Our naked empire, violent, intolerant, awash in contradictions. Image: Principiadialectica.co.uk/blog
What a quandary we find ourselves in.
As parents, we want to uplift and encourage our children, to have them believe with hope and admiration in the founding documents of our nation —the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights.
The last thing anyone wants is to foster in our kids an early cynicism that unmasks the betrayals in our system, its failures and glaring contradictions.
What is Occupy?
Yet kids today, with their access to various forms of media know about the Occupy Wall Street movement. Even if you personally restrict media, families are subjected to it in shopping centers, gyms, waiting rooms, restaurants, public spaces of all sorts. Those kids who deal with current events assignments may even know that the movement aims to get corporate money out of politics and restore regulations that keep banks from running amok with investor dollars.
So as people have taken to the streets with an openly non-violent protest approach, emphasizing that the movement follows the examples of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., it has been possible for parents to share the aims of the movement and the manner of engagement with their kids.
As the movement has spread, an explosion of stories across the blogosphere has inventoried the practical installations at the encampments. There are the lending libraries, wellness awnings, teach-in circles, nightly General Assemblies for consensus decision making, food tents, counseling opportunities and more. Each aspect illustrates what’s necessary for “freedom of assembly.” But moreover, it reveals the complexion of the demonstrations in clear form to anyone who sincerely wants to see the true ethos of the movement.
Long time Washington Post architecture and urban landscape critic Philip Kennicott even penned a glowing analysis of the “vibrant urbanism” present in Occupy DC.
Vibrant urbanists, meet our friends Billy Club and Pepper Spray
So with clear intentions, and believing in their Constitutional rights to participatory democracy, why are peaceful protestors getting skull-bashing blows from out of control cops?
Why are protestors being pepper sprayed in the face? Why are cloistered midnight raids happening, ordered by elected officials and resulting in brutal evictions, and the destruction of those lending libraries and wellness tents? Why are the necessary accessories to an assembly of human beings being systematically repressed by state powers and shift cops?
But most of all, how do we tell our kids that the nation we believe in, the rights we hold dear, will be openly trampled, battered, and brutally quashed with violent fury by those entrusted to uphold the right of law?
I wish I had the answer. I wish I could give the five-point plan that would be both honest and maintain a child’s belief in this country. I wish I could say, “we’re better than Pol Pot and Myanmar and Burma and Ghaddafi.”
But are we?
In degree, maybe. But in practice? And if the practice is just different by degree, how long until it’s not?
In practice we tout claims to equality, fairness, and justice. Yet we let white collar crime go not just with a pass, but we reward it with a bailout. And when the public cries foul, we club the people upside the head.
We laud the spirit and form of the Tahrir Square gathering, calling on then Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to respond to the demands of the people. When our people gather for similar protests against corruption, we tar them with wholesale pejoratives, calling them “stinky hippies,” from the children to the students to the business persons to the grannies. Stinky hippies, all.
Now club ‘em, spray ‘em, jail ‘em.
Patience, Grasshopper
Sure, we could tell the story of the wrenching struggle for liberty and justice. How it takes time. How sometimes people get hurt, even when they practice non-violence themselves. But why are we having to tell this story in the United States of America in the first place?
This isn’t supposed to be us.
But there’s no denying it now. It is us.
How do we avoid cynicism in our kids when they’re told we’re the higher minded country and then they see seated college students aggressively pepper sprayed? When they see peaceful crowds fired upon? How do we prop up the dream when that’s what they’ll see?
Not in front of the kids? Hey, we can’t hide our nation’s fall anymore. So if any of you readers have thoughts on what we’re supposed to tell the wee ones, I’d love to hear them.
The best I have right now is the story The Emperor’s New Clothes. Only it’s the updated version. The Emperor’s New Clothes and His Bad Ass Pepper Spray, A Watch Out Punk, Your Ass is Grass Story from Kangaroo Congress Inc. And that’s not exactly the “avoiding cynicism” that I’m looking for.
Comments?
–Lindsay Curren, Occupy Parenting
About Lindsay Curren
I’m not a father, I’m a 22 year old recent college graduate. I never even had a younger brother growing up. But I do get work in babysitting and substitute teaching from time to time,and talking to young people is something I have to spend a lot of time thinking about when I do.
