To adult, or not to adult? Not, agreed the teenaged leaders of the Never Again movement following the Parkland shooting on Valentine’s Day in 2018. After 17 people were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, survivors stepped up to demand action as the adults in charge had failed to prevent the most recent of many acts of gun violence in the United States. In fact, students around the country were taking the initiative to advocate for change, infuriated by the prospect that attending school could be a death sentence and that those in charge had done little to improve prevention. In a message to adults, Parkland survivor Cameron Kasky stated, “You can help us but you’re not going to run us. There are some things we’re going to inevitably need help with. But our message, our organization, our platform–that’s us.” Hm.
This sentiment was foundational to many concurrent student-led initiatives, and yet I had a hard time supporting it. In high school, I worked with five other students to organize our own walkout, and I remember our ongoing debate over whether we should involve administrators in the planning process. Here’s why we ultimately decided to work with the administration: First, safety was a significant consideration, and involving the administration allowed us to implement extra security measures. Additionally, we could guarantee students that they wouldn’t face disciplinary action for participating in the walkout, likely increasing turnout. Beyond these practical reasons, though, lied something greater–the administrators’ participation forced them to witness the fear felt by the student body. What’s more, a sense of solidarity was achieved when the situation could have easily deteriorated into an us/them division, decreasing the already tenuous sense of safety in our academic environment.
So. What exactly was the problem with Kasky’s message? Outwardly, nothing. Adults had failed at their most important job, and children were now holding them accountable and limiting their contributions to the purely pragmatic. “I’m 17. I can’t rent a hotel room,” Kasky pointed out. Right, but is that all adults have to offer? Renting a hotel room? No! They have the real-world experience, never mind the voting power, that any successful initiative so desperately needs. The students had the drive–they were the ones being killed at school, after all–but they lacked the knowledge, the unity, and the number power required to produce long-term results and maintain momentum once media attention inevitably died down.
My greatest peeve with liberal activism today is its propensity to exclude and alienate. It seems that activists have the tendency to reject the support of everyone except for those who are directly impacted by the issue du jour. At a meeting for my high school’s Young Democrats club following Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination, I remember a heated discussion between the attendees. “Men suck” and “men are trash” were particularly popular opinions, ones that were voiced and applauded by many of the club members (most of us women). I get it. I was disgusted by Kavanaugh and his appointment, too. But men are… an entire gender? Half of the population, more or less? While our statements dissing the Opposite Sex were mostly facetious, by the end of the meeting, the prevailing idea was that we, women, don’t need men to effect change. Except, unfortunately, we do.
Ironic though it may be, we cannot expect to achieve progress as feminists if we insist that we don’t need the support of men, and by extension, our fathers, brothers, sons, partners, and friends. How will we experience success if we prevent an entire sex from contributing beyond the bare minimum? I’m not suggesting that men can understand the problems uniquely faced by women, but I am saying that the inability to truly empathize should not preclude them from fully participating in the undertaking of this huge responsibility. After all, change becomes far less likely when we are more concerned with making enemies than friends. Absolutely nothing can be gained from refusing support when it is offered; instead, we run the risk of alienating the people whose contributions we will eventually rely upon, be them practical or, more importantly, electoral.
Furthermore, it isn’t realistic that people will even want to contribute in any way if they are expected to do so in silence. Last summer, I was a guest on a radio show hosted by the leaders of a local liberal organization. We were discussing white privilege and white feminism, and I was shocked when one of the hosts, a white woman, said, “We love to tell white women to sit down and shut up and listen.” What? I appreciate her point, that vocal white feminists too often ignore the experiences of women of color, meanwhile neglecting them in their pursuit of change. But is the solution really to tell any woman to “sit down and shut up,” especially since women have been working for so long to overcome that exact mentality? Essentially, this concept of dictating “who has the right to talk” represents the same mindset that leads us to tell adults to back off and men that we don’t need their help, to micromanage the ways in which ‘outsiders’ are allowed to contribute. At best, it hinders our ability to have well-rounded conversations and hear diverse perspectives; at worst, it is fundamentally antithetical to progress.
I’m not under the illusion that the solution is as simple as overcoming our differences and, poof, coexisting harmoniously. Gee, why haven’t we tried that before? That said, we should strive to build alliances, as opposed to operating on a policy of exclusion for the sake of ideological purity. Ultimately, we need immense support in every form in order to address the problems that are deeply ingrained in our society, and rejecting it on the basis of age, sex, or race is simply not a productive strategy. In the wake of the murder of George Floyd and the most recent initiative to challenge systemic racism, and with Election Day rapidly approaching, we need to get our shit together and find a way to work together. Seriously. We need all the help we can get.