Our country, our state, our community will be OK.
That is the very clear message delivered by some 1,000 Clark County high school students this past week at the 63rd Las Vegas Sun Youth Forum.
To be clear, the students didn’t show up at the Las Vegas Convention Center with that message in mind. They came, representing 52 high schools across the county, to discuss issues important to them.
Whether those concerns involved the obvious underfunding of public education in Southern Nevada, matters surrounding gun violence in America, or our country’s foreign policy around the world and the nature of the United States’ leadership moving forward, and everything in between, the students came prepared to share their ideas, learn from people they had never met and, at the end of the day, marvel at how much they could each move from what they believed were entrenched positions.
But the message that all will be OK — the one that gave every adult moderator, teacher, principal and advisor who attended the Youth Forum this week the belief that the country will be great again — came through loud and clear. America will be in good hands when this latest generation of young people start to take their place in society — as business, social and civic leaders.
The Las Vegas Sun Youth Forum was started 63 years ago by my father, Hank Greenspun, and Ruthe Deskin who, together with Harvey Dondero from the School District way back then, were determined to make sure that the voices of Southern Nevada’s youths were heard by those adults in positions of power in the community.
Those three people believed strongly that students should be seen and also heard, and nothing I have witnessed in the past 63 years of involvement with the Youth Forum gives me any reason to believe differently. In fact, every adult moderator has had the unique opportunity of seeing the future through the voices of the high school students who come each year to share their views of the world.
And that makes Sun Youth Forum Day the most hopeful day of the year.
I was especially proud this year to see people who participated in the Youth Forum in high school, like Alex Dixon who now runs Circus Circus, and my daughter, Amy, return as first time adult moderators. Many of our moderators — community leaders in their own right — came up through the Youth Forum.
The character of each Sun Youth Forum is different. This year it was evident that the national preoccupation with divisive politics based on “fake news,” “liberal media bias” and “alternate facts” had made its way to the discussion groups.
You could pick out the young people who grew up in “Fox News” households and those who grew up with other news sources. They came to the discussion as if what they knew was inextricably connected to what they had been hearing all their lives. And that was all they knew. With one significant exception.
Unlike their parents and grandparents who refuse to acknowledge any opinion different from their own, these young people were all too eager to engage, no matter how divisive the subject could have been.
Bob Fisher, who has been a moderator for, well, a very long time and who is a man who for most of his career has had his pulse on the body politic through his radio profession, sent me a note following the Youth Forum about his group’s critique of their day. It read, in part:
“There seemed to be some anxiety that due to the Trump vs. Trump and “Fake News” (something I heard a lot about yesterday) the students expected arguments with yelling, insults, etc. That was not the case ... they were unanimous in complimenting each other for the civility and respect that was shown to all participants.”
That, my friends, is the difference and what gives us reason for hope. While their parents’ and grandparents’ generations have decided that their belief systems are cause for division, the Sun Youth Forum students are willing to engage with each other — respectfully and civilly.
Those are two words that are in very short supply these days. But give these young people a few more years and they will change the way we talk to one another.
And that will make America work. And, yes, it will make our country even greater.
That’s the kind of stuff you learn at the Sun Youth Forum.
Brian Greenspun is editor, publisher and owner of the Sun