In his opening stump speech for Hillary Clinton, President Obama also went out of his way to praise Bernie Sanders for “bringing young people into the process.”
Which young people is he talking about? Presumably only those 18 years and older.
But what about all the millions of disenfranchised young people younger than 18 who have no voice at all in the political sphere? When will their turn come? Why is it that they still aren’t they part of “all men are created equal”?
As I’ve argued here, and a number of other places besides, that our kids deserve to have greater rights to self-determination, greater input in the way they are governed, educated, guided; they deserve to be formidable voting bloc in their own right. If they were, we’d at long last have the decent kind of educational system they deserve — one in which they’d enjoyed the kind of “world class education,” as Obama puts it, that his own children have; one in which the absolute lunacy of mass killings would be stemmed; one in which decent health care (including mental health care) would be a given (no, Obamacare hasn’t come close to solving that, as anyone who faces the ever-rising premiums with ever-higher deductibles knows full well).
We continue to carom from one adult-generated crisis after another, and our young innocents are caught in the crosshairs of conflicts of others’ (adults others’) making. Does this mean they should have the right to vote ipso factor? I don’t know. But what if they had some voting rights, on those issues that affect them at least as much (if not more) as they do adults. What if they had the right to vote on whether they should have the right to vote? I know many would say they shouldn’t, and would spell out convincing reasons — just as I know many would, and would also have compelling arguments to support their view.
There’s also this: youth enlisted, fought, were injured, taken prisoner (as was Andrew Jackson at age 13) and died in the American Revolutionary War. And if you take a close look at the iconic Spirit of ’76 painting by Archibald Willard, you’ll see a realistic depiction — realistic because it was from a real scene of battle — of a young drummer boy marching with the troops through the thick of battle, with nothing to protect him, as his drumbeat signaled orders to the troops.
How brave is that? Unlike his adult counterparts, he didn’t even have a weapon as he risked life and limb for the same promise of freedom as all the other patriots — yet ‘childkind’ still is left out, to this day.
Don’t believe they deserve this? Then check out their glorious, stirring, evocative, socially conscious declarations on the My Declaration page of our Declaration Project. You’ll see they are imbued with the Spirit of ’76; our Founders would be proud of them. Just as one for-instance, check out this Declaration of Independence from Silence written by a high school student in inner city Philly.
When will that change? When will we adults who recognize that our most intractable problems will remain so until they have an equal place at the civic table take up their call and demand it on their behalf? If and when we do, we’ll set our nation free.