the slacker uprising and revolution?

Armed with underwear and ramen noodles the youth of America are set to overthrow the failed system! They will wait no longer, they will sit no more and they will apathetically listen to no one but Barack Obama anymore. Young people are fed up, that is for certain, but to what extent and will their record numbers in the polls really revolutionize American political life?

Michael Moore recently released his fifth major film, Slacker Uprising and is giving it out for free (download from site).

"Slacker Uprising" takes place in the wake of "Fahrenheit 9/11," during the run-up to the 2004 election, as I traveled for 42 days across America, visiting 62 cities in a failed attempt to remove George W. Bush from office. My goal was to help turn out a record number of young voters and others who had never voted before. (That part was a success. Young adults voted in greater numbers than in any election since 18-year-olds were given the right to vote. And the youth vote was the only age group that John Kerry won.)

While this may have been a failed experiment in mobilizing young people to actually effect change, we may be able to see some of the results in this year's election combined with a number of other factors. In the primaries, the youth vote was very strong - more young people than ever before voted in the primaries. This coming election there are so many young people registered and registering to vote that I would not be surprised to see the youth vote carry some regions. With the candidates picked and running through the mud, the real question becomes: is voting really the most effective way to make change? Is voting for one man or the other really going to show us a reversal in American political action?

At the end of the movie trailer, Michael Moore says, ". . . the young people of America, you're the ones who are gunna do it, you're leading the revolution."

Getting young people out to vote will not show us a different America. Granted this is a great chance to get more young people involved in civic and community action, but the chances are slim if the movement only works through ramen and registering. The opportunities for long-term engagement need to be offered if young people are going to really make change in this country. The young people of today are hardly prepared to lead a revolution in America. If we look back to the 60s and 70s (an era of high political stakes, massive movement building, and student protest) we can see a different type of young person.

Today young people are tucked away, sheltered, and left unaware of the wide world outside. In the 60s you had students who were raised by parents affected by crises, they were first generation at college, they were raised in the steel mill, they were right up close to the issues of the day. Not to mention they were raised during the build up of a very active time with the Civil Rights Movement coming to a peak and that morphing into a number of other issues. Students during that time were able to get involved because they felt marginalized even with their middle class college backgrounds. Today, students are also marginalized and excluded, but young people cling to a apathetic stance as opposed to an involved one. This may be a result of our upbringing. The best student movement examples come from Berkley California with the Free Speech Movement (FSM). What resulted as the FSM moved from Civil Rights to Free Speech to ending the Vietnam War to spurring a counter culture, was a split thinking. One track that led people to think that the students were dirty hippies who were bad for challenging the status quo. The other track led people to romanticize fighting the man and rioting against the system. This romanticizing has led many people to try to recreate movements of the past.

Probably one of the most detrimental results of the 60s and 70s student activist era was the institutionalizing of campus activism. In a documentary that I viewed about the FSM it was clear to see this new mode of control take place as students were allowed to 'table' on campus. Now in order to take any action on campus you have to register, open a student account if you plan to raise money, file your planned events, get proper security if it is a large event, and jump through any number of hoops to be approved to engage in activism. In December 2007, Matt Birkhold wrote on student power and activism,

". . .colleges want to make sure that students do not get too radical and recreate the late 60s. To accomplish this, they monitor everything student groups do. When student groups get too radical or begin to question university policies, they typically lose university support. Because students want to get their message out, they create flyers that will be approved by the university. Unfortunately, this is too big of a compromise because all the time students spend getting flyers approved could be spent organizing or studying. By continuing with university approved activism students are giving up a great deal of power and giving the university far too much. This must be seen as both a diversion and a way to absorb radicalism."

University administrations learned from the past so that events of that era could never be repeated. Student activism has been boxed in and so most students wouldn't even imagine some of the most effective actions to make change on their campuses. To quote FSM leader Mario Savio,

"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!

The idea of ungovernability is how real change occurs, when something is ground to a halt it is forced to engage that which is preventing it from continuing. This was a tactic used throughout the 60s and 70s as well as during actions against the apartheid regime in South Africa. Making the townships ungovernable was how the black majority was able to force change.

In light of this, Universities have created a sterile vacuum for student action within the campus setting. For one example, during the 80s on Michigan State University's (MSU) campus students took over the administration building to demand a more diverse faculty. This was effective because it ground the university to a halt. All money was moved in and out of the administration building. Since they took over on pay day, and for a prolonged time after, the finances of the university were shutdown. Sadly, these movements were phenomenas, after negotiations were entered and actions were said to be taken - the follow up was gone because the movement has dissipated. Piecemeal outcomes were won for a long and often violent movement building. As Nelson Mandela noted, the oppressor defines the nature of the struggle. When Reagan had the national guard corral and gas students at a peaceful rally at Berkley, that marked the end of a long period of highly involved student activism.

Yesterday, Barack Obama came to speak at MSU's campus as the most recent presidential election draws ever closer. The student turnout was incredible, Obama's speech the usual, but still good. However the whole time I couldn't help but think about how sterile an environment this was for student activism and political involvement. Everyone is corralled into a small area, the police are everywhere, no signs are allowed, and the politician isn't there to talk to you. He is there to deliver sound bites to the press and media, your concerns are not that important. It almost felt like a day wasted on youth - get out of class, skip this, miss work - to hear a presidential candidate deliver My vote in Michigan as far as the Presidential election is concerned does not matter. Right, it is unimportant, since we have a winner take all system and McCain is pulling his campaign out of Michigan, Barack Obama will take the state and I won't even have to vote. This is where it is important to remind people that there is more than one man to vote for this election (and not even voting per say). I am a strong proponent of involvement in local politics because that is all that really matters.

And so back to the idea of a Slacker Uprising, we have a long way to come if we are going to have a mass movement of students. They may be going to the polls, but we need students running in the city councils, volunteering in their neighborhoods, taking action for their local environment, and caring for their communities. The opportunity and threat present in the 60s is not here today. The average college student is not going to jump into a rally because they see no need to. I agree with Michael Moore on one thing and that is the belief that it will be young people who make the greatest change in America. I firmly believe that young people are the key to social change. This can be evidenced by the 60s and 70s, and even today. I see its potential, but I am not sure that just engaging young people to vote is the best way. There needs to be a more comprehensive knowledge of how things are before involvement will lead to a revolution of sorts. We cannot seek to recreate the past, we need to learn and develop new tactics, we need to research how our power as students and young people can best make change. Birkhold reminds us that, "Students have power; they just have to learn how to use it."

Is participation to perpetuate an extremely flawed structure better than choosing rather to engage people and work for a justice deferred by that structure? The one decision here is the power in your right (or left) hand on election day - will you only check a box (fill a bubble, etc.), or will you help ideas become more than paper promises?

Previously posted on the Young People For Blog.