![]() ![]() Arab Springįor some, Twitter and Facebook embody the stereotype of a disconnected, smartphone-toting young person. Learn the historical precedence of youth activism and the factors that drive young people to become important advocates for change. Three decades after the crackdown, says He, “we still cannot bring justice to the hundreds of young lives destroyed by guns and tanks.” He and other colleagues researching the Tiananmen movement still fear reprisals from the Chinese Communist Party.Īround the world, young people have played a crucial role in a multitude of social and political movements. The extent of the casualties is still unknown.Ĭhina has never officially recognized the massacre and continues to censor information and conversation about the movement. On June 3 and 4, 1989, the emotionally charged protests took a terrifying turn when thousands of soldiers descended on Tiananmen Square, opened fire on unarmed students, and crushed the movement with tanks and rifles. Hundreds of thousands of activists, many of them university students, took to the streets with banners, speeches and songs. It swept through China as youth demanded democratic reforms and economic liberalization in the face of cronyism and economic decline. The movement made globally famous by the violence in Tiananmen Square didn’t just take place in the plaza. ![]() ![]() A teenager in China in 1989, He explains, “When I was around their age, millions of us took to the streets in cities throughout my home country demanding these basic rights that American students receive as their birthright and often take for granted.” Michael’s College in Vermont and author of Tiananmen Exiles: Voices of the Struggle for Democracy in China. “I envy the freedom that my students enjoy here,” says Rowena He, assistant professor of history at St. Youth who participated in the civil rights movement embraced what one-time SNCC chairman Representative John Lewis called “good trouble”-fearless agitation designed to provoke, challenge, and move progress forward. Fueled by young people’s rejection of white supremacy, SNCC was once the nation’s largest and most well-organized civil rights group. Fiercely independent, the group maintained organized efforts on countless fronts of change, enduring physical violence and state repression along the way. Together, these young adults desegregated schools in the Jim Crow South, challenged racism during Freedom Rides, and pushed forward voter rights and civil rights legislation.Īmong the most influential cadre of student organizers was the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a group that embraced nonviolent protest and helped train many of the movement’s foot soldiers. Youth were instrumental in the civil rights movement’s most memorable moments-and they were just as engaged behind the scenes. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |