I am supporting Barack Obama and hope that City will consider giving him its endorsement.

It all comes down to a single issue: the health of our democracy. I am 27 years old. Since I was 8, there has either been a Bush or a Clinton in the White House, forming an unbroken chain of executive power in the hands of two families. The impact of this cannot be understated.

My generation is in danger of forming an unbreakable habit of political apathy. We play video games. We watch football. We don't vote. I have spent hours pushing my peers to care about politics, and they tell me that politics and voting would be a waste of their time. In their view, citizen input doesn't count; a few powerful members of a ruling clique control the economy and government, so why bother turning off the TV to vote?

How can I convince them that they are wrong if there will be only two ruling families in America for 28 straight years (if Senator Clinton is elected and wins a second term)? And yet our generation has the biggest stake in this election. God willing, we have to inhabit this planet for another 50 years or more. Whatever happens now, we will have to live with the consequences for the rest of our lives. That is why I am so thrilled that people I thought would never turn off their PlayStations to care about politics have told me that at age 26, 27, or 28, they are about to cast their first vote ever.

Barack Obama inspires them. He is something different, something new, something worth standing up for. He seems to embody a new kind of politics, one we have been hoping for but had thought would never appear. With the win in Iowa, the impossible has just become possible. There is energy in the air.

I have not spoken about issues, or about experience and credentials (though I believe Obama is strongest in both). What I have spoken about is something that I think underlies them both: democracy. Obama's candidacy has the potential to bring an entire generation into public life just when that generation threatens to slip forever into a cynical immersion in private pursuits like the video game and the career elevator. Such a harvest of young voters will feed American democracy not just in 2008, but for decades to come.

MICHAEL BROWN, ROCHESTER

Brown is a University of Rochester graduate student and has volunteered to work on the Obama campaign.