The Real Dangers of Student Activism That We Should Teach Our Children

Protesting comes with many personal risks and often leaves its participants with little to show for their efforts

With another protest season on the way — this time fronted by K-12 children performing anti-gun walkouts — instead of encouraging your kids to get out and “make their voices heard” or some such, explain what is wrong with mass protests. 

Now, before I get to the point, let me acknowledge that, of course, we have our First Amendment right to peaceable assembly, and that this right should be exercised.  And of course there were times in history, like during Solidarnost or the Civil Rights movement, when people on the street brought about the much-needed change. 

I myself am a beneficiary of a protest movement.  In the 70’s and 80’s American Jews staged mass rallies in support of the Soviet Jews.  They impressed Ronald Reagan, the president already favorably predisposed to Jewish causes, who in turn placed demands to lift the Iron Curtain and allow emigration from the Soviet Union.  Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev obliged, and my family was free to leave. 

Having said that, our culture, including public schools, often presents children with a sanctified picture of mass protest: you exercise your rights, you make your voice heard, bring change, meet people, and have fun.  Come out and protest; it’s your civic duty.  It’s all kind of true, but rather Pollyanna-ish.  The whole truth is more complicated.  To singularly encourage street protest is no way to teach a child. 

Protests ruin lives. 

Of course, all adults have the right to be involved in a mass movement, and to take their kids (but not other people’s kids — long story) with them.  However, in most cases it really takes a middle-age perspective and disposition to properly understand the dynamics of large crowds and conduct oneself with appropriate restraint. 

A protester is swallowed by the masses, chanting, singing, agitated.  He makes acquaintances with friendly strangers, all of them are moved by the same cause.  He feels a sense of belonging; the righteousness of a cause is confirmed by the — usually overestimated — size of the crowd, and since the cause is righteous, he feels justified in doing anything he deems necessary to advance it.  All of a sudden he finds himself acting out something only an hour ago he found unconscionable, like chanting an embarrassing ditty, burning a flag or throwing a rock.  His self is broken, and he is ecstatic. 

Protesting didn’t turn out too well for many sixties radicals.  For instance, Mario Savio, the leader of UC Berkeley’s marquee Free Speech Movemment, never finished his Berkley degree.  He went on to Oxford, dropped out, unsuccessfully ran for office, then worked as a clerk.  The Cal golden boy graduated decades later, from a state school, after which, to be fair, he went on to get a Master’s degree. 

When the iconic protest leader passed away at only 53, David Hollinger, my American history professor who was also a student at Berkeley in the 60’s and knew the activists, gave a lecture on Savio and the Free Speech Movement.  It wasn’t entirely celebratory.  Savio wasn’t the only leader of the movement nor the smartest.  He was the most photogenic.  He became the face of the movement and an international celebrity. 

A poster made of Mario Savio and his iconic 1964 speech on the steps of Sproul Hall

Many ordinary Americans were sucked into political activism in the 60’s, and didn’t do very well, either.  After experiencing the ecstasy of belonging to an iconoclastic youth movement, they found it difficult to bring themselves to ordinary existence.  Because their glory days are solidly enshrined into our cultural mythology and in their past, some of them feel impelled to call the young to follow their example. 

Several teens became instant celebrities following the Parkland massacre.  The students themselves didn’t start any movements, but they became the avatars of anti-gun activism.  They also became favorite punching bags of the right-of-center internet.  That was predictable both because the Florida students were acting and thinking like ordinary 17-year-olds, which made them easy targets, and because if their arguments can be allowed to be unaddressed, Second Amendment supporters, who see most of the control arguments as attacks on not simply an essential liberty but the form of all liberties at the testing point, would essentially concede defeat. 

Give somebody like David Hogg a decade of mentoring, and he might mature into a decent pundit.  Unfortunately, his celebrity will end quickly, and what will become of him is unclear.  Will he realize that he was used, and what will he do then?  If Savio, a battle-hardened veteran of the Civil Rights crusade with an impressive grasp of history, had difficulty weathering his political celebrity, what can be expected of our little snowflakes? 

Protests are only marginally effective. 

While a democratic society respects all free speech rights, words do not necessarily result in change.  Attendance of mass events may influence politicians… or not.  In early 2003, the ANSWER coalition turned hundreds of thousands of people into the streets of American cities to protest the upcoming invasion of Iraq.  It failed to thwart it, just like it failed to thwart the reelection of then-president George W. Bush a year later. 

Protesters like to chant “this is what democracy looks like”, but it’s not.  It’s merely how some people choose to voice their opinions, and politicians know it.  What matters more in a democracy is learning history and civics, staying informed, and voting. 

Anti-gun activists put fresh-faced babes on national television, but what did it get them?  A smaller gap between Americans who want to respond with increased security and improved mental health (56%) and tighter gun regulations (41%) than after Sandy Hook.  But that massacare was committed by a school outsider psychopath whom teachers would find easier to shoot than a former student.  Moreover, by a double digit margin Americans say that gun ownership increases safety.  And that’s considering that gun rights activists were taken by surprise by the child-front strategy. 

