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Youth culture in Canada is a vastly under-explored and as of late there has been a lot happening in this area. Some of the developments, such as the Occupy Canada movement and resurgence in youth involvement in politics, have been quite positive, while other incidents such as the Vancouver riots have been quite negative. This post is going to explore some of the underlying issues and contextualize them in wider trends occurring in society.
Underscoring all the recent developments is a deteriorating economic situation in advanced economies; this situation is being driven by the policies arising out of and predicated on a neoliberal orthodoxy which has been the dominant political ideology in advanced economies over the last four decades, this includes: the rise of financial capitalism, globalization, liberalization of trade policy, technological change, deregulation of workplace law and retrenchment of the social welfare state.
These policies have had a tremendous impact on the structure of Canadian society driving and creating problematic trends such as income inequality, structural unemployment, the hollowing out of the middle class, deindustrialization, precarious employment, a decline in class solidarity and anti-worker sentiment driving public policy. There's been a deep impact on youth as well with issues like underemployment, precarious jobs, high debt loads from student loans and a difficult transition from school into workforce characterizing the experience of young people entering the labour market.
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| Police in Montreal attacked McGill students on Thursday. |
As of late the response from young people in Canada is one of outrage with recent memory seeing protests across the country on issues as varied as tuition fees to income inequality to attempts at voter nullification. The overwhelming response from the government has been one of repression through the deployment of police and utilizing the legal system to abrogate and silence dissent. From riot police attacking students at McGill this past week to the secret suspension of Charter rights at the G20 summit in Toronto to the illegal forced removal of Occupy encampments; behind the violent draconian response there's a worrying lack of dialogue from politicians about the underlying grievances raised by young people.
The questions that young people pose raise concerns about the deep contradictions that underpin our economic and social order in Canada; furthermore, the answers to these questions, predicated on a system rooted in social and economic justice, provide an incisive and compelling alternative to the accounts that pass for journalism in the mainstream. These questions highlight the ongoing failure of Canada's political class to address issues of social and economic justice in any meaningful way. The primacy of financial capitalism and corporate dominance of politics has simply gone unexamined, nor has progressive public policy that could address the underlying inequities.
It's unreasonable that initiatives that could stem income inequality, political corruption, structural unemployment and poverty aren't in the discourse of the political class; what's desperately needed in Canada is changes to tax policy, workplace law reforms and reinvigoration of social welfare programs - these sorts ameliorative initiatives could possibly stem the damage that's occurred in neoliberal era and offer hope for the young generation that's inheriting a political and economic system that's utterly devoid of substance other than a gravy of train of hate filled invective that targets the weakest groups in society for austerity measures, criminalization and marginalization.
Personally, I don't want to live in a country which has a political culture predicated simply on the division between haves and have-nots; I've seen places like that and the damage which lasts generations isn't easy to recover from.
thanks Andrew! I would also like to add a few layers to this post.
ReplyDeleteIn a recent conversation with Barbara Epstein after a seminar she gave on the Occupy movement in Oakland last week- I found myself questioning the ways in which we envision solutions and possibilities for today's Youth in political culture.
Although very interesting, Barbara's talk focused on the ways in which the Insurgent Anacrchists in Oakland were using "unstrategic" and thus pointless forms of violence as the primary objectives of the movement. From this argument, the leftist crowd entered into a series of uncomfortable discussions regarding the role of violence in political action- arguing quite simply of the immaturity of the movement, and its inadequacy. I wish to add some "youthful" contextual insights of the directions of youth politics.
I. Social memory and Learning
I would like to ask those of the "older generations" of the Left where they would like us to collect and gather the skills and knowledge required to organize in politically strategic ways. My generation has been without a particularly strong and organized labour, women's and student movement. Along with slashing economic and political state protections, services and legislation, neoliberal cut-backs also successfully demobilized the popular sectors of Canadian society- leaving an increasingly widening practical knowledge gap for the proceeding generations of Canadian youth.Collective political actions is in itself a process driven by the previous generations actions, where we as youth learn, and develop our own strategies within a context of broader based struggles. What happens in the event of a vacuum?
I am not saying that anarchic forms of violence and youth participation are justified by any means, rather that we need to contextualize the now, with not only the historical but the recently historical pasts of today's youth.
II. Government: Police State and Lack of Political Representation
ReplyDeleteThe spaces for political participation have also been squeezed to the point of the suffocation of civil society. How many students, or youth, are going to be willing to participate in protests where simply sitting down will get you pepper sprayed (UC Davis Campus), arrested (Occupy Protests), and even banned from crownland (Occupy Ottawa Protestors). The conservatives have recently introduced a bill for discussion which will make the wearing of face coverings illegal at riots. From the 200 out of 300 court cases aqquitted surrounding the G20 arrests in July of 2010, I can infer as to why the government would want to further justify their use of force and repression by making profiling legalized and easier, and thus the ensuing mass arrests and squashing of youth discontent justifiable to the middle class.
Second, where is the progressive oppositional support for youth? What we need are the more progressive members of our opposition parties in the house to stand up and say that protesting is a right, and that it is okay to protest. Youth need to feel like there is institutional support for their engagement in politics; they need to see that there are those who support their actions, but also those who provide a counter political discourse to the reluctant "faith in justice" drones that in fact, whether you like it or not Mr. Harper, the constitution still guarantees our right to protest.
III. Politics vs. politics
Finally, there is a very closed and compartmentalized association of Politics as solely directly related to parliamentary politics. Voting becomes the ways in which you engage politically and do your part, leading to a large majority of students feeling without representation (because our parties still majorly ignore youth issues as central-- or fail to identify youth as part of the precarious working class)and failing to see the possibilities for their political engagement as beyond simply electoral politics, but community based popular organizing... If we want to see oppositional political parties taking youth seriously, then we have to identify with ourselves as active and essential agents to that process--- putting ourselves in popular politics
I could go on, but I feel like to enrich the "why" of the lack of youth participation these three points can help us to understand the broader picture as well.
Thanks again Andrew