Morning in America
I am a radio talk show addict. Yesterday morning, I drove to work, listening to Bill Bennett proclaim that it is morning in America.
He is right, but not for the reasons that he thinks.
My students are the only bright spot that I've had this week. They will not always be young. And amongst the brightest of them, there is a fire unlike anything I've ever seen. It certainly didn't exist in my generation at that age.
Let me give you an example. One of my senior boys put a petition into my hand yesterday.
"My friend is going to run for city council," he said. "He'll be 18 in time. We're going to get enough signatures for him... there are a lot of 18 and 19 year olds in city high schools. I wish I could run, but I'm going to manage his campaign instead."
"That's amazing, but don't you think it's too soon?" I asked. "I don't want to discourage him... or you... but what about life experience?"
"It's not too soon. We don't have time to waste," was the reply.
That is my kids' general opinion about Tuesday. Three senior girls in my classes announced that they broke up with nonvoter over-18 boyfriends. There is a local election here next fall, and in a city whose "hip-hop" mayor was first elected at age 31, "mayor", "governor", and "president" are now answers I get whenever we journal about goals and aspirations.
It's not just in Detroit. Judging from the sentiment amongst Young Dems, former Deaniacs, and progressive millennial bloggers, the strategy of taking back local and state legislatures is starting to form. The message all over the place on my political lists is "the campaign for the midterm elections begins now". You are going to see more people under 40 running for office than ever before, not just because of ambition, but because of a fundamental realization: *we* have to live the majority of our lives in this new century, and we realize that we will have to fix things ourselves because our parents and grandparents don't seem to be very interested.
Best of all, most exciting of all--the death of the civil rights movement has been falsely reported. The new civil rights movement began in the mid-1990s in California, as various groups united forces to oppose Proposition 209. By 1998, they were in SE Michigan, fighting the rollback of affirmative action at the University of Michigan tooth and nail. In May 2003, they were victorious. Tuesday, they were victorious again, defeating the state takeover of the Detroit Public Schools at the ballot box and encouraging a swell in the Detroit and Ann Arbor vote--Bush *almost* won Michigan, and the fact that he did not is partially because of this movement.
It is no accident that something great is happening here. Contemporary Detroit is the 2004 counterpart to Birmingham, Alabama in 1954--it is the nation's most segregated city. Perhaps two-thirds of my students have been or are currently politically active, with perhaps one out of ten being activists. The core of this 10% will be the natural inheritors of the social transfomers of the 1960s.
They are smart, they are savvy, and they use peer pressure to get our kids to fight against injustice. During this election cycle, some of my students worked the polls, some passed out flyers, some manned phone banks. They have testified in front of city council, written letters to the editor, and stood up to the school board during public meetings ("My name is Jane Smith, and I'm a sophomore at Cass Technical High School... and I want to know why the geography textbook I'm using was published 20 years ago.")
A few have been arrested in peaceful demonstrations. They have attended conferences and met other activist teens and young adults from all over the nation. They have marched on Washington twice, and are certain their marches helped to preserve affirmative action in Grutter v. Bollinger.
There has been a lot of criticism of the adults who sponsor such groups, one of whom is a colleague. They have been accused of being communists, of using the kids for their own aims, etc. But the criticism comes from a fundamental erroneous assumption, one that everyone should condemn as false, no matter what their political leanings are. By virtue of being human beings just like the rest of us, children and teenagers have agency.
The majority of my students are agents, and thanks to my colleagues who laid the groundwork, when I read from the Federalist Papers or King's Letter From Birmingham Jail or the political poetry of Pablo Neruda, they take notes... and then use the quotes and rhetorical devices as a jumping-off point for their own writing. I'm fortunate enough to have students who test into my school, but this awakening has been happening all over the city, especially over the past two years... and when these kids are fully awake, and unite with others of their generation from all over this nation, I smile to think about where they will take us.
"To speak a true word is to transform the world," said Paulo Freire. We who write, who educate, and who share information have a responsibility and a duty to give these kids the tools they need to build a brand new world.
Yes, Mr. Bennett, I agree. It is morning.
(P.S. If this wasn't enough to cheer you up, take a look at Outlandish Josh's post over at DailyKos, complete with a red/blue states map of what the electoral outcome would have been if only under-30s had voted:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/4/191246/507
Happy stuff.)
He is right, but not for the reasons that he thinks.
My students are the only bright spot that I've had this week. They will not always be young. And amongst the brightest of them, there is a fire unlike anything I've ever seen. It certainly didn't exist in my generation at that age.
Let me give you an example. One of my senior boys put a petition into my hand yesterday.
"My friend is going to run for city council," he said. "He'll be 18 in time. We're going to get enough signatures for him... there are a lot of 18 and 19 year olds in city high schools. I wish I could run, but I'm going to manage his campaign instead."
