Why this millennial decided to run for Charlotte City Council

I hate the “M” word. It hurt to write it in the headline for this story. I hate the “M” word because it’s usually followed by negative characterizations: They’re lazy, they’re moochers, they don’t want to work hard, and they care more about listicles and cat videos than they do about politics.

But I decided to use the word this time because this millennial defies many of those stereotypes.

Larken Egleston, 34, is running for Charlotte City Council in District 1. He shared his reasons for running and talked about why it’s important to get more young people involved in local politics on this week’s CharlotteFive Podcast.

Egleston is a Democrat who’s running against the Democrat incumbent Patsy Kinsey in District 1. He talked about Charlotte’s fast-growing millennial population in Charlotte, but noted that the generation isn’t really represented in local politics. There are passionate young people all over the city, and we talked to Egleston about how to get them more involved in local politics.

We also discussed recent protests in the city, including the immigration protest that interrupted a Charlotte City Council meeting, and whether protests are actually effective in changing the minds of politicians.

Egleston, an alumnus of Johnson and Wales and Appalachian State, has worked with Republic National Distributing and is the president of the Young Democrats of Mecklenburg County. He’s also a volunteer firefighter, a part of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission and he’s on the board of the Plaza Midwood Neighborhood Association.

So yeah, he’s pretty involved around town. Find out how those roles and experiences led him to politics.

Also discussed on this week’s podcast:

The media.

It’s become a bad word to some people, with fake news, alternative facts and clickbait swirling around.

Since we work in media, Sarah and I wanted to talk a little bit about what it’s like working in journalism, how we see the current media landscape, the perception of bias and more. Basically, we wanted to shed some light on how things actually work at a media company and maybe dispel some myths that people have about media.

And to keep us on track, Producer Richard got behind a mic to moderate the discussion.

You can find The CharlotteFive Podcast on Soundcloud, iTunes, Google Play,  Stitcher — and now TuneIn, which means you can ask Alexa to play the CharlotteFive Podcast on your Amazon Echo. (It’s awesome.)

You can follow us on Twitter @Charlotte_Five, on Instagram @cltfive, and on Facebook, and you can shoot us an email to charlottefive@charlottefive.com.

Photo: Courtesy of Larken Egleston for Charlotte City Council Facebook page.

This story was originally published March 14, 2017 at 9:07 PM with the headline "Why this millennial decided to run for Charlotte City Council."