 Millennials are large and diverse, the largest generation at this point and the most diverse. Millennials are over 40% people of color and I think we have to remember that for communities of color the American dream has been something that we've been striving for for a very long time and have not ever reached. About 15% of the millennial generation was not born in the United States. They're so diverse that the concept of a typical American is really going to lose its meaning if it already hasn't done so. Over 6% of the millennial generation identifies as LGBT. This is double what older generations identify as. We can't talk about unemployment without talking about our own identities, be it as an immigrant, be it as a queer young person, be it as a Latino or African American, they all come together. All subsequent policy conversations are going to have to acknowledge the multiculturalism and the diversity of America now. Part of the American myth or dream is that every generation does better and better and for the first time we have a generation, at least in terms of wealth, that may not exceed the wealth of their parents or grandparents. We are optimistic but we're also in this place where we're kind of at the end of our rope. Millennials are having a difficult time gaining their footing in the economy. They're now on a very different trajectory than previous generations with greater obstacles in accessing some of the basic building blocks of success or what previously had been the building blocks of success. Getting the right education, finding the right job, raising a family, managing finances, even participating politically. For millennials, many of them came of age at a time when unemployment was high. And the very unfortunate fact is that research shows that when you enter the labor market when unemployment is high, it has negative effects that persist for many decades, maybe even for your entire lifetime. I think we should make it clear that those on the lowest end of the scale are in no way fringe. It is very mainstream to be living paycheck to paycheck as a young person. 40% of millennials are underemployed, right? And so the world between being employed and having that job security and having no income, more and more of us are in this gray area. What's at stake here is whether or not the American institutions, whether they're in government or in the private sector, can respond to the unique circumstances of the millennial generation. One of the core challenges of millennials is they have this huge amount of debt. So of course they're living with their parents more than people who were ever in college in 1997 when unemployment was very, very low. The fact that people are more likely to live with roommates or live at home, that may not be a cultural phenomenon. That actually might be a very realistic economic reality for millions of people. The old life cycle patterns about school, work, marriage and children are simply, they're not as effective as they used to be. And I've mentioned almost entirely ineffective for a huge portion of the millennial generation. Should I pay down my debt? Should I save for retirement? Should I save for a down payment? These are hard questions with a smaller pot of money to pay for it all. Every generation reimagines the American dream for itself. It thinks anew. It thinks fresh about who we are and what is success and what we're trying to achieve. And, you know, they define it in their terms, not in our terms. And we have to be careful about imposing our view of the American dream or the boomer view of the American dream onto these current millennials. For prior generations, it was almost like a staircase that each of these milestones as you met them, you sort of achieved another level, and then you work to get to the next level and to get to the next level. And what we're seeing is that for millennials, it's not a staircase, it's actually a meandering path. In this really exciting time where there are a lot of other tools, whether it's technological, institutional, or just kind of power politics, sit-ins of this kind that Perna was talking about. So, you know, social movements, a wider range of institutional forms outside of elections and the federal government. The fact that we have seen Occupy and Ferguson in the last five years alone means that we have a generation of people who are tired of just dealing with rhetoric and who are at a point where they want things to be taken literally. The White House in October released a memo about what their policies are for millennials now and in the future. When you get a memo released in October in an election year, that means you're a powerful political group. They already care about you and that's a good sign. It suggests that like they care about the elderly, like they care about Hispanics, like they care about blacks, they care about millennials as an institution already. We get scared talking about how younger people are actually using them to address systematic racism and classism because in general we're quite uncomfortable talking about systematic racism and classism. But you know what? I'd say that's part of what it means to be a millennial. Being an optimistic, entrepreneurial, tech savvy, emotionally grounded, yet financially conservative millennial isn't actually such a bad thing. Millennials are no longer just kids. I keep telling people when we talk about this work, they're older than you think, but they are still our future.