"That's amazing, but don't you think it's too soon?" I asked. "I don't want to discourage him... or you... but what about life experience?"
"It's not too soon. We don't have time to waste," was the reply.
That is my kids' general opinion about Tuesday. Three senior girls in my classes announced that they broke up with nonvoter over-18 boyfriends. There is a local election here next fall, and in a city whose "hip-hop" mayor was first elected at age 31, "mayor", "governor", and "president" are now answers I get whenever we journal about goals and aspirations.
It's not just in Detroit. Judging from the sentiment amongst Young Dems, former Deaniacs, and progressive millennial bloggers, the strategy of taking back local and state legislatures is starting to form. The message all over the place on my political lists is "the campaign for the midterm elections begins now". You are going to see more people under 40 running for office than ever before, not just because of ambition, but because of a fundamental realization: *we* have to live the majority of our lives in this new century, and we realize that we will have to fix things ourselves because our parents and grandparents don't seem to be very interested.
Best of all, most exciting of all--the death of the civil rights movement has been falsely reported. The new civil rights movement began in the mid-1990s in California, as various groups united forces to oppose Proposition 209. By 1998, they were in SE Michigan, fighting the rollback of affirmative action at the University of Michigan tooth and nail. In May 2003, they were victorious. Tuesday, they were victorious again, defeating the state takeover of the Detroit Public Schools at the ballot box and encouraging a swell in the Detroit and Ann Arbor vote--Bush *almost* won Michigan, and the fact that he did not is partially because of this movement.
It is no accident that something great is happening here. Contemporary Detroit is the 2004 counterpart to Birmingham, Alabama in 1954--it is the nation's most segregated city. Perhaps two-thirds of my students have been or are currently politically active, with perhaps one out of ten being activists. The core of this 10% will be the natural inheritors of the social transfomers of the 1960s.
They are smart, they are savvy, and they use peer pressure to get our kids to fight against injustice. During this election cycle, some of my students worked the polls, some passed out flyers, some manned phone banks. They have testified in front of city council, written letters to the editor, and stood up to the school board during public meetings ("My name is Jane Smith, and I'm a sophomore at Cass Technical High School... and I want to know why the geography textbook I'm using was published 20 years ago.")
A few have been arrested in peaceful demonstrations. They have attended conferences and met other activist teens and young adults from all over the nation. They have marched on Washington twice, and are certain their marches helped to preserve affirmative action in Grutter v. Bollinger.
There has been a lot of criticism of the adults who sponsor such groups, one of whom is a colleague. They have been accused of being communists, of using the kids for their own aims, etc. But the criticism comes from a fundamental erroneous assumption, one that everyone should condemn as false, no matter what their political leanings are. By virtue of being human beings just like the rest of us, children and teenagers have agency.
The majority of my students are agents, and thanks to my colleagues who laid the groundwork, when I read from the Federalist Papers or King's Letter From Birmingham Jail or the political poetry of Pablo Neruda, they take notes... and then use the quotes and rhetorical devices as a jumping-off point for their own writing. I'm fortunate enough to have students who test into my school, but this awakening has been happening all over the city, especially over the past two years... and when these kids are fully awake, and unite with others of their generation from all over this nation, I smile to think about where they will take us.
"To speak a true word is to transform the world," said Paulo Freire. We who write, who educate, and who share information have a responsibility and a duty to give these kids the tools they need to build a brand new world.
Yes, Mr. Bennett, I agree. It is morning.
(P.S. If this wasn't enough to cheer you up, take a look at Outlandish Josh's post over at DailyKos, complete with a red/blue states map of what the electoral outcome would have been if only under-30s had voted:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/4/191246/507
Happy stuff.)
posted by Ebony Elizabeth at 7:14 PM
2 Comments:
I've been one of the guilty apathetic. I've voted in my life, but only because it was time, the outcome never seemed to effect me profoundly.
A referendum here, a constitutional reform there. Municipal elections? Civic bill passing? Whatever. I'd be there if wasn't busy. I've always voted with my conscience, and trusted others to do the same, never fearing the outcome. The majority has to be right. Right?
Last Tuesday, I bowed my head and cried. I cried for the people who had to fight so hard for the rights they're entitled to. I cried for the young men who had hoped to be coming home. I cried for my children. I cried for my friends. Then I just cried. For the first time in my 41 years, I knew what it was like to have a political conscience.
That map was the first glimpse of hope I had seen this week. It made me smile.
Thanks Eb.
Nell
I actually do think life experience is probably important ... but I suspect there's already a lot of that on the City Council, and possible not a lot of understanding of the concerns of younger people. So if he's willing to work with the other people there to contribute what he knows and learn from what they know, and (what may be harder) if the others are willing to do the same, that could work.
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