I have failed you, my readers, in my task as an opinion columnist. Rather than provoking the discourse toward original thought, I have in the past indulged in the petty right against left debate.

I took to railing against Marxism when I did not strive to use my words to motivate profound change in the global debate and search for economic, political and cultural justice. For that, I humbly apologize.

The reason for this change of heart is, rather un-ironically, a Catholic nun. On Sunday, I participated in the 36th Roger William Symposium.

Sister Simone Campbell gave the symposium’s signature talk at the Gladish Community Center. Her subject was not only about social justice and income inequality but also reclaiming local politics, reasonable political discourse and the ability to empathize not just with the 99 percent but with the one percent.

I too was skeptical at first about this last message, but I soon came to understand. I was one of seven people selected to stand before an audience of 200 and hold a placard signifying one of the income quintiles in the United States.

According to Sister Simone, both my quintile- the second to lowest 20 percent– and the highest five percent are the most stressed in the country.

The second to lowest quintile stresses about falling into the poverty of the lowest; the highest five percent stresses about looking like and attaining the status of the one percent.

The most profound statement was Sister Campbell’s anecdote of meeting a group of Chicago hedge fund managers and learning that the top one percent of income earners likes earning more money only for the competition and sport of it.

Neither she nor I are asking for sympathy for these people, but the statement threw the reality of our current economic situation into sharper relief.

However, she advised that these people, however disconnected, are part of the solution as much as the problem.

She believes we need to engage and change our society locally in order to change it nationally. Reasonable discourse needs to take the place of vitriol, and community institutions need to be the bedrock on which the poor will climb back into material comfort.

She also called on me to respond, as she put it, “for your entire generation” when a professor asked how to get Millennials involved in social justice, participation and activism.

My short speech to the room included recognition of the bitterness Millennials hold in response to Baby Boomer and Gen X mismanagement of the economy; our burdens of student debt; our inability to achieve gainful employment; and the lack of respect older people have for the participatory power of political and social deliberation of social media.

I have honed my message since then. We Millennials also possess a sense of community and acceptance that transcends race, gender, orientation, religion and background like never before. It is not a perfect acceptance, but it is a cosmopolitanism not seen before.

My concluding argument is this: we need to seriously consider Sister Simone’s message of solidarity. We need to consider rethinking economic paradigms outside the old orthodoxies. Most of all, we need to think of what we want to achieve as a generation, a generation which our elders pass off as lazy, decadent and disconnected.

That all being said, I will henceforth use my column more or less controversially to help us, my fellow Millennials, motivate a constructive discourse on how to reshape the paradigms, build up our generational community, and use our many gifts to rebuild our wounded country and world.

Tyler Laferriere is a first year master’s student in applied economics and statistics from Phoenix, Ariz. He can be contacted at 335-2290 or by [email protected]. The opinions expressed in this column are not necessarily those of the staff of The Daily Evergreen or those of the Office of Student Media.