If We Are the Future, Why Are You Complaining?

What I want to know is, who decided that those youths didn't take up their posters and placards out of their knowledge and experience? Who says they are politically and socially awake enough to know when they're getting a bum deal and want to do something about it? Who decided that since they're doing something unpopular and controversial, they must have been put up to it?

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see much of this demonizing happening outside of Northern Ireland. Granted, I'm sure that there are some truths in the assertion that young people who didn't live through the Troubles have no real concept of what they're getting into, and may not have any experiences behind the slogans they're shouting. Some even allege that members of so-called 'dissident (don't even get me started on how that word has become a dirty word) groups actually use young people to stir up riots and attack police, and then take over when things get ugly. This is, after all, what the ever-so-wise media is saying about the three-day riots in Ardoyne surrounding the Twelfth of July.

So now, not only are young people often painted as hoods who are up to no good, who only hang around and get drunk, anything they might do as far as political action has been taken away from them as well. It's hard to find the line in NI in anything, and I'm sure this is no different. How do we tell which of these young people are demonstrating because they have a firm belief in something, and how many are rioting as a 'recreation' or because they're being provoked by older members of the community with memories of the Troubles? Many people say it doesn't matter, simply because so many young people have no first hand experience of the Troubles or the Civil Rights movement, therefore they have no idea what they're really shouting about, they're just shouting because of all the stories they've heard their parents and grandparents tell about shouting. Can that really be true?

In the United States last November, Barack Obama was elected president largely on the back of the votes of young people. As a young voter, I remember some (mostly Republican) people telling me that my views (and therefore my vote) was misguided on certain issues because I wasn't old enough to have those experiences or to know any better, and when I was middle-aged, I would understand why voting this way was such a dumb thing to do.

Now, pardon me, but I can see just as well as anyone that some things in this country - health care, education, foreign policy, war - are royally screwed up. So I think differently than a middle-aged person does. Yes. I don't have as many experiences as them. Yes. That makes my vote stupider and less educated? Nuh-uh. (Although, funny enough, while working on a campaign at work this year to lower the UK's voting age to 16, I came across an article that instead argued that the voting age should be RAISED to 35...)

My point is this: Young people have views. Legitimate views. Some of them come from experience. Some of them come from our parents. Some of them come from our own minds and consciences. Put it this way. A good friend of mine was a staunch Republican when we met freshman year at the University of Minnesota. About a year later, he was a converted Democratic (though a moderate one). This past summer, he went all over the country as a canvasser for Barack Obama. His parents are still Republicans.

Maybe young people in NI are more influenced by their parents than by experiences. Maybe they're influenced by education. But maybe, just maybe, they are able to see how sucky things really still are in a lot of places, and it makes them mad. It should.

And here's the thing: Just because a view goes against the prevailing wisdom of the government, doesn't make it wrong. Especially if it comes from someone under the age of 25. Hell, sometimes I think it's just because we're the only ones with enough energy to get really, really pissed off.

And that makes us really, really motivated.

After all, if youth are the future - why are you complaining about what we want to do with it?

written by  ebienelson on August 27, 2009 from Thiensville, United States
from the travel blog: "She is the Belle of Belfast City..."
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