Obama Discusses His Activism – ‘I Wanted Young People To See My Journey’

Former President Barack Obama has teamed up with British soccer player Marcus Rashford to encourage young people to become political activists calling for change in society.

The two men had a Zoom meeting that was posted to YouTube on Friday in which they talked about their individual motivations behind their activism.

Obama Talks His Activism 

“The thing I want young people to see is that even in the highest reaches of power, where I’m sitting with world leaders and we’re trying to design a programme to deal with climate change or end a war or address a major world economic crisis, it’s still just humans,” Obama said.

“It’s still just people,” he added. “So often for many young people, particularly young people who are poor or don’t come from well-connected families or young people of colour or women or people of different sexual orientation, so often we feel like outsiders, not sure we belong at the table in making those decisions.”

“But the fact is that the people who are making the decisions, they’re not any smarter than you,” Obama continued. “They’re not somehow endowed with some special gifts. They may have had opportunities and exposure to things that you didn’t have but you can get those. I wanted young people to see my journey to understand that they belong in those rooms and at those tables where decisions are made as well.”

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Obama Doubles Down

Obama went on to say that Rashford is way “ahead of where I was at 23,” praising the athlete for being wise enough to ask “how do I give back?”

“Nobody’s destined to be president, nobody is destined to have an impact,” Obama said. “It’s a matter of you taking the risk, taking the chance that maybe you can make a difference.”

“What I tell young people is that whatever chosen profession you have, you still have the capacity to give back and make a difference,” he continued. “If you want to be a journalist, there is a journalism that’s designed to titillate and to make people passive and ignorant, or there’s a journalism that focuses people on issues that are important and gives them information and empowers them.”

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“If you go into business, you have decisions to make: is your business one that treats workers fairly and is environmentally conscious and does right by the community in which it’s located?” Obama said. “Or is it exploitative? If you decide to go into public service, you can do that in government but you can also do it through non-profit organisations.

“It’s the accumulation of people doing positive small things over time that makes us a little bit better with each successive generation,” Obama concluded.

This piece was written by James Samson on May 29, 2021. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

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