Hundreds of young people from across the country will march through downtown Minneapolis this afternoon to call for good jobs and a middle-class economy. Starting at 5 p.m. CDT, the group will march from the Hilton to the City Government Plaza Light Rail Station. 

The young working people, students and activists are among the 800 participants at the second national Next Up Young Worker Summit hosted by the AFL-CIO. They will deliver the message that workers didn’t create the economic mess we are in, but we are poised to fix it.

This economic crisis has disproportionately impacted young people and will have long-term repercussions on their ability to raise families, buy homes and live the American Dream. But as a panel of young activists this morning told participants, young people can help make needed change.

Lisa Jordan, education director for the United Steelworkers (USW) said the short-sighted economic policies of the last 30 years that favored deregulation and privatization cost the nation millions of manufacturing jobs. We lost millions more in industries that supply and support manufacturing, she said. Any real economic recovery will require restoring the manufacturing base, she said.

Young people are the most technically savvy generation in history and that technology should be used to challenge the narrow image that the mainstream media has painted of working people, said Alison Omens, the AFL-CIO director of Media Outreach. Only six companies control most of the content on our airwaves and only one in five newspapers is locally owned, she said.  But workers can get their message out through various media, including social media. After all, “unions are the original social media,” she said.   

 The Young Worker Summit, which ends this weekend, is part of the AFL-CIO’s outreach program to working people under the age of 35. The conference will focus on the current economic crisis and pathways to building a just economy as well as the ongoing attacks on workers’ rights from state legislatures.