Oh, younglings, last night was a dark night. I stayed up very late watching live streams out of Ferguson, Missouri. I gasped at the incitements of the armor-clad police department as they insulted demonstrators throughout the night, kettled them into increasingly angry corners, shot tear gas at them over and over. I boggled at the mainstream media decrying damaged property and counting booze bottles on the sidewalk while dozens of independent live streamers were observing actual injuries, civil rights disregarded, counting tear gas canisters and rubber bullets. Over and over and over again robot-like police strong-armed demonstrators and ordered journalists to “turn off [their] cameras.”
There are too many cameras, though, too many citizens, too much truth to contain. We will never be turned off. Last night, I was astounded by reality, by my access to it, despite the best efforts of the media machine with its respective agendas. Young people brought this to me.
Thanks to live streaming webcasters, I saw Lesley McSpadden endure the brutal, stinging reality that had just been thrown in her face. I cried just trying to grasp the soul-killing agony and anger of a mother absorbing the knowledge that there will never, ever, at any point be justice against the person who senselessly killed what she loved most in this dangerous world. I understood that she had to sit still and listen to a jumpy (self-described), racist (established by his affiliation with organizations directly connected to the KKK), unharmed (despite the myth spun by his testimony and inflated by Fox News) killer (this cannot be disputed) describe her own beloved boy with the following words: “It looked like a demon.”
It. He actually said, “it.” Did nobody on that jury notice this? How could they not? Are we that lost?
Oh, dear Americans, we know better. We know that excluding a group of people from any path to the happiness life has to offer is the most desperately wrong thing that we can do as human beings. We fought this fight 50 years ago. We have been fighting it throughout human history. How have we so utterly failed the suffering and efforts of our forefathers? How did we let anyone convince us we are powerless? How did those freedom fighting muscles go slack? Will we never escape America’s corrosive legacy of racism?
Young people, you have been lied to and you have believed it. But let me lay some truth on you:
The magic is in you. You have the power to change the world. There are thousands of Mahatma Ghandis, Martin Luther Kings, Rosa Parks, James Baldwins, Ceasar Chavez, and W.E.B. DuBois among you. YOU, the person sitting behind that computer screen, can change this. You do not have to submit to the fearful and angry reign of our cranky, racist grandparents. You don’t have to watch their media, swallow their distorted views, and accept their manipulated elections.
While there may be a staggering number of petrified baby boomers in positions of power, we are stronger. We are smarter and more informed. We are better connected, better organized, better able to stop the embarrassing slide of our culture into an overly armed, theocratic, anti-intellectual neo-dark age. We have tools in our pockets that they never could have imagined. We were the ones with the imagination necessary. We made the Internet. We built a universe on the bricks laid down by a handful of renegade geniuses. We turned it into a global community. Now it’s time to put that community to work for something other than posting MLM ads on Facebook.
You were all raised reading the myth of your age, learning the magic required to win the dark societal struggle in the Harry Potter universe. You went to bed hearing the heroics required when fearful racists take any measure necessary to protect old ways that no longer serve the greater community. This is, after all, the story that Rowling told.
Do you know what your magic wand is? Your front door.
Young people, you must pick up the very devices they have used to numb you and turn them around. Start pouring truth out into the web, rather than sedately taking it in. Tell the stories of your actual world. Tell us how your college debt is crippling you while you use your master’s degree to work in a coffee shop. Tell us how your friends of every race and creed are tremendous human beings. Tell us how others have been brainwashed and philosophically corrupted. Tell us when you are treated cruelly because of your appearance. Tell us how you are silenced in the face of injustice. Tell us how your rights have been violated, how corruption has touched your life. Tell us about the beauty, the unfairness, the furies and beauties of this amazing world, your world.
Take it back, young people. Stop watching manipulative TV shows and scrolling through marketing aggregators like Buzzfeed and HuffPo. Unplug from their mind control portals. Stop buying their useless, plastic products and fizzy sugar highs. Stop watching, playing, smoking, popping and bingeing on the somas that keep you safely sedate. Stop consuming and start producing. Stand up and create the meaning that is so lacking. Make noise, tell stories, be present, film videos, expose lies, take journeys, volunteer to help the weakest among us, and ferfucksake, register to vote! (Only 18% of you bothered to vote in the last election. Those of you who failed to show up must take responsibility for the results.)
Take a chance, you glorious young wizards. Open your door, share your reality, control your destiny with the magic you already own. We need you to save us from what your grandparents have done.
postjulia 