It’s all terribly self-indulgent navel-gazing, but I suspect that a lot of us may be able to relate to this article explaining to Tom Friedman why young folks these days don’t go out and protest and change the world, like they all did in the good old days:
My generation tries to create lives that seem to match our values, but beyond that it’s hard to locate a place to put our outrage. We aren’t satisfied with point-and-click activism, as Friedman suggests, but we don’t see other options. Many of us have protested, but we — by and large — felt like we were imitating an earlier generation, playing dress-up in our parents’ old hippie clothes. I marched against the war and my president called it a focus group. The worst part was that I did feel inert while doing it. In the 21st century, a bunch of people marching down the street, complimenting one another on their original slogans and pretty protest signs, feels like self-flagellation, not real and true social change.
Well, speaking personally, that very sense of helplessness was particularly acute after the Kerry loss, and has continued with every day that I get more horrific news from Iraq and more warning signs on global warming. That’s why I write, which is not quite the same as “point-and-click activism”, but neither is it taking the streets and threatening domestic chaos until my demands are met. I’m not hunger-striking, I’m not doing a salt-march to the sea.
Lord knows we want to know what works. As Ms. Martin points out, the protest march has really been done to death, and it’s not a surprise anymore. (If I hear another hey-hey-ho-ho chant I’m gonna do something rash.)
What we need is a method of protest that 1.) really gets attention, that is completely novel, creative, and inventive; and 2.) in which the method of protest embodies and clarifies the ethics of the movement itself, and 3.) invites people into the movement, which allows them to become members of a coalition without sacrificing their own identities or personal ethical codes. It should invite discussion, not demand conformity.
Now, all that being said, I have no idea what that would look like. But when we figure it out, it’s gonna be good.
not bowling alone, and yes, I’m talking about meatspace.
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For me, that means things like: * Drinking Liberally * Progressive Democrats of Massachusetts local chapter * Mass Climate Action local chapter * Democratic Town Committee local chapter * Town Meeting
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and perhaps most importantly, serving as a precinct captain for elections — organizing block captains, maintaining voting lists more accurate than the Town Clerk, registering neighbors to vote, welcoming new neighbors to the political process, etc.
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That’s my formula. YMMV. Want to make change? Get other people to move in the same direction you’re moving — get enough, and politicians will either move with you or be trampled.
Yeah I read that and largely ignored the article. Look, whenever we college students do direct actions — protests, lying in front of a bulldozer, “die-ins”, etc. etc. etc — people basically laugh and say, “Oh what good is that going to do?”
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And then when we don’t do these activities which realistically don’t change public opinion, we get criticized for being apathetic, inactive, and you know, not as idealistic somehow.
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The ultimate goal of any political activity is to be effective in pushing for your agenda. That’s why students are getting savvier:
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This is true, also, at Brandeis. For example, recently, student environmental activists worked with the university to sign onto the campus climate commitment and hire a sustainability coordinator. I don’t think that would have happened without student pressure. And when students around the country do that it adds up.
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And students have been really involved in things like the One campaign to end global poverty. And hey, ask Governor Patrick what he would have done without a lot of the young energy fueling his campaign. I could go on.
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So just because youth activism doesn’t look like the 1960s activism doesn’t mean we’re apathetic.
Without a free media conventional civil disobedience is an exercize in futility. If the camera isnt there, than it didnt happen.
if the university actually does divest it’s Sudanese interests, I’d hardly call that useless.
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And, sometimes column inches are more valuable than the 5:00 news.
I don’t want to sound critical but …. what is your gut feel on the investments angle? Who’s to say that the investments don’t just get rerouted through some other vehicle right back to the same point of interest anyhow … logical for the course. It seems like a well intentioned and fruitless exercise but what the hey, not like I have any better ideas.
Its just the whole concept of playing dress up to go play by the laid out rules in order to initiate change. I may be cynical but it sounds synonymous with mocking ones self. It sounds like surrender. What happens when they say no? Do you come back with a better presentation. Do they give you an A when you see the light and adjust your presentation so that it matches the decisions they already made. Congratulations, you have now graduated and can go out and conquer the world ?
