The Millennial Mindset: Getting Into Politics
BOSTON (CBS) - About six-in-ten online Millennials get their political news on Facebook, according to a recent Pew Research Center analysis.
Read: 'The Millennial Mindset' Series
Massachusetts state senator Eric Lesser not only wants to tap into that audience, he wants his peers to tune in to the real thing.
Lesser, 30, is the youngest member of the state senate. He got his political feet wet at an early age, signing onto the Obama presidential campaign in 2007.
"My job on his campaign was actually to carry all of the suitcases around on his first campaign plane," he told WBZ NewsRadio 1030.
Post-election, Lesser worked as a junior aide in the West Wing of the White House.
"I actually saw first hand the poetry and excitement of that campaign kind of collide with the machinery of Washington and the realities of government." he explained.
Lesser returned home to Longmeadow, won the district senate seat and now heads up their Millennial Engagement Initiative. It was launched earlier this year by Senate President Stan Rosenberg to do something about the lack of participation by the millennial generation in the political process.
The initiative is a series of listening sessions around the state. In Amherst, Lesser got an earful recently from young men and women paying enormous college student loan debts.
Kelsey Williams, who received her undergraduate degree in special education, is a prime example.
She lives in Boston with two roommates, while working on her masters degree and paying $750 a month in student loans.
"So I kind of cope with it knowing that loans will be part of my life for a very long time, so that it doesn't become completely overwhelming," she told WBZ.
On Beacon Hill, Lesser is already working on legislation that would mandate civics education and financial literacy courses in public schools along with a college student's Bill of Rights.
In part 8, giving back with Rep. Joe Kennedy III, a former Peace Corps volunteer.
WBZ NewsRadio 1030's Mary Blake reports
