"Ellen" Barry#Top>Takes on the Democrats in the US state elections

Boston - Hotel manager Dana Dilto was just bidding for Boston mayor when he noticed someone in city politics stalking him online.

He said the effect of this attack was rapid and widespread. The morning after his candidacy was announced on Twitter, he showed up at his local barbershop, and while looking in the mirror, he heard a customer describe his views as a white fanatic

"I'm thinking, man, politics is filthy," Dilito recalls. He rushed home to shoot his critic, an enthusiastic progressive who had dug up some old Depelteau posts on social media and reposted them online. But he discovered that was a big mistake.

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"I didn't know how old he was," he explained. "I just knew she was such an outstanding person."

This is how he met Kala Walsh, the leader of the activist group known here as the Markeyverse. Walsh, a 16-year-old high school student, has many of the characteristics of Generation Z: She likes to refer to people (like the president) as "best friends." Every now and then she is called out of political events to take care of her little brother. It's a little bit in the kennel, from the parent, to get C + in Calculus.

He is also a representative of an influential new force in democratic politics, activists who honed the presidential campaigns of Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. 

The full strength of these activists - many of them not old enough to vote - was not apparent until last fall, when they were the key to one of the most surprising upheavals of the year as they helped Senator Edward Markey defeat the primary challenge of the Rep. Third Joe Kennedy, Who Was Strongly Favored to Win.

In conversation, Walsh tends to downplay her movement, calling them "teenage Marky" and "stage kids" who "previously ran, for example, Taylor Swift or K-pop Stan accounts."

But Markeyverse carried out a devastating political maneuver, firmly establishing Markey's idea as a left-wing icon and Kennedy as his challenge from the right. They implemented an ambitious digital regulation, using social media to conjure up a personal workforce - “an army of 16-year-olds,” said one veteran politician, who could “do anything online”.

They are viewed with concern by many in the Massachusetts Democratic establishment, who say they denigrate their opponents and are not held accountable; They turn on their allies at the first whiff of scandal; And they attack the Democrats in a concerted effort to push the entire party to the left, just as the Tea Party, on the right, has done to the Republicans.

Walsh, for example, is cheerfully aware of all of these criticisms.

In this spring's podcast, I remembered today last summer when the Kennedy Campaign summed it up in a statement, accusing that negative online campaigns created a fierce and dangerous atmosphere.

"I won't lie," she said. "I was terrified." But then, the fear evaporated.

"That's when I realized I had a stake in this game: They feared me," she said, "I am a random teen on the Internet who was doing some organizing with her friends." “I think this made us all think, 'Hey, they are scared of us. We have power over them. "