Student survivors of the violent assault at the Parkland Florida High School that took seventeen lives are sad, frustrated, and angry. They took their protest for stricter gun control to the State Capital in Tallahassee and they’re inspiring popular protests by tens of thousands of youth and others across the country. The students are demanding universal background checks, banning assault weapons, like the AR-15, and raising the age for purchasing a gun to 21, all measures with substantial majority public support. They’re calling for a national protest on Saturday, March 24 and they’re warning politicians, many of whom face elections this year, not to cave-in to the NRA.
Many observers of the protests predict that youthful energies and enthusiasm will fade, and the protests will die down. After all, these are “just kids.” Some more critical conservative responses have alleged that the youth are being manipulated by adult anti-gun organizations. A particularly vicious response launched by an extreme rightwing radio talk show host and given a thumbs-up “like” from Donald Trump, Jr. accused one of the student protest leaders of being a “crisis actor” trained and played like a puppet by his former FBI agent dad.
What many commentators are failing to acknowledge is how many times, in how many countries over the past century, the world witnessed students and youth serving as the conscience of their nation and as the vanguard for major social change. It’s worth recalling a few of the many examples to appreciate the potential power of youth acting together based on their hopes for a better future, and on their bold belief and daring determination that they can help achieve it.
Watching the Olympics recently, I was reminded of how in 1960 in South Korea, facing brutal police violence, it was student protests that inspired broader mass popular protests which finally forced President Syngman Rhee, a corrupt, repressive dictator, to flee the country. Tapping into this same positive political, cultural vein, South Korea’s current President, Moon Jae-In, was elected on the back of waves of students protesting corruption. Moon believes in negotiating with the North and offers some hope that the two Koreas will find a way other than war to resolve their conflicts.
In South Africa, students and youth played a major role over four decades in the struggle to end Apartheid. While everyone knows the name of Nelson Mandela, many people may not remember how in 1976 high school students in Soweto organized a protest for a better educational system for blacks. Police responded with tear gas and bullets, killing 600 people. A year later, Steve Biko, one of the organizers of the Soweto protest, was arrested and died in police custody from severe brain damage, likely a result of police beatings. The Soweto story and continued action by students inspired worldwide anti-Apartheid protests. Nelson Mandela often is credited with inspiring the anti-Apartheid movement; and it is a fact when he was released in 1990, after spending 54 years in prison, Mandela led the movement and was elected South Africa’s first black president. It is equally true that the popular movement from below, especially the movement of South African students and youth, was responsible for inspiring and supporting Mandela..
The Arab Spring in 2010-11, sparked by the self-immolation of a young street vendor in Tunisia, was a wave of pro-democracy protests and uprisings against poverty, corruption, and repression in the Middle East and North Africa. In Egypt the uprising began on January 25, 2011 when diverse youth groups issued online calls via social media urging public protest against increasing police repression and brutality. The uprising consisted of demonstrations, marches, occupations of plazas, non-violent resistance, acts of civil disobedience and strikes. While tragically the Egyptian military eventually reimposed violent repressive rule, in the interim the Eygptian uprising forced the dictator Hosni Mubarak to resign and caused new free and fair elections to be held. A little-known story about the uprising is how The Montgomery Story comic book, originally published by the Fellowship of Reconciliation in 1957, making the case for nonviolence, was translated into Arabic and thousands of copies distributed among Egyptian youth.
Reference to the Montgomery bus boycott reminds us of the major role played by students and youth in the American Civil Rights Movement and the Peace Movement to end the War in Vietnam. In Birmingham in 1963-64, both before and after the church bombing that killed four young girls attending Sunday School, thousands of black children and youth braved mass jailings and attacks from powerful fire hoses and police dogs. The dramatic events of the “Children’s Crusade” in Birmingham provided the context and impetus for passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In March 1965, hundreds of black Selma high school students were joined by black and white college students from across the country, and Christian and Jewish clergy to march with Martin Luther King, Jr. for voting rights. Events in Selma, including the arrest of hundreds, beatings and killings of several young and older activists, and the successful Selma to Montgomery March led directly to President Johnson’s successful push for the Voting Rights Act and to his speech in which, taking a line from the movement’s anthem, the President famously declared, “And we shall overcome!”
Tragically, Johnson's commitments to civil rights, the War on Poverty and other socially beneficial programs were deeply undermined by decisions he made, despite not seeing any way of winning, to escalate the U.S. war in Vietnam.
As American doubts and debates about Vietnam heated-up, young people played a major role in building opposition to the war. The first large anti-war march on the nation’s capital was organized in April 1965 by Students for a Democratic Society, many of whose young leaders were already activist organizers in the Civil Right Movement. A few months later, inspired by Vietnamese Buddhist monks and student peace protests in Saigon, several young Americans publicly burned their Draft Cards, and a young Catholic seminarian, Roger LaPorte, immolated himself in front of the United Nations. Resistance to serving in the U.S. War in Vietnam grew, both as resistance to the draft and within the military in the form of soldiers seeking Conscientious Objector status, refusing to fight, going AWOL, or deserting, with some men escaping to Canada or Sweden. By Fall 1967, thousands of young men, many of them students who gave-up their privileged Student Deferments, turned in or burned their Draft Cards in large public protests as part of the “We Won’t Go” movement. In November 1969 500,000 people, most of them young, participated in the March on Washington for Peace in Vietnam. Another 250,000 participated in a parallel march in San Francisco. Thousands of high school and college students volunteered in nationwide summer door-to-door educational and organizing campaigns that eventually led Congress to stop funding the war.
Given the sad history of how little changed after mass murders at Columbine High School, Sandy Hook Elementary School, at churches in Charlotte North Carolina and Sutherland Springs Texas, and at the music concert in Las Vegas, it would be a mistake to think making change this time will be easy or certain. It would be an even bigger mistake, however, to underestimate the potential power of activist young survivors of the Parkland Florida massacre tapping into and helping to mobilize substantial majority sentiment in support of stricter gun control. The Florida students’ demands - requiring universal background checks, banning assault weapons, and raising the age for purchasing a gun to 21 - are achievable.
I think people are fed-up with the NRA’s stranglehold blocking sensible gun control. Recent responses by many companies distancing themselves from the NRA, including the announcement by Dick’s Sporting Goods that they no longer will sell military assault-style weapons, are encouraging. People should demand that Bass Pro Shops and its subsidiary, Cabela’s, do the same. Joining our voices with the calls from the Florida student survivors, we can achieve change this time. Elections are coming later this year. We all should pledge not to vote for any candidate who won’t support stricter gun control.
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