Twenty-five years ago this month, a largely student-run movement overthrew Czechoslovakia’s repressive Communist government and established a functioning, multi-party democracy. The nonviolent transition of power is now known as the Velvet Revolution due to the mostly peaceful destruction of Communism and transition of power, as opposed to a “hard” or violent revolution. 

I bring up the Velvet Revolution for two reasons. The first is that, in today’s messy world of violence, upheaval and repressive governments, it is nice to remember that a peaceful, pro-democratic movement can happen. 

Uprisings and unrest, whether in Egypt, Ukraine, Venezuela or any other part of the world, do not have to end in tragedy and a state that is worse than the one overthrown.

But there is another reason that I want to remind everyone of the Velvet Revolution, and that is for its leaders. With the exception of a small group of older intellectuals and artists—Vaclav Havel and his friends—the Velvet Revolution was a movement by young people and for young people. These young people were the same age as the so-called millennials of today.

“Millennials” is one of those buzzwords that people like to throw around, often disparagingly. The word is loosely defined by NPR as the generation born between 1980 and 2000. To hear Time magazine tell it in a May 2013 issue entirely devoted to what is wrong with millennials, they are a lazy generation who don’t want to pay for TV or a college education and are not as successful as their parents or grandparents. To the New York Times Magazine in March of the same year, millennials are well-intentioned kids, college graduates in what some people see as “useless” fields like sociology and gender studies. They are also struggling to thrive in the “real world,” according to a column by economics reporter Annie Lowrey. They are obsessed with materialism and new technology but often can’t afford to get a house or start a family. In Lowrey’s words, “The millennials’ relationship with money seems quite simple. They do not have a lot of it, and what they do have, they seem reluctant to spend.”

I think millennials get a lot more flack than they deserve. Millennials came of age during a sluggish economy in a country that was mired in two wars and had lost much of its international prestige. However, millennials are forced to live up to the same expectations of their parents’ generations, of the Baby Boomers and Generation X, who could realistically expect to afford to pay for college and graduate with minimal loans, get a job, buy a house, have a family and live the “American Dream” in the same way that their parents did. 

Never mind the fact that the cost of attending a private university has increased by 250 percent since 1962 and that, according to that 2013 New York Times article, the unemployment rate among 20 to 24-year-olds is at 17 percent, more than three times the national average even though millennials are more educated than any other generation.

But I don’t think that my generation, the millennials, is lazy or spoiled or entitled. Some individuals in the millennial generation might expect life to be handed to them on a silver platter, but the same can be said of any other generation. That is not what makes the millennial generation different from the Baby Boomers or Generation X. Rather, the millennial generation is a diverse one; almost a majority of the millennial generation is made up of “traditional” minority groups. This generation is underemployed despite being more educated and paying more for that education than earlier generations, yet are still optimistic about what the future may hold for them. According to a Pew Research Center study, a majority of millennials are ultimately hopeful about the future. 

This directly contradicts the popular image of the millennials as selfish and entitled. The actual values and history of millennials include facing economic woes and emerging optimistic, standing united through deep internal diversity and seeking out education despite long-term financial consequences. 

Millennials haven’t earned a reputation for self-absorption simply because we grew up around technology that encourages interpersonal interactions. Those who would seek to criticize this generation must first acknowledge the facts that millennials are diverse, educated and optimistic about their future and changing the world. 

It’s unproductive to criticize the millennial generation for not being able to find jobs, for having to take out student loans that can end up in the tens, or even hundreds, of thousands of dollars, or for coming of age in a time when the world has so fundamentally changed. The United States is a slipping global power. Institutions like Social Security are no longer guaranteed. And college is just prohibitively expensive. Rather, our parents and their peers in positions of power should see what the millennials have to offer and how the millennials have the potential to make a change.

Millennials are the ones who organized around climate change and helped lead the largest climate change march in history. Millennials have taken a stand on ending the use of conflict minerals in their beloved consumerist products like iPhones and laptops, even while being criticized as mindless consumers in the one field that has most developed during our lifetime. 

Millennials constantly lead protests on issues such as immigration reform, minimum wage reform, sexual assault and gay rights. Simply look at the Young DREAMers organization or individual leaders like Debbra Alexis, Emma Sulkowicz and Chris Hughes. Millennials around the world have led the way on trying to end repressive regimes in Ukraine, Egypt, Thailand, Burkina Faso, Serbia and countless other states. 

It is counter-productive and disingenuous to call all millennials, or the young people of any generation or decade, lazy, self-absorbed or unable to make change. Look back at the Velvet Revolution if you want proof. 

It was young people who destroyed Communism in Eastern Europe, and the young people of today, the most diverse, least employed and most incredibly optimistic generation, can make that sort of change, regardless of what older generations may say.