…if the college divests itself of its investments in companies doing business in the Sudan, it will be doing so at “fire sale” prices. The investments have already been made. Who is going to be hurt? The Sudan? No, the entity that will be hurt will be the college.
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From what I read, divestment per se did little to overturn deKlerk’s Apartheid government in South Africa. What did work was a conflation of two things. One, the white Apartheid government wanted to be seen as a member of the Western society of nations. And, more importantly, it needed trade, which was being upset because of trade boycotts. It is unclear whether the Sudan will be swayed by mere divestment.
That being seaid, kicking “whitey” out throughout Africa worked wonders. I have no idea what the answer would have been, but this certainly was not it. Africa has been been plunged back into the stone age. The S. African government simply created satellite sovereign nations in which to deport their malcontents and pretty much went along their merry way. Mr. Mandella, after Winnie through a monkey wrench into things, played the game and disappered into obscurity. All that altruism resulted in what? A humanitarian catastrophe.
I’d expect the opposite. I’d expect that since most stock investment is done through large institutions [banks and brokerage houses] that even if all universities divested their Elbonian investments that the price wouldn’t budge, since the total percentage of each given company owned by the unis is so small.
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In a direct sense, I’d think that were it done in secret, the universities might bear a smidge of opportunity cost, the stock price wouldn’t move, and that would be the end of it. I suspect though that if universities started divesting, the media gets hold, and the public starts discussing more economic sanctions for Elbonia. Then the stock may dip, since large investors are concerned about the prospect of trade embargoes or other sanctions in the future.
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I have no idea how effective divestment is. I just point out that if the goal was divestment and divestment happened, then clearly the students were affective.
…is merely a tactic to get people who are forcing divestment to feel better about themselves.
…the plants have been built. All that is being done with “divestment” is trading pieces of paper. That isn’t divestment–it isn’t destroying the value of the plants that were built with the original investment.
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On the other hand, trade boycotts might reduce the value of the plants that were built with the original investment.
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NB: It’s “effective.”
…I would almost be willing to bet that, if there were still a military draft to supply cannon fodder for the US’s little adventure in Iraq, there would be more than a bit of student activism. Except largely for Jews* in the 1950s and early 1960s (and before), it was not until mid- to late-1960s that many students became activists–largely because they didn’t want to be drafted to go to Vietnam.
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*Why Jews? They, along with blacks, were leaders in the civil rights activism, which predated the anti-Vietnam war activism.
There were many folks of the jewish persuasion that
civil rights activists, but most were initially middle aged white northeasterners.
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The original nucleus of anti war protesters (so-called) in USA were leftist vermin. The young folks who were hazily stumbling around in lysergic acid and THC fog came much later. It was the social thing to do. Now talk to those folks. Most are embarrassed and apologetic re their behavior. I believe there was an article in the September 07 Esquire re this very matter–“Vietnam Guilt” or something along that line.
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Revolutionary War, American Civil War,WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Shield/DesertStorm,
Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, American men and women put their lives on hold, got up off their asses and did what they were called upon to do. They didn’t weigh the merits of their participation or involvement, they answered the call when their nation called. They succeeded in the face of unimagineable adversity.
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Think about what those men and women sacrificed for you when you bemoan your existence and how unfair everyone and everything is around you. If you live long enough, you will understand that from the moment of conception, life is unfair. Life will always be a struggle and I have a feeling it will very soon become a exponentially more challenging. Best of luck.
Hows that 20,000$ dollar bonus thing working out?
My Berkeley-educated sib and her Navy-vet husband recall with pride participating in the anti-war movement, being beaten and gassed by the “pigs,” and ultimately helping to move the country to end the war. Those experiences inspired for them a life-long commitment to Democratic candidates and progressive causes.
LSD was originally sythesized by a Swiss chemist in the 1930s. It was popularized in the US in the 1950s and 1960s by the CIA and the US military. Cannibis (your “THC”) has been consumed for millenia in more than a few asian countries. Try harder.
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As to Revolutionary War, American Civil War,WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Shield/DesertStorm, Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom you really should get off your Shetland pony. Aside from the fact that the Northern states would now be better off if they had let the South go their own way, except for the Revolution and WWII, the US had no interest in any of those wars.
