<p>A little off topic but this reminds me of a funny story.
I arrived at Columbia in 1970 with radicalism, strikes, black power, gay rights, as issues that were constantly present. To pay for my Columbia education I worked all summer outdoors in the fields (and yes the Who’s Next album was blaring from my dorm room). I am already dark complected and was quite brown when I arrived on campus. Though I’m white, my hair is black and very kinky. I let it grow into a full 'fro. Walking across campus I was stopped by one of the leaders of a militant black group. After greeting me with the “handshake” he said “Brother, the meeting is tonight at Furnald, you be there!” He went on to explain how important black unity was. Not knowing how to respond I finally told him I wasn’t black but actually white. I braced myself for his reaction. At first he looked confused then he burst out in a long fit of laughter. Before walking away he said “Hey you can come to the meeting anyway, brother”.
Many of the radicals have moved much closer to the center now. In my class Abbe Lowell was the leading shrill leftist and he went on to join a large Washington law firm (and represent President Clinton).</p>
<p>My daughter volunteers at the local shelter, has tutored at local detention center and helped sponsor Sierra Club talks on campus. Maybe they aren’t the protests “against” anything but if everyone volunteered I (still) think things would change for the better.</p>
<p>I think kathiep and sac make good points about the community service ethic being this generation’s choice of activism.</p>
<p>“the community service ethic being this generation’s choice of activism.”</p>
<p>IMHO, I think they’re going to be disappointed when they end up drafted to Iran or trying to pay back a trillion dollars of debt or wondering what happend to their civil liberties.</p>
<p>I think folks are too quick to forget the extraordinary outpouring of community services - many of which never existed before and which led to major social changes later - of the 60s and early 70s. School breakfast programs, neighborhood health and legal clinics, sexual assault centers and domestic violence housing, major tutoring programs in poor neighborhoods, free neighborhood preschools, senior advocacy, voluntary reforestation projects and community gardens, community support agriculture, meals-on-wheels, dispute resolution centers, community mediation programs, community radio, recycling programs, veterans advocacy centers, school clothing drives, the list could go on and on, all had a major part of their roots in the community service outpourings of the 60s and early 70s.</p>
<p>Careful with the stereotypes.</p>
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<p>The sky is falling! The sky is falling!</p>
<p>because activism is just being part of their movie.</p>
<p>I wonder how many of the peace activists in the 60’s really cared about what was happening half a world away, and how many of them were just subjected to peer pressure-going with the flow.</p>
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<p>Well, Drosselmeier, we, and you too, I bet, do try to show in the way we live our lives what we believe. We haven’t modeled the “good job, lots of money, big house” ethic for our kids. Though my H was a pediatrician, it was on a van visiting inner city housing projects–he dodged bullets sometimes, literally. Now, he’s left that to be a high school bio teacher, hardly courting the big bucks. And I work as a counselor in a support program for low income, first gen college students. We live in a small house in a very non-elite public school district. We really DO believe in living what we believe.</p>
<p>My college grad D is a canvasser for an environmental advocacy organization (maybe she knows Calmom’s S.) My S also worked there last summer, and over Christmas break, and will be back there again next summer. All members of our family have spoken out and demonstrated against the war, and for many other social justice causes.</p>
<p>Drosselmeier, I don’t mind you moralizing at all–I absolutely agree that if we expect to see our kids speaking for social justice(and maybe we all don’t, I don’t know), then we better speak up ourselves, and we better live lives that our consistent with it. I can’t say my family always does, but we sure try darn hard.</p>
<p>I guess it just depends on which part of the elephant the blind man is feeling.</p>
<p>From my part of the elephant, looking at both a small LAC and a large private university, I see a tremendous amount of involvement. In political elections. In community service. In understanding the cultures and nuances of the world economy. I think that “trying to make a difference” is very much alive and well…although perhaps overshadowed depending on the school or the part of a given school that we look at.</p>
<p>why protest? To me, protesting seems like the easy way out. Do you want to protest that no governments are doing anything to help in Darfur, or do you want to help yourself, by raising money and making trips to the region? Anyone can stand in the street with a sign, few people are willing to try to work to solve the problem.</p>
<p>personally, if a group blocked off the dining hall I would think they would make more enemies than friends.</p>
<p>this group at my school camped out in the middle of campus for more than a week, protesting the local law of no more than 3 unrelated persons living in one house (discriminates against students), and they claimed they demonstrated that lots of people could live in a small space and still be very nice and orderly, but personally I wanted them to leave the middle of campus because I didn’t like them there, so they didn’t help me join their cause, though I don’t agree with the law they were protesting.</p>
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<p>My S would likely agree. At 18, he’s on his third political internship and third political campaign. He’s on the board of the biggest political organization at his college (Berkeley) and writes for a campus political rag, of which he will be the editor next year. He’s been to two political conventions, participated in a public debate and went to political retreat this school year. He’s met a half dozen major state and local politicians. Rather than marching, he’s spent the majority of his time trying to get out the vote, both on campus and in various communities around the university. And, yes, much of his work is done by internet and cell. He’s extremely well read and well-versed on political issues, but he doesn’t drop everything to join mass protests. I think he would see the emotional value in them, but not the practical, and his time is so limited that if he thinks a political action will not lead to concrete results, he probably will choose to act in some other way.</p>
<p>He did participate in a march once though. At age 15, he was on a trip to Europe with students and teachers from his school over Spring break. Everywhere they went, Europeans were protesting against the US over the war in Iraq. By the time he got to the last leg of his trip, Rome, he bought a peace flag, broke away from his tour group and joined the Italians for a few hours. It was amazing, he said.</p>
<p>cavalier:</p>
<p>You’re right of course. These are just great times in America.</p>