(Murray KY - October 1, 2012) - Young Democrats from Murray State University campus showed up Monday night (October 1, 2012) to report for duty. They plan to stand with their elders and fight for their economic future against the Republican planned cuts to public education funding.

Lindsay Summers, President of the MSU Young Democrats and Zack Engleman joined the celebration for Hal Kemp. Along with them were about 10 % youth (under 30) in the small mob for Kemp.

Summers spoke to the issues of higher education costs, mounting debts and few jobs for college graduates. “We do the right things. We follow the rules. We come out of college with very large debts and can’t find work. What happened to America?” she asked.

The young Democrats will coordinate a final Get Out The Vote with the Kemp campaign in late October.

As I listened to her speak of being proud of the Democratic Party and the things that the Party leadership had done for her family through the years, my mind drifted for a second back to 1968.

“Mr. Chairman, you are out of order and hereby relieved.” The very young MSU senior had just spoken to a very frustrated Robert O. Miller, head of the Calloway Democratic Party.

This was 1968, the year of all hell breaking out within the Democratic Party, not to mention the murders of Robert Kennedy and Martin L. King. It was the year youth felt disenfranchised from their America, like they were watching it being stolen along with their futures.

But on this November night in 1968, I was with a party of 135 MSU registered student voters who took over the Calloway County Democratic Executive Committee. We outnumbered their 31 members for the meeting and voted for Eugene McCarthy, national anti-Vietnam war candidate, as our choice for President. Only five counties in Kentucky did the same. All were the locations of major universities.     

That was then and now is now. The reality of these two standing young people standing before me, making their stand against the wrongs of our society along side of the political system rather then, like us in the 1960s against the system, means that there is hope for America.

This hope for correcting the wrongs will be fought out in places like Murray with all ages engaged in the battle. However, in Murray, the hand to hand political combat will be fought with grace and style. After all, one must be somewhat proper with senior citizens in eating cheesecake and changing the future.