Protesting proved to be a similarly dubious strategy for the right.  Leslie Loftis noted the pro-life movement’s spectacular failure to bring about modest, widely popular changes to abortion legislation.  In 2009, the Tea Party launched series of nationwide actions that ignited the small government movement.  The Tea Party gave us the Republican legislative branch at the federal level, along with the sea of solid red state governments.  Yet it failed to elect a conservative president.  A 1.3 billion dollar omnibus bill was signed by Donald Trump last week. 

March for Life comes to DC

And then there is the most notorious protest backfire of all: the 60’s hippie movement that activated the “silent majority,” which handed the presidency to Richard Nixon. 

Protests can be exploitive. 

A person surrounded by the roaring masses may feel empowered, but is he?  Does he understand the nefarious forces leading the movement? 

Following the shock election of Donald Trump, pussyhat-clad masses flocked to the streets.  Yet, if the life of an average woman had changed for the better, it’s probably due to the booming economy and the recently passed tax cuts.  But that first Women’s March in 2017 was unmitigated success, if one thinks launching Linda Sarsour, a woman who was never a feminist but was drafted to headline it for intersectionality’s sake, into national prominence counts as success.  The second one, held a year later, after sexual exploitation scandals swept through Hollywood and media, was underwhelming. 

Another example.  A friend of our family had attended the aforementioned ANSWER protest in San Francisco in 2003.  When my husband explained to him the following Monday that the event was called by a coalition of communist and Islamists, the friends’ hands started to shake because, he explained, at the end of the March the protesters were flocked through a narrow opening with large garbage bins on both sides, and that the bins were full of donation money, most of it in $20 bills, and that he was compelled to contribute.  Such a nice protest.  So many wonderful people to meet. 

On a similar note, read Paul H. Jossey’s essay on how lawyers and consultants have bled the Tea Party dry. 

There is a reason why cult leaders like Jim Jones or Louis Farrakhan wield outsize influence in politics.  They don’t command that many people, but if a small-time activist needs to organize a rally, he doesn’t need a whole lot of people to begin with, and a cult leader is just powerful enough to boost attendance. 

And when exploiting children — even your own — it looks like a cult

Parents, American parents, should not be raising cult followers.  Yet protests such as having elementary-school age children lie down on cold earth look awfully cultish to an uninitiated observer:

The country doesn’t know the worst of the grade-school protest abuse because it takes place in ultra-progressive schools where all parents are of the same mind, and no one blinks an eye at it.  In rare occasions when some parents oppose it, they keep quiet or resolve issues on the local level for their kids’ sake.  Conformity rules. 

And conformity or not, these kids are not ready for the public forum.  Their opinions and defenses are not well-formed.  We’ve all seen it: ridiculous signs, silly clothes, shanty towns erected on public land.  All of it is particularly sad when it involves hapless teens many of whom will either come to regret their sweet innocence splattered all over the webs, or end up having their future ruined by ideology — possibly both. 

Community organizers want to put passion in large numbers on display; they don’t particularly care if a protester’s argument is ill-informed or dubiously constructed.  What they look for are specific ideas backed up by strong sentiment, preferably expressed by attractive young women and colorful characters who keep the masses anchored in. 

Activists have narrowed organizing down to a science.  They know how to “rub raw the sores of discontent”, to quote the master manipulator Saul Alinsky himself.  They know which buttons to push to get their marks to show up, get worked up, and keep coming back.  They know how to alleviate doubt and insecurity.  Because community organizers have movements to build, the individual is subordinated to an agenda; the individual is, to paraphrase Savio’s most famous speech, a gear in the machine. 

Silence is golden.  Reason over emotion.  Young people shouldn’t be encouraged to broadcast their still nascent world views to the whole world, especially not with any zeal.  Nor should they be subjects of peer pressure to participate in any school-wide events.  They might feel secure in their world views since everyone around them seems to think the same, but that’s problematic in and of itself.  With time and experience they may learn that other perspectives exist and may even adopt some of them. 

The right of free speech is enshrined in our constitution, but respect for one’s strongly-held opinions has to be earned.  Years of learning and self-reflection are necessary to be able to form a proper combative argument. 

Is it cruel to laugh at minors?  Yes?  Then stop inserting them into adult conversations

When my children say something political and sound passionate, as they often do, especially regarding the subjects mommy and daddy feel strongly about, it often comes out wrong.  I temper it.  They still need to develop the language and absorb the data.  We help them.  Because that is part of how this parents and children thing works.  That’s how children learn.  Going to rallies and watching adults beclown themselves teaches the wrong lesson. 

I know parents who took their kids to very mellow political rallies, those attended by families and older people and with very little media presence.  They exercised their natural rights while their children looked on.  This is certainly an improvement on the charged atmosphere of a mass protest, but personally I still wouldn’t take my child to such an event; it’s too much to process.  If the rally is a failure, if the movement is a failure, it’s too much to process.  I wouldn’t want my kids growing up cynical and disillusioned, or feeling used in any way. 

Before young people throw their voices (and faces) behind a mass movement, they need to learn the basics of civic discourse.  Children need to know that there are other avenues for expressing themselves.  They can write a letter to a newspaper, they can discuss current events with friends, all preferable to group antics.  Above all, they need to be prepared to exercise the most basic right and sacred civic duty of all: voting, which notably is private.