Millennials throughout the Panhandle have found how powerful their voices can be after a few of them spoke up as advocates for the convention center hotel, parking garage and multi-purpose event venue (MPEV), that have been proposed in Amarillo.

When speaking at a few city council meetings, the young adults received a lot of negative feedback online. People were accusing them of being paid, having scripted speeches and not being educated on what exactly they were voicing.

Motivated by this, Lily Gamble, a mass media major at Amarillo College, and WT alum Meghan Riddlespurger decided to found the Amarillo Millennial Movement (AMM) by creating a Facebook page encouraging millennials to come together.

“We recognize no one is talking to us, no one is engaging us,” Riddlespurger said. “They are talking about us all the time, but no one ever invited a millennial to come talk about millennial perspectives. So we thought this was a great chance to get involved.”

AMM is a group of millennials encouraging all young adults to care about local politics and recognize that their voices matter in the development of their community. After the initial start of the Facebook page, a website was then launched, as well as many other forms of social media which can all be accessed from their Facebook page.

They have since then held nine public events such as a five block walk-a-thon, an outdoor movie night and many general public meetings.

“AMM, I never thought would be what it is today,” Gamble said. “To think that we are a registered PAC, to think that we have such a great supportive audience, and that we are making a difference in the community.”

AMM has now become an official political action committee. C-founder Riddlespurger, and treasurer Katie Perkins have also become Volunteer Deputy Registrars, and can register locals to vote.

AMM says that they have many WT students involved and they plan on making their AMM branch at WT more noticeable.

“It’s ten-fold the amount of things that will happen whenever downtown develops for WT students because first off, population increase for the University is always good, and secondly, our generation is very entertainment centric,” Riddlespurger said. “We are looking for things to do on the weekends. We pick a city not because of a job opportunity, we pick a city because we want to live there, and then we find a job, that’s how we operate as millennials.”

Besides advocates, there are naysayers who do not agree with AMM or MPEV and continue to fight against them. This has been the largest difficulty as AMM learns some of the aspects of being so heavily involved in politics and what kind of backlash comes not only personally, but as a whole demographic. They are learning how to manage insults and what to say in order to continue representing the organization to the best of their ability.

“It’s not a certain age group, it’s a type of ideology that people have,” Gamble said. “Those that are very distrusting of the government, or that are fearful of change.”

AMM members agree that they did not expect the backlash, especially from people of such highly respected positions. But if name-calling and negative words are the worst thing, then they are set and ready as ever.

“Why does Amarillo not understand that what we do here is not just for Amarillo,” Regina Dinga, attendee of AMM’s movie night said. “It’s for the surrounding towns and communities. Borger, Hereford, Perryton, Pampa, Panhandle, they count on us. They come here for their shopping and entertainment”.

As Millennials continue to find their voice and use it, AMM will continue to encourage young adults to invest their voices in revitalization of their city and participation in politics.