by St. John Barned-Smith // University of Pennsylvania

George Bryant is a radical who looks like he’s passed his activist expiration date. He sits at the Harvard transit station in Cambridge, Mass., his graying hair and white stubble on full display as he brandishes signs condemning “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week,” a conservative protest led by David Horowitz that took place at campuses across the country this fall. Students hurry past, barely glancing his way, wary of entering a conversation about the issues that have Bryant riled up. But Bryant doesn’t seem to mind. He continues to fight the good fight using method that characterized his generation: unapologetic public demonstration. In that sense, Bryant exemplifies what being politically active once meant for students, and how much that concept has changed—devolved, some would argue, into complete indifference.

Protesters at a 1968 rally in Iowa sponsored by the Students for a Democratic Society.

 

But Bryant is wrong if he thinks our student generation is apathetic. Just because we’re not screaming doesn’t mean we’ve fallen asleep. In a world that measures its problems with a global yardstick, yelling into a megaphone simply seems futile and clichéd. Some of the problems that we face are new (global warming, the pervasive, ambiguous menace of terrorism), while others—a war dividing the country—echo those of our parents’ generation. Nonetheless, these issues are daunting, and we are paying attention. Not only that, but we are leaving behind the sit-ins of Bryant’s day, embracing new forms of protest.

THEN

It’s not that we don’t appreciate the ’60s. We still listen to Bob Dylan, rock shaggy hairstyles and practice free love (though not exactly by that name). In fact, we absorb stories of our parents’ wilder years with a sort of envy because the ’60s were cool, and that—shudder at the thought—actually makes our parents pretty cool.

Students forty years ago stood up in the name of change and progress in obvious, “out there” ways. They lashed out with protests, riots and, of course, transformations into head-banded, bearded, drug-snorting scofflaws. In an age where political involvement was a rebellion against the button-down status quo, even seemingly superficial choices carried political connotations, says Jerald Podair, a professor of history and American studies at Lawrence University. When looking at the ’60s, he says, “the personal is political.” An action as simple as liking rock and roll was more than a reflection of music taste, Podair says; it was a “rejection of previous music and aesthetics.”

This newfound political involvement seemed to be dominated by one voice, and that voice was angry and loud. Take the case of Columbia’s gym built in 1968 for Columbia students and the largely African-American community in the surrounding neighborhood. The community entrance was at the back of the building at the bottom of a hill, which some students viewed as a racist design. In protest, they staged sit-ins and seized control of several campus buildings.

The national media carried dramatic photos of the protests: a bright red communist flag soared above Mathematics Hall; denim-jacketed students tangled with cops in white motorcycle helmets as a sea of other protestors looked on; floppy mops of hair and sideburns contrasted with policemen’s close-cropped cuts and neatly clipped mustaches.

Many of these Columbia protestors were members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a vanguard demonstration movement dubbed the “New Left,” which called for anti-establishment, anti-authoritarian action. In 1962, SDS leaders gathered in Michigan and drafted its now-famous “Port Huron Statement,” a manifesto outlining everything that was wrong with America and their plans for how they were going to fix all the problems.

NOW

But our generation has no manifesto. We have no iconic photographs of wild demonstrations. The counterculture our parents created has been popularly appropriated so that it’s not really counter-anything anymore. In short, says Podair, “students have nothing to rebel against,” because “the students of the 1960s won it for them.”

That may be, but signs of the old youth efficacy are popping up: last year, students around the country gave birth to the New SDS after forty years of the organization existing as little more than a non-threatening, nostalgic memory. The New SDS grew swiftly to more than 250 chapters nationwide. While some of its modern student activists still swear by the radical leftist ethos of the sixties, the group overall has undergone a 21st-century makeover.

