Sunday, November 10, 2019

WHAT STILL GIVES ME HOPE ABOUT THIS “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH” MOVEMENT: 2019


Harry Targ

Helping Students Adjust

“It’s clear that today’s young people…are more fragile in some ways. ….They seem  to be a little less ready, a little less prepared  for difficulty and setbacks than earlier generations. And so, yes if we can do something that enhances their resilience and all this that I just talked  about, I think it’s our responsibility to do that,” Purdue President Mitch Daniels quoted in Joseph Ching, “Student Success Initiative to Launch: Program Tailored to Tackle Gen Stressors,” Purdue Exponent, October 17, 2019.

The Vice Provost of Student Life, Beth  McCuskey, the article reported, announced a new program to facilitate student resilience called “”Steps to Leap,” which would help students respond to stresses in college and beyond building “lifelong skills in the area of well-being and resiliency.” This program would coordinate various university programs, including curricula, to address “five core pillars of life skills:” “well-being, leadership and professional development, impact, networks, and grit.” Daniels added that students today were having more severe mental problems than in years past.

The article then cited a college senior who had been researching student stresses for the new Steps to Leaps program. He suggested that generation Z students were too impatient; they expected change to occur immediately, not realizing that change takes “one step at a time.” He claimed Zers were reticent to network and rejected leadership as an hierarchical concept.

In a subsequent article announcing the program’s beginning, a student was quoted as saying that it was good to know that Purdue was supporting them in their endeavors: “Purdue has your back.” (Sean Murley, “Students Excited About ‘Steps to Leaps,’ Purdue Exponent, October 31, 2019).

Student Protests

One week later, a group of students protested an incident in which a pharmacy refused to sell a cold product to a student because he used his  Puerto Rican driver’s license as an ID, thus in the clerk’s mind, signifying that he was not a US citizen. A spokesperson from the pharmaceutical company apologized for the incident. But given experiences of discrimination on campus some students urged Purdue to issue a public statement condemning all forms of discrimination. Their demands were ignored. A Ph.D student protestor suggested that “Purdue is complicit in this case.  Students perceive, and rightly so, that the university’s diversity statements are mere words stated to give the illusion of anti-discriminatory policies.” (Dave Bangert, “Students Are Demanding That Daniels Denounce CVS Incident, Journal and Courier, November 8, 2019.
  
The particular incident, for which the company apologized, is not the issue. Students at Purdue University have for a long time raised concerns about racist incidents on campus. Over the last three years alt-right flyers with coded Nazi symbols have appeared on campus. Earlier, in December, 2014, students mobilized to protest the killing of an unarmed African-American man by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Demonstrators urged then that the Purdue administration address racial profiling and harassment on the campus . University spokespersons refused to publicly reiterate the institution’s stated commitment to oppose discrimination wherever it occurs.

Over the last several years, Purdue University reaction to student protest seems to contradict the claim that students “have the university’s back.” Rather Steps to Leaps, as described, seems to be a program designed to train students to adjust to a world with serious problems. And, if one reads between the lines, the Steps to Leap program regards student protest as part of the problem, not the solution. However, data would indicate a dramatic increase in youth protest in the United States and all across the globe. Why? Because of the threat to the physical survival of the planet, growing inequality in wealth and income and abject poverty, racism and sexism, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism, war, and the threat of violence in public spaces, including schools.

In short, the Steps to Leaps program is based on unfounded generalizations about the inadequate adaptability of Generation Zers to a complex world, and an assumption that protest and demands for radical change represent an impatience that is a sign of mental stress and immaturity. Again it is assumed that stress and “immaturity” is greater in this cohort of students than in prior periods (Students in the 1960s were characterized in similar ways as Steps to Leaps today).

Generation Zers Are Taking the Lead  for Social Change

In contradistinction to the implicit message of Steps to Leaps, protest can be seen as a manifestation of a profound commitment of Generation Zers to the project of transforming a world that is being destroyed by fossil fuels, endemic violence and racism. A year ago I wrote an essay about the skillful and committed mobilization of young people who had experienced gun violence at the Parkland High School in Florida. It argued that educators and the broader public should support movements for change initiated by students rather than ignore them. These mobilizations are not signs of immaturity or lack of “grit” but perhaps commitment, passion, and intellect.

I wrote then (“What Gives Me Hope About This ‘Enough is Enough’ Movement,”  Diary of a Heartland Radical, March 25, 2018):

“While I have had bursts of enthusiasm before when women marched for their rights, masses mobilized against war, and many stepped up to say no to police violence and mass incarceration, I was touched emotionally even more this time around. On reflection, I think, my optimism, my interest in being involved, and my sense of purpose has been energized by several features of this new movement.

First, this movement was not organized around “identities.” While the student organizers of the rally purposefully incorporated how people of color, women, and lower income students experience violence differently in their lives, the central focus was on the general issues of guns and gun violence. Individual youth organizers then spoke from their own experiences.

Second, the students, again consciously, avoided all sectarianism. While there were clear messages about profit-making corporations, lobby groups, self-serving elected officials, and the uses to which elections were put, they did not explicitly address the role of capitalism and class, race, and gender. They made it clear that elections matter. They avoided the debate about whether people should support one or the other of the major political parties or build a third party. They had organized in 800 cities and towns to say “Enough is Enough” about gun violence, not to raise issues of theory and practice that often divide older activists.

Third, the students had a direct, immediate issue-oriented agenda; that is the regulation of the ownership, sale, and use of firearms in society. Although spokespersons from Parkland and elsewhere beautifully grounded their advocacy in broader systemic, structural arguments about why they are mobilizing, they presented a modest but significant set of policy goals that they wished to achieve.

Fourth, the young people who organized the marches and rallies presented a practical plan to achieve their immediate goals. They urged those who were old enough to vote, to do so in the 2018 elections. Those who were going to become of voting age, they proposed, should register to vote. And all young people should encourage others to register and vote.

Fifth, all young people were urged to participate in the electoral arena. Activists called on youth to establish litmus tests for each candidate from local to national office on gun issues. And, where possible, participants in rallies were urged to run for office. And young people were advised to reject the argument that “you are just a kid… you don’t have the experience or knowledge to hold public office.”

Sixth, all the emerging youth spokespersons from Parkland, Chicago, Los Angeles, and elsewhere made it clear that they were not leaders in the traditional sense but facilitators of an organically charged mass movement. All students from Parkland who were interviewed indicated that they were not speaking for and about themselves. They saw themselves as part of a generation that is demanding the right to be free of the threat of being a target of violent death.

Seventh, spokespersons for this mass mobilization promise that “this is just the beginning.” One gets the sense from the passion, the collective solidarity, the proposed plan of action, and the specific goals articulated all across the country that a new movement has been born. This movement might transform itself from its singular commitment to controlling gun violence to a broad-based social movement for justice and democracy.

These “Generation Zers” will continue to build from their extraordinary uprising. For now they have set themselves and the nation on a new path that should give us hope and direction.”

The Bookshelf

CHALLENGING LATE CAPITALISM by Harry R. Targ

Read Challenging Late Capitalism by Harry R. Targ.