thomas friedman

So remember when Tom Friedman was running around spilling all that ink about how young Millennials aren't as involved as their parents were back in the 60's? There was a huge response from the youth community noting that many of today's climate activists - and other activists - are taking a more pragmatic approach to their activism.

It was around that same time that fellow Boomer Al Gore, lamented the fact that young people weren't chaining themselves to bulldozers to stop the construction of more carbon-spewing, coal-fired power plants.

Well, apparently we do that too. From It's Getting Hot in Here:

Yesterday, Earth First and Rising Tide blockaded a gas-fired power plant construction site in Palm Beach County, Florida near “the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge which sits 1000 ft from the power plant site.”

27 people were arrested putting their bodies on the line with over 200 people rallying in support. The action stopped construction on the site for six hours.

A whole 6 hours. Not really that effective as a tactic. I wonder if Friedman will cover it?

Regular readers know that we don't like Tom Friedman around here, mostly for reasons well-stated here. He has regularly criticized young people for not taking action on the issues of the day, typically defining action as "yelling and screaming on campus quads with witty signage." So I was surprised to read his column on climate change in this weekend's edition of the New York Times.

Last week, I also met with two groups of M.I.T. students who blew me away. One was the M.I.T. Energy Club, which was founded in 2004 by a few grad students discussing energy over beers at a campus bar. Today it has 600-plus members who have put on scores of events focused on building energy expertise among M.I.T. students and faculty, and “fact-based analysis,” including a trip to Saudi Arabia.

Then I got together with three engineering undergrads who helped launch the Vehicle Design Summit — a global, open-source, collaborative effort, managed by M.I.T. students, that has 25 college teams around the world, including in India and China, working together to build a plug-in electric hybrid within three years. Each team contributes a different set of parts or designs. I thought writing for my college newspaper was cool. These kids are building a hyper-efficient car, which, they hope, “will demonstrate a 95 percent reduction in embodied energy, materials and toxicity from cradle to cradle to grave” and provide “200 m.p.g. energy equivalency or better.” The Linux of cars!

They’re not waiting for G.M. Their goal, they explain on their Web site — vds.mit.edu — is “to identify the key characteristics of events like the race to the moon and then transpose this energy, passion, focus and urgency” on catalyzing a global team to build a clean car. I just love their tag line. It’s what gives me hope:

“We are the people we have been waiting for.”

Shocking as it is, Friedman is giving props to young people for organizing effectively around the issue of climate change on the campus of MIT. Not by waving signs, but by building shit that actually prevents global warming. Either Friedman is slowly learning two things that we all know already - that activism can be a cultural and social experience, and that young people today are pragmatic and working within and through institutions to accomplish change that his generation has thus far been unwilling to make - or he is somehow managing to keep his head from exploding from the cognitive dissonance of his two world views.

Recently, there have been an extraordinary number of dismissive, sneering media attacks on America's young people and the utility of the internet in politics.  This website has tried to correct the condescending, disdainful narratives time and time and time and time and time and time again but yet the haters persist.

One fine example, The New York Times' columnist Thomas Friedman recently put on an album of Captain Beefheart, got sentimental, then in turn, regretful; and so he lashed out at whippersnappers, his infernal computer, and those geeks who like infernal computers. 

"But they can’t e-mail it in, and an online petition or a mouse click for carbon neutrality won’t cut it. They have to get organized in a way that will force politicians to pay attention rather than just patronize them. Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy didn’t change the world by asking people to join their Facebook crusades or to download their platforms."

Bobby Kennedy didn't travel between farms or factories by horse-drawn carriage  - and there was no teaching of songs! Would journalists who also covered the AFL's growth in the 1890s or of California's Wobblies in the 1930's have rolled their eyes at RFK's silly methods?  Martin Luther King always made sure to have newfangled mechanized-photo-graphic picture-illustrators present at his heavily stage-managed lunch-counter sit-ins.  No planned riots and not a single engraver was invited! 

