Youth in Revolt: A Look At The Youth Movements That Changed The World
More often than not, movements that seek progressive social reform are led by young people. Maybe this is because young people are less risk-averse. Maybe it's because those who have their lives ahead of them have a clearer view of society's flaws. Whatever the reason, activists tend to be on the younger side.
Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was in his twenties when he began protesting. Marx and Engels were 30 and 28 respectively when they published the Communist Manifesto. There are some activists who are even younger when they're inspired to action. And many of the most famous social movements have been led by teenagers.
With this notion in mind, we've rounded up ten of the most important youth movements in world history.
Newsboys Strike (1899)
One of the major contributing factors to the United States' involvement in the Spanish-American War was the prevalence of anti-Spanish propaganda in Joseph Pulitzer's New York World and William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal. Towards the end of the 19th century, these papers were in a vicious circulation war and used cheap, tabloid-esque tactics in order to gain popularity.
While circulation continued to climb, pay for New York City's newsboys stayed stagnant. Following a slew of strikes in the 1880s, their frustration came to a head in 1899. During the 1899 strike, the newsboys reduced the amount of papers in circulation and were subsequently successful in increasing their wages.
Vietnam/Cambodia Protests (1964-73)
From the beginning, the Vietnam war was heavily protested in the United States. The protests of 1968 following the Tet Offensive were worldwide, occuring not only in U.S. cities, but Rome, London, and Paris. More famously, after Richard Nixon elected to invade Cambodia in 1970, unarmed students at Kent State took up picket signs. During this demonstration, the national guard open fired upon the youth activists, killing four and wounding nine others. Their deaths spurred a 100,000 man march in Washington D.C. protesting the war, but the United States' involvement in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos would not stop completely until 1975, nearly five years later.
Black Panthers (1966)
The Black Panthers aren't typically thought of as a youth organization, but when the group was formed in 1966, Huey Newton was only 24. The group was originally formed to protect the citizens of Oakland from police brutality. Outside of this, their goals were socialist in nature and sought to free black Americans from the oppression of American Capitalism. While they officially disbanded in 1982, their mission lives on.
Tiananmen Square protests (1989)
These protests were conducted by large groups of students and intellectuals to protest the economic policies of China's Communist Party. While not entirely cohesive, the demonstrations were largely peaceful until the Chinese Army arrived, massacring between 300 and 3,000 citizens (reports vary widely). The next day, the famous video Tank Man was filmed. In it, a single man stood in front of a column of Chinese tanks and blocked their path. His fate is unknown.
Arab Spring (2010-2012)
The Arab Spring was born online and started during the Tunisian Revolution. Both violent and non-violent protests swept North Africa and the Middle East, and resulted in the toppling of several totalitarian regimes in the region. While these protests started out strong and cohesive, various interests began to collide, and some of the destabilized regions are still in civil wars today; the most newsworthy being Syria.
Dakota Access Pipeline (2016-2017)
The Dakota Access Pipeline was built from North Dakota to Southern Illinois and connects oil fields in each locations. Unfortunately, the pipeline runs through the Standing Rock Reservation and threatens the regions clean water supply. After a long, protracted struggle and hundreds of arrests, the pipeline was put on hold for an environmental evaluation. When President Trump was elected, he bypassed this evaluation and the pipeline delivered its first oil in the spring of 2017. The pipeline has already leaked several times and is proving to be exactly the type of ecological nightmare that the protestors were worried about.
Muslim Ban Protests (2017)
When President Trump signed executive order 13769, or the travel ban, protesters gathered at major airports all around the country, delaying flights and offering legal aid to various deportees. Following the protests, the U.S. Court of Appeals found the travel ban to be unconstitutional on three separate occasions.
March for Our Lives (2018)
Perhaps the most famous youth movement in recent history, March for Our Lives was a nation-wide rally advocating for stricter gun-control laws. Led by the students of Stoneman Douglas High School, it is one of the youngest (and largest) peaceful protests in American history and had close to 2 million people in attendance. David Hogg, Emma Gonzalez, and the rest of the the Stoneman Douglas students who helped organize the rally showed tremendous resiliency and strength of character; this protest took place about six weeks after the shooting. While no gun control laws have been passed yet, the protests certainly have the nation's attention.
Palestinian Protesters Against Israeli Occupation (Present)
Palestinians have been protesting Israel's government at the Gaza border and are currently in a standoff with the Israeli military. Palestinian refugees are seeking equal rights within Israel and to be allowed to enjoy the same comforts as the Israelis. While the Palestinian protest has been a peaceful one, the Israeli military has already killed and injured several protesters, many of whom are mere teenagers.
Donald Trump Is Encouraging His Supporters to Spread Death
It's understandable. The economy is suffering under the strain of the COVID-19 quarantine. It has decimated the stock market and resulted in an unprecedented spike in unemployment, and people want to get back to their lives. They want to reopen the country, and so does President Trump—whose ardent supporters have been among the most vocal and visible protestors. He's worried that if this situation continues on his watch, the economic damage may hurt his chances at re-election, as businesses small and large suffer losses that threaten their very survival. Leaving aside the fact that reopening too early will result in worse economic damage, there is another group that doesn't seem to concern him as much and whose survival depends on continuing the quarantine: People. Hundreds of thousands of people.
