A Ca Ira

[poliphilo]

I was a student revolutionary - and I'm happy to see the kids are back on the streets and occupying lecture theatres again.  A bout of political activism is an education in itself- and will teach you more about politics and the psychology of crowds and what the individual human being is made of than you will ever get from books. I learned to despise the Trots and how brittle potheads are and how easy it is to mislead the press and what comradeship feels like and all sorts of useful stuff like that. Really, it was one of the formative events of my life.

Comments

[airstrip.livejournal.com]

I'm not big on student activism.

I think it's mostly a bunch of spoiled brats getting out to protest issues they don't know anything about which take place in a world they systematically avoid in favor of shallow social networking.

Your generation was probably different and maybe it's completely different in Europe. The last time I was impressed with student activists they were protesting how the US treats illegal immigrants brought over as babies. You saw a lot of those babies, now grown, their brothers, sisters and friends.

Other than that, though, you just get something vaguely left-wing but mostly concerned with how witty the slogan is.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Young people are callow, ignorant and easily led. They're also idealistic, relatively uncompromised and don't see why they shouldn't change the world. I like to see them sticking it to their elders and betters. Where there's youth, there's hope.