Absurdly, Thomas Friedman's beef with the do-gooding college children of the millennial generation is that they're just all too Facebookey. "But Generation Q may be too quiet, too online, for its own good, and for the country's own good." Really? Online equals... quiet?  What then would Rip Van Friedman think about this:

Youths silent rally met with force in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Ahsan Pirzada and his high-school buddies spread the word via Facebook, e-mail and cell phone text messages: Let's meet at McDonald's after school on Monday.But not to hang out.

About 100 students pulled out banners, taped their mouths shut in symbolic protest and marched silently toward the office of President Pervez Musharraf. Before they had gone 1,000 yards, truckloads of police, including an anti-terrorist squad, swooped in and dispersed the threat, hauling about 50 teens to a police station.

Using facebook, twitter and cell phones they did a flashmob protest.  (That alone is enough politics 2.0 to literally blow Friedman's head off his shoulders.) 

"We know that many people cannot afford to join us," said Samad Khurram, a Harvard University student who stayed home this semester to work in the pro-democracy movement. "At least 30 percent of Pakistanis are surviving day to day on their wages. They can't afford to take off a day to protest" or to risk indefinite arrest.

Thomas please note, an undergrad organized a political cause using the internet's free tools, such as online petitions, emails, webby gizmo for cell phones "twitter" and the dread facebook...  the result of this online organizing: offline action for thousands. 

"This is how people are really networking, expressing themselves," said Adnan Rehmat, who heads Internews Pakistan, a Washington-based media watchdog group. "People are sending messages of solidarity, relaying information about protest sites, that sort of thing."

I'm a little behind on this, but it's worth noting that a number of high-profile blogs have responded to the Tom Friedman "Generation Q" column we posted on a few weeks ago (here and here). I wanted to call attention to these pieces for those who have might not have seen them, as well as respond to them as I don't agree 100% with all of their assessments.

First up is Georgia10, a front pager at Daily Kos, whose response, A Generation in Waiting calls out Freidman for singling out youth without turning his admonishing eye back onto the current apathy of his own generation on issues such as the war, global warming, or any number of problems. Georgia also hones in on the idea that Milennials view government as a joke, an ineffective institution that inspires cynicism, not action.

I can't say that I agree with that. All polling - from PEW or the Harvard Institute of Politics - indicates that we are optimistic and actually have a steadfast belief in the power of ourselves and our government to effect change. I think it might be more accurate to suggest that we have no faith in the current actors who occupy positions of power. It's the people - Friedman's own generation - that we are mistrustful and cynical about, not the institutions themselves, which we actually view as potentially powerful vehicles for change.

Generation Overwhelmed, a piece in the American Prospect by Courtney Martin, drew the most attention this week, with responses posted by Millennial commentators Ezra Klein and others. Martin smartly picks up on what I think is one of the main faults with Friedman's column - the old ways of effecting political change (marching in the streets, chaining ourselves to bulldozers (thanks Al Gore!) are no longer effective. Nor do they fit the moment. Nicholas Handler suggested much the same thing in his New York Times essay, and I'll quote Martin here because I think she hits the nail perfectly on the head:

Many of us have protested, but we -- by and large -- felt like we were imitating an earlier generation, playing dress-up in our parents' old hippie clothes. I marched against the war and my president called it a focus group. The worst part was that I did feel inert while doing it. In the 21st century, a bunch of people marching down the street, complimenting one another on their original slogans and pretty protest signs, feels like self-flagellation, not real and true social change.

That said, I didn't wholly agree with her thesis and conclusions. Rather than Generation Quiet, she labels us Generation Overwhelmed. We are indeed overwhelmed, but that does not lead to paralysis and inaction as she suggest. She gives too little credit to the "lifestyle choices" of her friends and colleagues. When Millennials pursue careers in socially responsible business, pursue Green architecture, work in the public sector, start nonprofits, run for office, these are all forms of action, all more suited to our current environment. Martin also leaves out the increasing civic engagement of our generation, which is participating in politics at a greater rate and in greater numbers than ever. That too is significant and can lead to change.