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WWI? No–let the Europeans fight it.
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Korea? What possible interest?
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Vietnam? Don’t be ridiculous. The US fostered the war, by refusing to allow the promised elections in 1956.
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Desert Shield/Desert Storm? Don’t be silly. Who cared who owned the oil fields under Kuwait? Other than, perhaps, Maggie Thatcher, whose UK housed Kuwait, Inc.
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Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom? Oh, so let me understand this. The US had an interest in fostering a civil war that now threatens to engulf the entire region? Give me a break.
Generation Overwhelmed?
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I would call it “Generation Oblivious.”
I do not agree with that assesment and I do not think that was the intent of this author either. I am assuming we are looking back at about the same events with about the same perspective and comparing them to what we see today … Now think about the differences that all of these recent “technological advances” have made … they have not advanced the cause they now work against us, somwhere there is a file that recorded what I had for breakfast … the internet is the last frontier and we are close to losing this media as well. This is what today’s generation is up against. We had it easier. The techniques of old will not have the same effect today and they know it.
There already is a defacto draft, I didnt get that point. Anyhow what the author was pointing out was that he know it wont work either. It is going to take something new, something the powers that be have not adapted and prepared for and I, like the author, look forward to seeing what it might be.
It should be apparent that I was satirizing the author.
What was the point of the “generation oblivious” comment?
Boston area college students against the defacto draft. Pretty catchy!
At the risk of sounding like an old fuddy-duddy, the lives of young adults are different now than they were when I was young(er). Engagement with the world then did involve armbands and signs and protests. Engagement now may mean something very different, including activism in suits, working with social entrepreneurs to change the way the world works (Kiva, for example), netroots activism, and other tactics I’m too old to be aware of.
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If you’d like a glimpse of what life is like for students today, take a look at this short video, from Michael Wesch and his Introductory Anthropology class at Kansas State University: “A Vision of Students Today”. Certainly, the experience of that group of students is vastly different than the one I had.
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Tom Friedman has some good points. Today’s students do have higher material expectations that almost anyone I knew when I was a student. Charley, too has good points-the issues are to figure out what actually could work in the environment young adults live in. It’s probably something really different than the tactics that used to work.
Ever since “Gen X,” the search for the adjective that best describes the marketing cohort du jour has directed attention away from real issues and into pointless speculation about the “character” of a generation.
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If only the kids weren’t so selfish/distracted/entitled/passive/aggressive/whatever, the world would be better.
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Do I have to point out how stupid that is?
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I like what Charlie has to say:
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only I’d reframe it to say we need a method of exercising grassroots political power–which is what protests try to do–that etc.
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I’m not sure it has to be “completely novel,” either–that may be raising the bar too high. I think there is a lot to be learned from studying grass-roots movements of the past, even if their strategies are not specifically useful today.
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Successful movements brought political power to bear from outside of the official power framework. The corruption of our political culture and institutions, and the urgency of some of the problems we face, means we have to do no less today.
When I was a kid, I was the oldest of many children and we were dirt poor. Having something to eat every night was not a given.
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I would venture to guess that very, very few young people have to worry about very much. “Failure to launch” is the biggest worry of parents in this day and age.
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Way back then, kids had numerous jobs, didn’t get pregnant, didn’t drink a whole lot until you were 21 because your old man would kick your ass, as well as the local cops, didn’t do drugs because essentially there weren’t any, and watched very little TV. This is very simplistic, but accurate. Then suddenly everything got much better. We are drowning in betterness.
You’ve got the demented old duffer routine down pretty well. “These kids today…!!!” Yeah, sex and drugs were first created in the ’60s. Yeah. Right.
contrary, maybe, to the tone of your post (but not I hope the spirit), is to come to the peace rally on Boston Common this Saturday at noon.
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It’s one of eleven regional protests being held across the country on that date.
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A protest demonstration is not new or perfect or any of those other great things but when people of good will set out to to do something good it’s best to be helpful and humble with the criticism. Because, you never really know.
