When I was six years old, my biggest concerns were how soon I could go outside to play with my best friend and which dress I would wear to school the next day.
Six-year old Sophie Cruz, a United States citizen, was with her undocumented Mexican immigrant parents on a visit to Rome, when she wriggled her way through a crowd to get closer to the Pope. She asked him to please intervene in the cruel immigration policies of the United States (defineamercian.com). Now 9 years old, she remains an immigration activist, working to ensure that the DAPA (Deferred Action for Parents of Americans) program continues.
When I was seven years old, I was playing hopscotch on all the sidewalks to and from school. A seven-year-old Syrian girl, Bana Alabed, was sending tweets during the 2016 siege of Aleppo – urgent tweets about the bombings that were forcing her family to become refugees. She is now known world-wide for her calls for peace and an end to all wars (bbc.com, 10/2/16).
At eight years old, Mari Copeny of Flint, Michigan, persuaded then-President Obama to become personally involved in the Flint water crisis (oprahmag.com, 12/11/18). When I was eight years old, I worried about whether Billy and I would get the big ball at recess so we could play together.
When I was in sixth grade, I was taking armloads of books out of the public library – all of them by white people and, for the most part, about white people. Sixth-grader Marley Dias, an avid reader, noticed how difficult it was for her to find books about black girls. She started a book campaign to find and donate 1,000 books with black girls as the main characters.
The campaign went viral. She now has a collection of over 9,000 such books, and is publishing a book of her own (Forbes, 6/13/17).
Children today labor under a 21st century brand of cruelty to children. When children as young as six years old are trying desperately to call attention to issues adults are responsible for creating and solving, you can be sure that we are going backwards. Like the children of the industrial revolution, who were forced to work 15-hour days in unsafe factories and coal mines, millions of today’s children have had to forfeit their childhoods in order to deal with conditions adults have created.
If you think it’s wonderful to see Greta Thunberg galvanize a world-wide climate change movement, you need to take a step back. Think about her. Imagine, for a moment, the childhood she ought to have had.
Imagine yourself between the ages of 13 and 15. What would such a deep and abiding despair about the environment have done to you at that age? How would it have changed the childhood you were privileged to lead?
What is it doing to you, right now, to accept the rising numbers of youth activists? To miss the point about their sacrifice of childhood for the sake of the environment, their education, our shared humanity? To passively watch children all over the world become the voice of sober reasoning?
This situation has become absurd, and a condemnation of our adult nonchalance.
If you are only somewhat aware of the young people in our midst who are leaders of one cause or another, then you are unaware of the extent to which adults are failing to shoulder responsibilities that are ours – failing to address issues that have needed to be addressed for generations. The youngest generation is tackling the biggest, toughest issues, because we have failed to do so and they are living with the consequences.
Here are just a few more examples:
- The “Never Again” movement: Begun by survivors of the Parkland, Florida school shooting. A national organization that is working towards electing state and national legislators who will create the laws that will prevent more mass shootings (newyorker.com, 3/10/18).
- Autumn Peltier: An Anishinaabe-kwe known as a “water warrior.” Internationally recognized advocate for clean water since the age of eight. Spoke to the UN General Assembly at the age of thirteen (cbc.ca, 9/28/19).
- Boyan Slat: From the Netherlands, founded the Ocean Clean-up at the age of eighteen (grist.org, 10/4/19).
- The Sunrise Movement: An American youth led political movement that advocates for climate change and climate justice. Among the leaders of the USA Climate Strike (9/20/19). Working to elect climate-informed politicians (newyorker.com, 12/23/18).
- Detroit public school students: Suing the government in federal court to argue that they have a right to a good education (nonprofitquarterly.org, 11/1/19). In the face of decades of decaying structures, the Detroit schools are no longer able to meet even the lowest standards of education.
- The Slow Food Movement: Young people from 25 countries in this organization are focusing on sustainable food choices, community gardening, and educating future generations about care of the food supply. (motherearthnews.com, 5/2014)
- The young people of Charlottesville, Virginia: Launched an anti-racism campaign immediately after the white supremacist protest that was intended to terrorize the black community in particular. Called Unmasking C’ville, the group offers a three-day workshop led by the young people of the city (virginiahumanities.org, 6/2018).
So many of the leaders of today’s world are children that it is impossible to compile an exhaustive list. Children all over the globe today recognize from an early age the consequences of leaving urgent problems of this magnitude unattended.
They don’t sit around bemoaning how complex the problems are. They don’t throw up their hands in a gesture of futility, saying, “It’ll cost too much money to fix.”
They determine what needs to be done. They look for ways to get it done. And in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds – remembering here that they are children – they roll up their sleeves and get to work.
While many elders don’t or won’t recognize the harm that continues to be done to the earth and to society in general by our uncaring behavior, world youth leaders are saying, “We can’t live on the planet you’ve created.” American youth are also saying, “We can’t live in the nation you have created.”
They are all saying, “Control yourselves!” the urgent command parents give to children whose behavior is out of bounds. It is we who are out of control. We are being self-serving and self-indulgent while using our children to clean up our messes.
Shame on us.
