My Generation? Hello?

By Christopher Flavelle • October 17, 2007 • 4 Comments

Just when it seemed like nothing more of interest could possibly be written about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, New York magazine comes out with a surprisingly engaging look at their respective political activism in law school — Clinton fighting for civil rights in the early ’70s at Yale, Obama caught up in the affirmative action debates of the late ’80s at Harvard. The article is focused on the two candidates’ early lessons in politics, but I read a more pressing question: what happened to student activism? If every generation is defined by the cause it fought for, what’s ours? And if you can’t answer that question right away, what does it tell you?

Last week, the Times’ Thomas Friedman called the current crop of students “Generation Q.” The Q is for quiet — quiet in the face of quickening climate change, a madcap federal budget deficit, and Social Security reform that can either be uncomfortable or excruciating, depending on how long Americans wait to get on with it.

To this list he might have added a health care system that is outperformed by almost every other Western industrialized nation, urban infrastructure that is literally falling apart, the growing income gap, and other sources of outrage and civil disobedience. At least, these things seem like they might have caused outrage when Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were students. Today, says Friedman, people do online petitions.

Friedman’s piece met with some pushback from college activists. One disputed Friedman’s charge of too much virtual activism by listing some of the activist Web sites he was involved with. Another wrote, “Mr. Friedman may not see Facebook as a ‘substitute’ for his generation’s tactics, but my generation needs to see the potential in creative, nuanced and unseen ways of getting our voices heard.”

That might have been a compelling argument four years ago, when genuinely innovative online organizing helped Democrats raise more money and deploy more volunteers than perhaps ever before in the history of the party. Just one problem: they still lost the election, to the worst president in living memory, in the middle of a war that was going badly, in an economy that was shedding jobs. So much for the power of the online American generation.

But at least they’re trying. In Canada, the twentysomething generation has no comparable project to boast of; no bold effort, successful or not, to make a mark on the political landscape.

It’s not for lack of a stirring cause. Under the current government, Canada’s fight against climate change has been reduced to capitulation in fact if not in name — the more so after yesterday’s throne speech. If a Democrat becomes president next year, we may very well find ourselves last in the developed world on ecological responsibility. Canadians under thirty — my generation — will be left to deal with the havoc this causes. But the streets are not flush with protesters, the university campuses are not roiling in dissent, the Internet is not throbbing with Canadian versions of MoveOn.org.

Patton told his troops, on their way to Germany, “You can thank God that twenty years from now when you’re sitting by the fireside with your grandson on your knee, and he asks you what you did in the war, you won’t have to shift him to the other knee, cough and say, ‘I shoveled crap in Louisiana.’” As the youngest generation of Canadian voters, the fight against climate change is very much our fight. But it’s being fought by Europeans, and increasingly by Americans, on our behalf. And the only thing we’re shoveling is the idea that somebody else will let us off the hook.

Posted in Bright Lights •

Paul Bien

This is a very thought provoking piece, one worth further research I am inclined to opine. As a twenty-something myself I have been struck by the way University life seems to have changed in the past two decades. Chalk it up to those bedrocks of neo-liberalism, Thatcher, Regan and Mulroney, or perhaps to the increasing demand from the work world for even more education than ever before. The point I am trying to make is that something more has shifted than simply a move to “generation Q”. Perhaps it’s ‘generation overworked’ or ‘generation overstimulated’, but quiet is just not accurate enough. A campus to campus tour of Canada might really shed some light on the subject and promote some real, honest dialogue (perhaps the most absent of all the forms of dissension the used to pervade university campuses).
Pat Tanzola

Overeducated, Meritocratically Obsessed
Overloaded by Debt
Outnumbered 2 to 1 by Boomers (will spend adult years caring for dying relatives)
Generation Green Party (10% of vote, 0% influence)
Generation Jaded
Solution: Ultimate Frisbee
http://thinkingoutloudblog.blogspot.com/ Sarah Boyd

I’m with Pat Tanzola. Undergrad is the new highschool–you have to have bachelors to make more than minimum wage, unless you have practical talent and are in the trades. Everyone I know is graduating with massive debt, except for the handful with super-rich parents. There’s a few causes I would have loved to get involved in, but between full-time studies and my 2-3 part-part time jobs since high school, I don’t have the time to eat, sleep, or clean my apartment let alone participate in worthy but non-pecuniary causes. My plan has been to get through school and then devote my career to my “cause” (I’m studying to be a refugee lawyer).

There’s also a vote-splitting effect. If you only have time to support one cause, what do you choose? Darfur? Palestine? Israel? Climate change? Racism? Labour activism? Feminism? Electoral reform? A political party? Anti-poverty? That’s just a few of the causes warring for our attention on my campus (York, in Toronto). I wouldn’t call it compassion fatigue–more like poster & protest fatigue.
http://www.stepitup2007.org Jamie Henn

This is one of the better and more nuanced responses to Friedman’s article that I’ve read. And there have been many: from Facebook to blogs, students have been writing back, yelling (online) that they are in fact active, just ignored.

However, it is much too early to pronounce the failure of the “Online Generation.” The tactics developed in the 2004 election were new at the time and over-hyped as the arrival of a complete new strategy rather than what they were, an important piece of an evolving new form of activism.

Since then, a new crop of activists has been trying to improve on those tactics. We’ve had our failures and wasted time on projects that resulted in nothing, but we’ve also had phenomenal successes. Last spring, a group of friends and I helped launch and coordinate Step It Up 2007, a grassroots campaign dedicated to turning online connections into offline action. In three months, we organized over 1400 real world events – community rallies from the melting glaciers of Alaska down to the broken levies of New Orleans. They were united by a common message to Congress that was displayed in every photo uploaded to our website: “Step It Up, Congress: Cut Carbon 80% by 2050!”

John Edwards attended one of those rallies, having committed to our goal two weeks earlier. Within the next two weeks both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama committed to 80% carbon reductions as well, signing on to the strongest climate legislation in Congress.

This fall, we’re at it again – trying to organize another set of rallies to drive the message home. The date is set for November 3rd and we’re encouraging people to take action in their communities and this time invite their members of Congress and presidential candidates to join them. We know we’ll never have enough money to host the kind of $1,000 dinners the oil companies can, but we can help gather thousands of people and send thousands more invitations to events.

You can help – there aren’t any events in Canada: the U.S. Congress is the big roadblock in our way right now, so that’s what we’re focusing on. But help us spread the word – get it out there on websites and blogs. That won’t make November 3rd a success, the hard work of hundreds of people on the ground in their communities will do that, but it will be a help. As with web activism of any kind, it’s all a piece of the puzzle.

For more info visit:
http://www.stepitup2007.org

My Generation? Hello?

Posted in Bright Lights •

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