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Chanting hey ho etc etc (which I hate) is optional.
I think that part of the disillusionment with marches/protests/etc. is that they’re largely seen as being ineffective — especially, as someone already pointed out, when the media chooses to ignore them.
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While I don’t completely discount the effectiveness of protests, I think the fundamental problem is a systemic one, and thus must be dealt with accordingly: If you don’t like how the system works, stop playing along with it.
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Unfortunately this entails asking tough questions of ourselves and making some tough choices. It requires us to really understand our own values and what trade-offs we’re willing to make. We need to recognize the connections between our lifestyle choices and the health of the world we live in. Are the comforts we’re accusotmed to worth the price? Ultimately this is only something each of us can answer for him- or herself.
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I just read Jim Hightower essay regarding the assault on the Constitution being perpetrated by the BushCheney administration and their accomplices in Congress.
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Towards the end of the essay Hightower makes the following proposal:
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A tough challenge, indeed, but perhaps the only way to effect meaningful change.
Every so often somebody comes up with a boneheaded idea like this one. “Let’s protest the high profits of gas companies by boycotting them for a day!” “Let’s go on strike and sit around on our asses for a day doing nothing — that’ll show Bush and Cheney!” But these ideas are forgetting one thing:
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Corporations only ever look at quarterly and annual sales and profit numbers.
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If you “boycott” gas one day, then that just means you’ll buy your gas the day beforehand. The same amount of gas will get sold that fiscal quarter, and the gas companies won’t care.
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A general strike? Slightly better. If you skip work a day, then your job is not getting done and it will have a slight, noticeable effect on the economy. Very very slight. But that’s the only effect — you still have to buy groceries, gas, video games, whatever, and if you don’t buy them on Nov 6, you’ll surely do it on the 5th or 7th or 4th or 8th…
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So, this slight slight measurable effect… even if you could get enough people to take part, do you think anybody in power would actually notice? “Oh, looks like our profits are down 1.5% this quarter. I wonder why.” (1.5% is a generous number, assuming everybody took part, and given that one workday on “strike” out of 65 or so in a financial quarter amounts to 1.5% of the quarter.)
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They probably wouldn’t even notice that. 1.5% gets lost in the noise. Profits fluctuate all the time — up 5%, down 3%, up 10%, down 6%, down 1%, up 15%… if you subtract 1.5 from any of those numbers, would you even notice?
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There are ways of getting attention, meaningful ways. I don’t think this is one of them.
The key is repetition. Surely a day where a significant percentage of the population “drop out” would get some attention, but the key to any real change is to do this repeatedly and in significant numbers.
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Again the challenge is whether any of us (myself included, certainly!) has the cojones to actually TRY this. At what point are we actually willing to make the necessary sacrifices to bring about meaningful change?
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There seems to be a general sense of apathy/complacence/fear/inertia — or simply a general reluctance to actual undertake the sort of real sacrifice that would be required. There’s no sense of urgency, and THAT is what the current system thrives on: Keep ’em fat, happy/fearful, docile, and in perpetual endebtedness.
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Surely the proverbial “tipping point” is out there somewhere on the horizon, but the question is whether it will be too little too late.
The Dalai Lama just had an op-ed piece published in the Washington Post last weekend, around the time he received the Congressional Gold Medal.
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I also had the opportunity to hear him speak in New York City the weekend before. One of the recurring themes of his public talks is the need for “inner disarmament” before we can begin to approach the idea of “outer disarmanent.”
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In the concluding his op-ed piece, the Dalai Lama offers this suggestion:
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The Dalai Lama prefaced his New York talk by saying that anyone who came to hear him expecting some sort of special wisdom was bound to be disappointed. However it is this very sort of down-to-earth wisdom that is well worth taking to heart.
This idea that youth activism has declined might be true in some cases, but at times it borders on dismissing the activism that exists.
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For the first time in history, millions of people around the world protested the Iraq war before it happened, just to name one.
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And don’t forget the Jena protests. Youth from around the U.S. just converged on a small town in louisianna primarily through our new mediums of communication, namely web 2.0.
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The resistance still exists we just have to look for it.