Colleen Carroll Campbell’s column (“Challenging America’s me-first culture” 5/7) missed the boat in its attempt to blame young people for the ills of society.

First, instead of making an “apples to apples” analysis, comparing youth today with those of past generations, Ms. Campbell cites research comparing a 20 year old with a 65 year old burdened with many issues that a younger person would not have. This flies in the face of logic.

Furthermore, Ms. Campbell conveniently neglects to include any feedback from young people.  In reality, Millennials, or people born between 1976 and 1996, are being disproportionately affected by the economic crisis.  Not only is youth unemployment higher than the national average, but Millennials are more uninsured than any other demographic, and have an average of $27,000 in student loan debt.

Finally, young people are far from passive about their situation – according to a recent survey conducted by Mobilize.org, young people overwhelmingly cited the economy as their number one issue, and the vast majority felt that they were responsible for fixing the problem.

This is why Mobilize.org, SAVE and The Roosevelt Institution, along with an impressive coalition of other organizations launched the “80 Million Strong for Young American Jobs” coalition, which will hold a summit of Millennials this summer where participants will craft federal legislation to solve these issues and work to direct their own economic reality. Young people can also give input online at 80MillionStrong.org.

Instead of passing the buck and pointing the finger like Ms. Campbell, we all should be working together to come up with solutions to our problems.

Maya Enista
CEO, Mobilize.org
Washington, D.C.