I don’t know a sure way to tell kids about what’s happening with the police that wouldn’t leave both them and us depressed. But I do think there might be ways to at least help them be hopeful about it getting better. This isn’t the first protest that’s for something right that was met with violence. This isn’t even the first such protest that’s entirely non-violent. And talking about what’s happened before might help at least a little.
Martin Luther King wanted equality, and his marches were met with fire hoses and dogs. And it was wrong, what was done to them. But because they stood, the world is a better place.
Gandhi wanted freedom for his people, and his demonstrations of peaceful civil disobedience were met with force. And it was wrong, what was done to them. But they stood, and their example shines still today.
Anti-war demonstrators against Vietnam were demonized and brutalized and on one occasion literally gone after with lethal weapons. And it was wrong, what was done to them. But they stood, and their voice was heard.
And now the Occupy protests face these challenges and more. They face a world that seems built to destroy their movement. And the things being done to them are wrong. But they still stand, and they may still be heard, they may still shine, and they may still make the world a better place.
I can’t say really how we can help the next generation be less cynical about the world we are in today. Maybe it’s the kind of world that they should be entirely cynical about. But I can say that we can inspire them to feel hope about tomorrow. We can inspire them to see what’s being done to change it, to give them a better place to live in when they are our age. We can show them that even as we are beaten, and sprayed, and arrested on dubious charges, that we still strive for that.
Speaking as a mother of four, I say that I would like this generation of children to be a little MORE cynical. A little LESS Pollyanna. I want to see them spend more effort discerning between truth and lies in the media, and to be more proactive, not “wait to be taught.”
This is a learning opportunity. What’s currently happening is a demonstration of why we cannot take our constitution for granted. America is full of humans that are full of temptation, just like everyone else in the world. The only difference with our country is: we are the only country that has set our system up from our inception, to peacefully take back our country from those who would corrupt it if they do not obey the constitution.
I don’t want my kids changing the channel back to SpongeBob and drowning out the outside world with their iPods. I want them to participate in whatever way they can, beginning with learning their founding rights backwards and forwards.
Constructive ACTION is the remedy to replace WORRY.
My kids are younger, but I’m still trying to convey shades of gray. I would talk about how the protestors are bravely standing up for what they believe to be true, (what WE believe as a family) and that the police are caught in between somehow, perhaps receiving orders, perhaps losing control.,, I think different things are happening in different situations. The violence is ugly, and it’s okay to look at that ugliness squarely. . (Good friends’ father is a cop, so it’s really important not to denigrate the categorical lot of them–and of course there are situations in which one might want one’s children to trust a cop.) I think within the broader political context it’s pretty important, as Leslee says, to stress that action, that people coming out into the street standing up for their vision of rightness and their country, is so important, and admirable. I cannot really use the language of patriotism but many might define it this way.
I’ve been using “Order 66″ myself– http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Order_66– but that may only work if your audience is as big a fan of Star Wars the Clone Wars as my little guy is. :*)
Still, it sets up the “These are individuals acting on orders that they may not agree with but have trained hard to follow” thing well, so we can still talk about the actions of individual police officers without calling all cops pigs. (This is important to me, both philosophically and because we live in a blue-collar neighborhood where a lot of people have cops in the family. Cue socially awkward moment!)
One more thing: I took my son– he’s seven– on a march yesterday (http://alia-gee.blogspot.com/2011/12/thursday.html) and what I haven’t gotten my head around yet about how to post is that he was very excited and then suddenly stopped bouncing and said, “Mommy, if we see any riot police, can we go home?” And it broke my heart. I hate it when there is tension between being a good mom and a brave protestor, and I deeply resent Bloomberg and any person with power trying to frighten my child in order to get their own way.
Isn’t that the very definition of a bully? And isn’t that something we need to talk to our kids about, anyway?
My child is very young, only four, and she did see the photo of the pepper spraying at Davis. She immediately proposed a solution. “Maybe the good police will come and stop the bad police.” I think eventually, she may be right. The rank and file may someday realize that they are part of the 99%. But for now, I tell her that there are some bad people in the world who do not want to share, and people sufferbecause of this. Some brave people are insisting they share. They are asking the police too join them too.