A mass grave in New York
So when Donald Trump was suggesting that "large sections of the country" could re-open for Easter, it was cause for concern. But with the impact of the pandemic still far from its terrifying peak in hotspots like New York city, it seemed likely that Donald Trump would back off his overly-optimistic stance—and he did.
That's often how things work with Donald Trump. He will make a show of how tough and no-nonsense he is with some dramatic posturing that seems to fly in the face of the experts and will then be cowed by behind-the-scenes efforts to make him see reason. Unfortunately for the country, most of his followers are not similarly attended to by an entourage of people trying desperately to steer them away from catastrophic idiocy. So now that Easter has come and gone and Donald Trump is continuing to hint that he may soon reopen the country—maybe even against the wishes of governors in individual states—chaos was bound to ensue.
While some of the protesters have remained in their cars—honking their horns and blocking the passage of at least one ambulance—others crowded together to scream their rejection of science in one proud voice and one shared cloud of breath.
For Donald Trump, the political effect of his latest hints and ambiguous comments about wanting to reopen the country and authorizing governors "to implement ... a very powerful reopening plan" while telling them, "You're going to call your own shots," is that he can have his cake and eat it too. While taking no direct measures to reopen the country amid continued medical advice to extend restrictions, he can still communicate to stir-crazy and cash-strapped supporters that he's doing everything he can for them and that maybe they should talk to their governors.
And that's just what they've been doing. In Michigan—where Operation Gridlock was so effective that even emergency vehicles couldn't get through—protestors directed their frustration at Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, with chants of "Recall Whitmer" and "Lock her up." In North Carolina, at the ReopenNC protest, more than 100 angry citizens assembled to protest Governor Roy Cooper's stay-at-home order and to spread conspiracy theories that the COVID-19 death toll is being inflated—though the opposite is true.
In Ohio the scene was particularly disturbing, with dozens of protestors gathering at the statehouse in Columbus with Guy Fawkes masks, Trump hats, and signs reading "This is tyranny," and "Quarantine the sick not the Contitution [sic]." Eventually a group pressed close together against the locked glass doors to shout their feelings with no concern for social distancing.
What these people need is financial assistance that isn't delayed by politics or targeted at millionaires and massive corporations, as well as reassurance that the current approach is necessary and effective—that our leaders are unified in following the guidance of health experts. What they get instead, from Trump and top Conservative voices, is constant waffling and hedging about the cost to the economy and tacit endorsement of these dangerous protests.
Just as he has had every opportunity to decry violence done in his name, Donald Trump could end these protests. If he were open and honest about the fragility of our hospital system and our country's best hope of getting through this crisis intact, then he could quell much of this unrest and dispel false narratives equating this virus to the flu or car accidents. Instead, he feigns careful consideration while effectively encouraging defiance that will inevitably result in more infections and more death.
Stay home and stay safe.
Protests in Chile Should Serve as a Model for American Activists
A memorial depicting Allende's broken glasses in the aftermath of the coup
On that day in 1973, the United States backed a coup that killed Chile's democratic socialist president, Salvador Allende, ushering in the brutal era of Pinochet. Chile has never fully recovered from the violence of that period, nor the sudden shift in economic policy that followed. For many Chileans, it has been hard to imagine a world in which the leadership could work for them, rather than the global elite. But now the streets of Santiago and Valparaiso are being taken over by thousands of protesters who've been unwilling to accept piecemeal concessions from President Sebastian Pinera.
So far many of these protests have been peaceful, but there have been instances of arson and of violent clashes between protesters and security forces. At least 20 have already died, but the activists there are not giving up. They are relentless, and they are only interested in substantive change—a fundamental restructuring of the Chilean Government to serve the working people. They want Pinera to resign, and they are calling for changes to the Chilean constitution.
Al Jazeera
For Americans, this kind of protest remains out of the question. Protest in America does not exist to be disruptive or to force action. It only serves as a salve for our powerlessness.
American protest is sanctioned by the system and restricted to its proper time and place. It makes the protesters feel better for a time—makes them feel seen, like they're a part of something—and maybe it raises some awareness for a cause or inspires some phone calls to congress. And if it attempts to do more, it is met with swift and violent crackdowns. It does not—cannot—break down the country's normal functions.
Christian Science Monitor
But what if the normal functions no longer work for the people? What if the interests that led the United States to back coups against Socialist leaders are also fueling mass propaganda campaigns against grass roots movements at home? What if they're defending those in power from the normal avenues of accountability?
The American media has a tight focus right now on the rapidly developing impeachment proceedings, and that makes sense. There is new information coming out of those efforts on a near daily basis, and there is a significant precedent for this kind of procedure to effect change. But it remains to be seen whether all this new evidence will survive the spin and propaganda from the likes of Fox News and One America News. We should not place our faith purely in the institutions of power to regulate power. To achieve anything for the people, the institutions of power must be afraid of the alternative.
AFP/Getty Images
We must look at the mass actions that are making life difficult for the powerful in Chile and Lebanon and Hong Kong, and prepare ourselves to make the same kind of trouble at home. Even if Trump is forced out of office and the Democrats choose a progressive nominee and the 2020 election fully flips control to the Democrats, the fight will only be getting started. The interests and forces that killed Salvador Allende in Chile will still be doing everything in their power to protect the status quo. We must be willing to upend the normal order if we want to produce real change.