This 21st-century angle is where Meredith McBride, a University of Pennsylvania sophomore and SDS member, sees herself fitting in. McBride displays none of the outward signs that would mark her as a rebel—no fraying clothes, huge political pins or combat boots in sight—but she considers herself one nonetheless. A member of Penn Against the War and the author of “Radical Chic,” a column in the campus newspaper dedicated to ideas about feminism, social justice and a decidedly leftist agenda, McBride insists (and proves), “you can be counterculture and not look it.”

According to the new SDS, modern-day activists will have to lose more than just headbands and tie-dye to get their message across—they need to lose their preconceived notions of what leads to change. Although McBride appreciates the efforts of her SDS predecessors, she says they would be fooling themselves if they believe that their style of constant, overt protest was the only way to have accomplished their aims.

Street protests won’t draw in today’s college students, McBride says, who generally want to “find a way today to leave the ’60s behind” and find their own ways to fight the system. “We’re coming from a different place,” she adds—a more individualized place—and the SDS’s tactics have come to reflect that. The Philadelphia chapter of the New SDS is implementing a “befriend a recruiter” program, in which students with no real intention of joining the military pretend to be potential applicants to tie up recruiters’ time. Since the U.S. won’t be able to fight the war in Iraq without soldiers, McBride reasons, making it difficult for recruiters to meet their quotas will curtail the war’s progress. The guerilla tactics of the old SDS, some more logical than others, seem to be alive and well in its new incarnation, too.

FROM HERE ON OUT

The major development that sets today’s activists apart from their ’60s counterparts is the increasing reliance on technology—and a little medium for which we can thank Al Gore, “the Internet.” Student activism is being swallowed up in cyberspace. Or maybe it’s blossoming there—depends who you ask.

There’s no question that people are making statements online, political statements among them. But how far do those online declarations go? It’s easy, for instance, to sign up for one of the pro-Obama Facebook groups (one of which has 375,000 members so far) and add your name to his growing list of friends. He’s got more than 140,000 already—three times as many as his chief rival Hillary Clinton—which is all well and good for his online ego but certainly doesn’t guarantee galvanized students who will work to get out the vote for him or even vote themselves come election day.

...

Howard Dean already gave us a great case study of how fragile the balloon of an online sensation can be. Leading up to the 2004 presidential elections, Dean was hailed as the Internet Wonderboy, creating his “Blog for America” and galvanizing a student and Internet anti-war movement that seemed like it would steamroll his opponents. But after a gaffe in Iowa (the scream), he lacked vital live support in New Hampshire and fizzled out fast.

That’s why some are so dismissive of online activism. “Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy didn’t change the world by asking people to join their Facebook crusades,” Tom Friedman wrote in his New York Times column in October, in which he derisively titled us “Generation Q”—Q for quiet. “Virtual politics is just that—virtual.”

But we are not “Generation Q.” If anything, we are Generation “I,” for “Individual.” The autonomous mentality of our Internet-suffused lives—there’s so much we can do on our own, at a computer—comes across not only in the ways we show our support or displeasure but also the ways we engage in public service, says Karen McKnight-Casey, director of the department of service learning and civic engagement at Michigan State University. Just look at the viral growth of Teach for America, which has swelled from 500 corps members in 1990 to more than 17,000 in 2005. Instead of congregating on the Mall to protest inequalities in education, we scatter across the country to fight it alone—then congregate online to form our communities there.

So where does all of this leave us? Are we doomed to be “Generation Q,” protesting digitally and meaninglessly? Or “Generation I,” causing change through solitary yet passionate actions? Perhaps this desire to squeeze our generation into a specific mold is where we went wrong to begin with. Ever since our parents so deftly defined themselves as the “Baby Boomers,” the desire to fasten a label onto everything and everyone has been strong. We are “quiet.” We are also “Boomerangs” and “Y” and “Next,” whatever that means. Our actions are constantly treated as products of a generational personality that we never chose, and a sense of disappointment can only follow when we do not do the impossible and break beyond expectations.

As for what the next 40 years of political awareness will bring, not even the pundits can predict that. So cut us some slack, children of the ’60s. We’ll figure it out for ourselves—just like you did.