It's not that we're paralyzed. It's that our form of activism looks completely different from what the past 40 years has taught us activism should look like. Obviously there is no one defining issue as there was back in Friedman's youth, and those choices are overwhelming. But that doesn't cause us to freeze up, it causes us to zoom in and focus on one problem - sweatshops, climate change, poverty - we specialize and either create new institutions where none exist (see everything I've ever written about youth politics), or to quickly work our way into existing institutions and try to instill in them our values.

It's also important to point out that there are no shortages of young people protesting. Between the Iraq War protests, climate change activism like Step It Up, Students Against Sweatshops, the One Campaign, the WTO in Seattle - more students have been marching in the streets in the last 10 years than ever did during Friedman's time. It's just that the media and political establishment - Friedman and his generation - don't care.

Finally, Chris Bowers weighed in with the most cynical piece of the bunch: The Ultimate Frustration of Political Activism. Bower's piece isn't wholly focused on Millennials (he's skeptical of any criticism that uses such a broad brush category as a "generation"). Instead, he uses his own experience over the past 4 years to illustrate how entrepreneurial activism of the kind I reference above ultimately serves the purposes of those you are looking to displace more than it does your own goals:

Your life doesn't improve, but their's does. And then, when its all over, first they condemn you, and then they ask you why you aren't more politically active. While that makes me want to pick up my pitchfork and torch and engage in as many intra-party struggles as possible, I can understand why for many it would cause them to instead wonder what was on television, or to simply transfer their activism to volunteer social justice work and lifestyle choices. Really, what is the point of continuing to do their dirty work for them?

I can't say that he's wrong - given his examples - but I have to chalk that up to the fact that the type of change he (and we, really) are engaging in is not revolutionary. The balance of power does not flip immediately, and it will be years before positions of power are occupied by those who truly agree with Bowers, the Netroots, or Millennials generally. Until then, yes, those in power do reap the benefits of our actions and small changes to the system. However I don't really see that as a discouraging factor on a macro level across a whole generation of activists. If he's right, we'll see a downturn in activism over time, if not, we'll keep pushing for change in spite of these conditions.

Since when did it become the thing to do to hate on young people? This week the NYTimes has posted three articles the first saying we are meaningless non-voters the second Criticizing us for "delaying" things like marriage and permanent employment... And finally today's saying we're doing our civic duty but we're doing it all wrong because its too quite.

Generation FU needs to get off our backs.

Thomas Friedman begins today's piece all about exploring colleges and how confused he is.

"The Iraq war may be a mess, but I noticed at Auburn and Old Miss more than a few young men and women proudly wearing their R.O.T.C. uniforms. Many of those not going abroad have channeled their national service impulses into increasingly popular programs at home like “Teach for America,” which has become to this generation what the Peace Corps was to mine.

It’s for all these reasons that I’ve been calling them “Generation Q” — the Quiet Americans, in the best sense of that term, quietly pursuing their idealism, at home and abroad.

But Generation Q may be too quiet, too online, for its own good, and for the country’s own good. When I think of the huge budget deficit, Social Security deficit and ecological deficit that our generation is leaving this generation, if they are not spitting mad, well, then they’re just not paying attention. And we’ll just keep piling it on them."

Why are these things all our burden? Why is it that the mistakes of Generation FU (aka 40+) suddenly require us to rise up and blow things up like some kind of psycho. I don't want to get tortured by Dick Cheney do you?

So we look at what is practical - what works, what will become a longterm investment in our future. I don't need to point out that we hold absolutely no cards at this stage in the game. We do not have representation to the youth in the White House, the closest person to our age in the US Senate is 40, and the 30 something Caucus has a hand full of people in it who I've never seen talk to us about ways to work together....

Wouldn't it be a smarter means of rebellion to create lasting, meaningful, revolution that is embedded into the culture rather than a short term hell raising weekend that just energizes our opposition and creates another counter-culture yuppy movement in our history??

As Mike Connery just said to me

"doesn't it make more sense for us to work towards gaining that power as quickly as possible rather than wasting our time in useless gestures and symbolism?"

