Pace Paw Print

Media Credit: www.thestandard.com

Media Credit: www.thestandard.com

In my experience, previous generations have often been quick to characterize us, the post-civil rights generation as lazy, apathetic, and self-absorbed.

We are supposedly lazy because we don't know the meaning of "hard-work." We are supposedly apathetic because we don't empower ourselves through organized voting blocs. We are self-absorbed because the celebrity-glorifying, consumer culture of America society has us hooked into lifestyles of comfort-seeking. Much of this is difficult to dispute, but in our defense, we face challenges that no generation before us are forced to face. We didn't create the world we live in today, we are products of it.

Handed down to us is a world where lessons of the past have not been learned. How is it possible for us to demonize the genocides that occurred in Nazi Germany during World War II, but stand idly by as human atrocities in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, and Sudan unfolds before our eyes.

How can we embrace the core American values of life, liberty, and freedom, as our government entered into a pre-emptive war, civil liberties have been revoked, and fear is used as a tool to paralyze people into a state of submission? How can we condemn the evils of the Jim Crow era, while nooses are hung on trees as a statement that racial animosity still exists to this very day?

Every generation is judged by history on the stances they took on issues that actually mattered. There is undoubtedly a rumbling within many of the student organizations at Pace Pleasantville to take on the issue of the Jena 6.

Various ideas are floating around from an awareness raising campaign, to a town hall discussion, to a petition drive, to a possible rally. So, don't be surprised if you see the beginning of our generation's movement manifest itself at Pace, because contrary the perception imposed on the youth of America, we are willing to work and fight for causes that we believe to be important, that we actually care about addressing. We may not be the raging youth of the 1960s, but I'd say we are the quiet storm youth of the millennium.

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