Younger Americans are certainly primed to have this national conversation. Major organs of popular culture--the main source of news and information for younger people--devoted sustained attention to the attacks. MTV programs such as Carson Daly's Total Request Live substituted beach parties in Florida with call-in discussions of the attack with popular musicians Lenny Kravitz, Moby and Jay-Z. The network produced short segments on Islam and Muslims in America between its musical programming, earning praise from Muslim groups. Celebrities rallied to telethons and concerts to raise money for the families of the victims, while Julia Roberts recorded public service announcements to support the Red Cross. VH1 continues to cover the USO participation of pop stars such as Jennifer Lopez and Kid Rock, who have been entertaining the troops at home and abroad.

But transforming this attention and energy into something politically tangible requires leadership, particularly since young people's notions of citizenship and democracy are generally so vague. In focus groups among teenagers and young adults conducted for The Justice Project last year, for instance, concepts like citizenship evoked these sort of responses: "Nothing," "I don't know" or, somewhat more substantively, "My rights, just like, pride, I guess, to some extent, and paying taxes." There was some notion that democracy means voting, but others said, "It's just a concept, not a state of government," or "I just think, like, what does it really mean? I know it's our, like, our government, but I don't know what it technically is."

As Robert Putnam makes clear in Bowling Alone, his extensive exploration of the decline of social capital, the rise of civic community in the wake of patriotic fervor during World War II was not spontaneous but was facilitated and encouraged by the government through such efforts as the civilian defense corps, selling war bonds, rationing and scrap and rubber drives. At the time, people felt they were part of a larger effort, in partnership with government, to get through troubled times. We should not expect young people to experience spontaneous transformation into progressive civic beings. Like many people, they find recent events and patriotic responses confusing and unfamiliar. As one young woman in a recent focus group put it: "I don't understand this; why all of a sudden is everyone rooting for the United States of America? I know that we live here, but before this whole thing happened, no one had their flags out all of the time. I'm doing it now too..."

In the aftermath of the attack, younger people heard that they should go back to work, lead their lives normally and spend money as tourists. But progressives should not miss this opportunity to make the case to younger people for the relevance of government. The response to the attacks--aid to New York to clean up the devastation, the mobilization against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, the work of police officers and firefighters, the testing for anthrax exposure in the Capitol, newsrooms and post offices, the federalization of airport security--all demonstrate the essential work of government. This matters, as we are currently in the midst of contentious and important debates in Congress and state legislatures about how to cope with the economic downturn. Particularly at the state level, governors and legislatures are making decisions about how to balance their budgets, proposing cuts in programs such as higher education.

But as it stands, the parties and candidates speak in a language that is not very relevant to younger people--for instance, the heavy emphasis in Democratic circles on Social Security and Medicare, and educational issues primarily as they relate to young children. They employ communications strategies that bypass the media habits of younger people, focusing on older audiences that consume conventional media (for example, broadcast news). Progressives need to communicate with younger people in a way that addresses the issues they care about in their own language. They need to hear about how politics matters in their lives, from people and sources that share common values and experiences. Effective communication, moreover, needs to reach young people where they get their information and learn about politics--the organs of popular culture: music, magazines, late-night television and, to a lesser degree, the Internet. But more fundamentally, progressives need to understand that young people do not share a progressive vision merely because they tend to be more liberal than older people on issues concerning the environment and sexuality. Instead, we need to actively make the connections among patriotism, the work of government, the current economic debate and a larger progressive agenda.

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