Ypulse has partnered with Alexander Steed (Alex), a Gen Yer planning an ambitious journey across the U.S. to interview other young activists who are tapping into technology to help create social change. Here is his second dispatch from the road…

We've stopped in Rochester, New York, eaten the infamous Garbage Plate, and talked with local teenagers about how they engage with political reportage online. We've gone to Ann Arbor, Michigan, ridden around the streets with a bike gang there, and chatted with Mary Lemmer, Co-President of UM Net Impact Underground about how young people today are creating social change by way of learning the fundamentals of socially responsible business practices. We're now in Chicago and are looking forward to talking with the Interfaith Youth Core, then heading to meet up with a group organized by Justin Massa from MoveSmart and Dorothee Royal-Hedinger of See3 Media. Tomorrow we look forward to addressing a class of sophomores at a Chicago public school and hearing from many, many more engaged and active Millennials.

I was struck by our talk with Mary Lemmer, who talked extensively about her interest in social entrepreneurship and venture capitalism. I have spent a lot of driving hours meditating on the moments that have influenced this generation – the end of the Cold War for the older members and the lack thereof for the younger ones, September 11th, of course, the Bush Presidency – and what I hadn't put a lot of thought into until talking with Mary, was the impact of Millennial attitudes towards business. I refer not just to the consciousness raised around anti-globalization/Washington Consensus riots, which popularized the images of trash cans going through Starbucks and Nike Town storefronts, but also of the Enron tragedy, where we were collectively introduced to the Gordon Gekkos of the new Millennium – scumbags who put the livelihoods of all of their workers on the line, lost, and escaped relatively unscathed.

At the same time, our generation also grew up with Bill McKibben advocating for sustainable economies, Ben and Jerry's, Toms of Maine, Patagonia, and other businesses run by socially consciousness individuals who consistently reinforced the idea that business did not necessarily have to equate business as usual, and various other signs of the potential success of alternative models. Not only can companies be structured in a way where business does not screw everyone on the bottom, but there is a value expectation on the part of this generation born out of our observation of evil businesses practices. We have seen and now largely expect/demand an alternative. Now while the overseers of the economy is scrambling to find a way to restructure itself – to integrate new values into the system in order to reintroduce rationality and sustainability – folks over the ages of 25 are also having to accept values that we internalized long ago.

Mary, who has a gift and drive for large-scale management, does not look at big business as the enemy; she looks at it as an opportunity for reform and reconstruction. She has also been given hope by observing and absorbing ethical alternatives, and she aspires to be on the front lines of that movement.

[Note: While I intend to flesh this out in greater detail later, Lemmer used an example of a Greenpeace information campaign against Unilever as hope that corporations are having a harder time than ever before resisting challenges against bad business practices, thanks to wide-scale information distribution methods by way of YouTube and elsewhere. Not only have the barriers for participation come down {thanks to the internet), we're feeling empowered in a way we haven't before.]

[Note (on the note): We also discussed the negative impact of Internet communication on interpersonal, face-to-face communication and I'll certainly go into this further soon.]

Categorized under: Youth Marketing

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