Column: The apathy doesn't fall far from the tree

01/30/09 - So often do you, wiser mentors, label my generation "apathetic." I wonder, "Is this our fault?" Or is this the outcome of another generation's failure and disconnect? I think it may be.

However, I do think there exists legitimate reasons for the apathy toward physically and mentally burdensome political and social interest.

My generation is on the cusp of a new economic depression. We are experiencing ecological devastation that will forever change the way our species interact with one another and our environment. Not to mention class struggle in our major metropolitan areas and that thing that those guys are doing in that country in the Middle East.

So why are the masses of students silent when a hand-cuffed African American laying on the floor of a subway platform is shot in the back by an Oakland Transit cop? Why are they not staging sit-ins and protests as low-income families are thrown out of their homes? Why have the weekly meetings stopped?

These students must want to be economically defeated before they graduate; they must want to live in a noxious and violent world. Otherwise, they would undertake the causes handed down to them by you. Right?

I'll tell you why they do not: your politics are boring work.

"They know that your antiquated styles of protest-your marches, hand held signs, and gatherings-are now powerless to effect real change because they have become such a predictable part of the status quo," writes Nadia C.

The passive (not to be confused with peaceful) tactics don't work anymore. If they did, wouldn't there be some significant change? Would the student population not rise to the causes? They know that no matter who gets elected, who writes the laws or what ideology the intelligentsia screams for- life for them - us - will be exactly the same.

They have watched your generation's brilliance fizzle out like a shooting star. After all it was your generation that took part in the protests to end segregation, it was your generation who stood against the Ohio National Guard at Kent State, and it was your generation that ended the draft and fought to bring home young American soldiers from Southeast Asia. You saved the world as a youth, when it was the "cool" thing to do. But what are you doing now?

Are you sitting in your comfortable university offices snobbishly branding every student who does not take to the streets with a sign "apathetic?" Have you given in to the "man?" Are you busy writing theory essays to an expensive and esoteric academic journal, which is seldom read by the average student? Are you waiting for that weekly paycheck to roll around so you can buy a little more freedom?

Can you blame a young adult balancing school, work, and relationships for sleeping-in on a Sunday afternoon instead of standing in the icy January air with a poster board that reads "END RACISM, HOMOPHOBIA, WAR, FORECLOSURES, TORTURE, ENERGY DEPENDENCE, etc., etc.," when he sees now how so many of you have given up.

You say those days are over for you. You say you have made your contribution. But everything you do now negates the history you helped create. You have become mildly complacent within the institutions you wanted to change or abolish. Maybe you should be a bit less apathetic.

Maybe you should show us where you failed, where you succeeded, where you learned, where you fought, and where you loved. Maybe you could show us that even you still need to be taught. Maybe you'll learn something from us.

Many times before have I heard my generation be called apathetic and I have blindly agreed. Now, as I reflect, I ask, "is it really our fault?