Tapping the wire U.S. youth lack fervent protests, by Molly Riordan

Feb 9
On Feb. 1, Israeli police attempted to extradite thousands of illegal Jewish protesters from a West Bank settlement. There were several arrests and injuries. As the conflict escalated, a few hundred settlers holed up in nine houses that had been built on Palestinian land and designated for demolition. These protesters were mostly young people, ages 13 to 16.

Protest seems to be an inherent facet of adolescence. Not simply idealism or teen angst, rejection of authority and the status quo is the product of a blossoming, albeit sophomoric public consciousness. This coming-of-age ritual tends to present itself fervently throughout all corners of the world except among fearful U.S. youth.
In November 2005, young North African immigrant protests paralyzed the suburbs of Paris. For 12 days, the world watched and wondered how the young and disempowered could engulf the City of Light with red flames of burning cars.

Visible and volatile youth activism also seems to be a component of Latin-American political culture. In a major recent protest thousands of young Bolivians took to the streets in support of their newly elected president, Evo Morales. Morales is often compared to Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, another political leader with a young support base. In November, both men led thousands of anti-globalization activists, many of them young people, in an “anti-summit” near the convening Summit of the Americas.

Yet in the United States, such fervent youth activism is nowhere to be found. Staged “protests,” even large ones — marches on Washington and Times Square rallies — lack the fiery emotional investment we see in foreign demonstrations.

In addition, demonstrations are often represented as “violent.” In the case of the West Bank protests, demonstrators reportedly threw rocks at the armed militia, who later squelched their effort.

But regardless of how they’re portrayed, such protests simply don’t happen here. When our president, whom less than half of us approve of, spouts anti-terror rhetoric, we do nothing to extinguish it. Perhaps our immobility is not rooted in apathy, but in fear. This, combined with dismantled civil liberties, threatens our relatively peaceful, if not frustrated, political consciousness.

Like our peers around the world, we must be willing to pay a price to exercise our “freedoms.” Daring to voice dissent at the risk of retaliation has the double advantage of expressing concern and exposing an unjust system. Embracing the indignation of youth is the only way to realize its potential to incite change.