A few weeks ago the winner was announced in an essay contest run by the New York Times. The winner was responding to an essay by Rick Perlstein called "What's the Matter with College," another anti-youth piece run that made the argument that young people need to rise up.

The winner, Nicholas Handler, says

"On campus, we sign petitions, join organizations, put our names on mailing lists, make small-money contributions, volunteer a spare hour to tutor, and sport an entire wardrobe’s worth of Live Strong bracelets advertising our moderately priced opposition to everything from breast cancer to global warming. But what do we really stand for? Like a true postmodern generation we refuse to weave together an overarching narrative to our own political consciousness, to present a cast of inspirational or revolutionary characters on our public stage, or to define a specific philosophy. We are a story seemingly without direction or theme, structure or meaning–a generation defined negatively against what came before us. When Al Gore once said “It’s the combination of narcissism and nihilism that really defines postmodernism,” he might as well have been echoing his entire generation’s critique of our own. We are a generation for whom even revolution seems trite, and therefore as fair a target for bland imitation as anything else. We are the generation of the Che Geuvera tee-shirt."

As Mike Connery said so eloquently in an email to me - there is activism out there - it just takes on different forms.

"Al Gore and Friedman want us standing in front of bulldozers, but what does that accomplish? Protest is pretty dead as a viable form of activism. We're working within the system to change it. "

Friedman is quick to smackdown the internet as a "too quiet" form of revolution and goes on to say:

"Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy didn’t change the world by asking people to join their Facebook crusades or to download their platforms. Activism can only be uploaded, the old-fashioned way — by young voters speaking truth to power, face to face, in big numbers, on campuses or the Washington Mall. Virtual politics is just that — virtual."

You can see just how old fashioned Mr. Friedman himself is. I didn't find Thomas Friedman on facebook. But I did find a special group called "Thomas Friedman: Bigoted Fool" that I joined right away... you know, to show my activism.

Mike says "the accomplishments of the blogosphere aren't symbolic, and FaceBook can be a valuable recruiting tool for youth nonprofit organizations that do real work. All of that builds power for young people in our public debate, and all of this is in addition to (not in place of), the work we are doing to build careers where we can push for socially responsible business."

If you further examine some of the sites we quote on here such as the National Conference on Citizenship Report (NcoC) with CIRCLE and Saguaro Seminar (Harvard). (page 17) that discusses "netizens," which are citizens are active online, you'll find further refutation to Friedman's thesis:

"Contrary to predictions that the Internet might replace face-to-face participation, the survey finds no trade off. In fact, the netizens are much more likely than other people to attend public meetings in which there was discussion of community affairs (38 percent versus 23 percent), attend a club meeting (72 percent versus 47 percent) or take part in a protest or demonstration (31 percent versus 15 percent)."

My assumption is that these Generation FU writers are too disconnected, too out of touch, and too old to recognize progress, rebellion, and meaningful action even with their bifocal lenses. Perhaps they should spend time talking to their kids about websites rather than having us just fix their computers the same way they want us to fix the society they screwed up. Perhaps they should spend more time talking to us about what we are doing rather than assuming it isn't well thought, well planned, or well organized before they pass judgment based clearly on ignorance.

Handler's piece ends as a well worded response to Friedman by saying

"College as America once knew it–as an incubator of radical social change– is coming to an end. To our generation the word ‘radicalism’ evokes images of al Qaeda, not the Weathermen. ‘Campus takeover’ sounds more like Virginia Tech in 2007 than Columbia University in 1968. Such phrases are a dead language to us. They are vocabulary from another era that does not reflect the realities of today. However, the technological revolution, the moveon.org revolution, the revolution of the organization kid, is just as real and just as profound as the revolution of the 1960’s– it is just not as visible. It is a work in progress, but it is there. Perhaps when our parents finally stop pointing out the things that we are not, the stories that we do not write, they will see the threads of our narrative begin to come together; they will see that behind our pastiche, the post generation speaks in a language that does make sense. We are writing a revolution. We are just putting it in our own words."