How Nashville youth showed city leaders that Gen Z is setting the future for the nation

On Nov. 7, thirty-seven local students ages 8-18 were honored by Nashville’s Metro Council for their vision in helping to chart a path forward for our city.

This was the culmination of "Show Us YOUR Nashville,” a contest hosted by a non-partisan civic organization I founded, Kidizenship, in partnership with Vanderbilt University’s Project on Unity and American Democracy.

We asked students throughout the city to dream up one positive change they would make in Nashville if the voters put them in charge.

Hundreds of entries poured in, each with a written proposal and a visual representation of the idea using media from paints and crayons to computer graphics.

The submissions were breathtaking in their creativity and scope. They included plans to build a citywide composting program in school cafeterias and a light rail system with solar-roofed playgrounds; plans for bail system reforms, school safety and food security, green roofs and urban agriculture, youth literacy programs, and visions for affordable housing and expanded local news.

About the organization: How Kidizenship is helping young citizens express themselves and be heard

Justin Jones and Bill Frist were among the contest judges

Our contest judges – Metro Nashville Public Schools Director Dr. Adrienne Battle, Rep. Justin Jones, former Senate Majority Leader, Bill Frist, and artist Ruby Amanfu -- were bowled over by the range and sophistication of the work.

So was our mayor. “Have you been reading my campaign memos?!” Mayor Freddie O’Connell asked 13-year-old Annika Abramson when she proposed a plan to bury power lines throughout Nashville.

Later, after exploring the proposals of each student gathered, the mayor added, “I can’t believe how many of these ideas reflect and expand on the work we’re trying to do both in (Metro Council) committees and in my administration. We want to plug you into that work.”

This is the most recent iteration of Nashville’s deep history of youth-led civic action. In the 1960s, future leaders, including John Lewis and Diane Nash, used Nashville as a training ground for sit-ins and other expressions of nonviolent direct action that would soon spread across the South.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said at Fisk University, “I came to Nashville not to bring inspiration, but to gain inspiration from the great movement that has taken place in this community.”

Hear more Tennessee Voices: Get the weekly opinion newsletter for insightful and thought provoking columns.

Young people are leading the way to better outcomes in Tennessee

Today, a new civic movement led by Gen Z is taking place. We saw it percolating in June 2020, following the killing of George Floyd, when six Nashville teens led tens of thousands of people on a peaceful march to protest police brutality.

We saw it last April, after a mass shooter took six lives at The Covenant School, when thousands of students poured out of schools and gathered at the State Capitol with messages of peaceful protest.

And we’ve seen it in more subtle forms – in the work of young artists creating murals and civic art throughout the city; in our region’s Youth Poet Laureates bringing voice to the power of civic engagement.

We’ve also seen it behind the scenes in the work of high schoolers such as Katie Rush, the Hume Fogg student who proposed a bill in the Tennessee General Assembly that would increase the youth vote; and Clara Thorsen, the Hillsboro student who, at 16, became one of the youngest poll workers in the recent mayoral election.

Tennessee Voices video podcast: 'Flaming Moderate' author Bo Roberts fights for democracy and honors Howard Baker's legacy

Gen Z has begun to define its future and all of ours

The Kidizenship contest winners leave no doubt that this generation has powerful ideas that will guide our city’s future. And so we will take Mayor O’Connell up on his generous offer to connect kids to his administration.

He understands that Gen Z is already reshaping the American body politic. No doubt, all 2024 candidates will have to reckon with the dreams and demands of young voters. The issues that matter most to kids in America – from jobs and the economy to climate change and mental health – are defining local and national political agendas.

As we gear up for a critical election year— in which the oldest incumbent presidential candidate in history is squaring off against a fellow “Boomer” — we have lots of work to do to amplify young voices.

Kidizenship will soon expand our civics contest throughout Tennessee and into Kentucky and Georgia, three states with youth activation across party lines. We will publish the results in our national youth civics magazine, Watch Us Rise.

Not since the 1960s has it been so necessary and important to invite young Americans into a vibrant civil discourse about who we are as a city, a region, and a nation -- and who we want to become.

Because whether we’re ready for it or not, Gen Z has already begun to define its own future, as well as ours.

Amanda Little is the founder and director of Kidizenship, a non-partisan, non-profit media platform for students that reaches beyond the classroom, merging civics education with creative self-expression and community action. She is a journalism professor at Vanderbilt University, a columnist for Bloomberg, and the author of  “The Fate of Food: What We’ll Eat in a Bigger, Hotter, Smarter World.”

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Kidizenship contest: Youth showed Nashville leaders Gen Z's impact