration, but the rhetoric, and the rhetoric that it enables.
00:21And what never ceases to amaze me is the tremendous apathy that a lot of people my age, and I'm
00:3132, a lot of people my age and younger seem to have toward that when it's their own children
00:37and their own students feeling this way.
00:41So my question for you is, in the face of this disillusionment, what can we do, people
00:49who are looking to organize or potentially run for office to somehow inspire hope in the
00:57younger generation?
01:06It's a tough question.
01:08I mean, it's not a tough question.
01:13Finding an answer to the question is tough.
01:17What I try to do and what I try to share with people is think about your own experiences
01:28and think about what you wanted when you sat where those students sit and see whether or
01:39not there are differences in what you aspire, what you wanted, and what you're hearing from them, and see whether or not you can
01:50in some way rectify those differences that you have with them.
01:56And I think that's a tough assignment, but it's something that's got to be done.
02:05Because one thing I've learned from young people is they really want discipline.
02:15And a lot of times, they're crying out for it.
02:22They just don't know how to tell you that they want this discipline.
02:31I had a very interesting experience.
02:33About two weeks ago, I was speaking to Mama Sana, the group.
02:38I'm a 33rd degree, Prince Hall Mason.
02:43And we were having their council deliverance, and I was doing the luncheon.
02:49And after the luncheon, the young man came up to me, and he said,
02:57I was still behind the head table.
03:01He says, where did you put that newspaper?
03:07And it startled me.
03:08So what the heck is he talking about?
03:11Well, it turned out that after a minute, he was a young man that was in my class.
03:16I had taught him history.
03:20But I used to teach from the newspaper.
03:25I mean, my textbook was my reference book.
03:29You know, just think about this.
03:31I was teaching during the Cuban crisis.
03:35What do I look like standing in front of a class back in, what, 1962?
03:41Even that those missiles were put down in Cuba.
03:46We were sitting in Charleston, South Carolina.
03:48The mine warfare school sitting out there.
03:51The Navy Yard.
03:51The shipyard.
03:53Those kids were worried as to whether or not Charleston was going to be attacked.
04:01By these missiles.
04:04So what do I, if chapter 22 in my textbook is Cuba, and the newspaper headlines are all about Cuba,
04:14what do I look like talking about chapter three?
04:17And this young man remembered that.
04:22And so what I say is, when you talk to the students, really talk to them from their perspective.
04:32Get out of them as much as you possibly can, and then see whether or not you've got something in your own experiences,
04:42your own background, that you can help them reconcile what it is that's going through their minds.
04:47Because you've got to know, with the headlines being what they are, with these young people seeing on TV what they're seeing,
04:58you have to help give them some perspective on this.
05:02Don't give up on them.
05:03For God's sake, don't do that.
05:07Don't scold them.
05:11In the name of God, don't do that.
05:14Try as best you can to say to the young person, yeah, I understand that.
05:20Well, let me tell you how I approached this problem and how it worked for me.
05:29I think that our young people want guidance.
05:34They want discipline.
05:36They want to know that there's some worth in them.
05:41I always try to give a young person credit for something in the question.
05:47And see, can you reconcile that?
05:51It's going to be tough.
05:54Their challenge is a little bit different from the way I was growing up.
05:58When I was growing up, it was unusual to see what we see in schools today.
06:08I mean, we never – we had fire drills.
06:10We didn't have any shooting drills, whatever they call it, fire drills.
06:22Now you have more shooting in the school than you have anything else extraneous.
06:30So it's going to be tough.
06:31But I would just say to you, just know that they really want discipline and see whether or not you can reconcile your viewpoints on discipline to what their anxieties are.
06:48Because this is – it's going to be tough.
06:52But thank you so much for committing to that.