Activities Of Our Youth

805 Words4 Pages
The Activities of Our Youth Beliefs. They shape many of our decisions in life and can be a very strong driving force of our desire to take action. Writer Courtney E. Martin shares with us one of her beliefs. She believes that youth activism is absent in generation Y because it is being institutionalized. She claims that activism groups in college have become tame and bureaucratic, that students will not start an uprising or go on hunger strike anymore for fear of upsetting the institutions that are funding them. My high school very strongly inspired me, pushed me, and supported me in my decision to become an activist not only in the safety of my hometown but on four different continents. Biased on this experience I would have to disagree with Martin. I do not believe there is an absence of youth activism on campus due to institutionalization. Institutions change the way certain organizations function, but so does time. Martin does not take into consideration is her essay that the way student activism is executed has changed with the times and the technology. She talks about how tame the youth of today has become and how they do not riot, protest or organize great uprisings but are any of those really necessary any more? Back when the Black Panther Party, Weather Underground, and Students for a Democratic Society were first created it was the 1960’s, the internet and mobile phones did not exist. Communication was slow and spreading the word about a cause was difficult. Back then you had to do something radical, something wild that would get peoples attention and perhaps even get the press involved. That was how you spread awareness for your cause, by starting uprisings and going on hunger strikes. Also all the societies Martin mentions originated in the sixties. So was the youth of the seventies, eighties and nineties just as radical or was it just that decade
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