By Anthony Bernier \/ July 2024<\/strong><\/p>\n Have we become complacent envisioning our young people as citizens in a Every adult alive today grew up under political skies we felt were, like climate, But it\u2019s dawning on more and more of us that big things like this do change. My question is this: is it imprudent to begin thinking of young people not as When elections are \u201csettled\u201d instead by who is threatened more, intimidated What does \u201cadult\u201d even mean if the \u201crule of law\u201d is simply just a phrase we What does \u201cadult\u201d mean when the obligations and imperatives of citizenship we It\u2019s one thing for today\u2019s adults to fret about the future we see changing from But it\u2019s another to imagine how the institutions we created to raise new Who would they be after citizenship ends?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After Citizenship: What\u2019s Left for Young People By Anthony Bernier \/ July 2024 Have we become complacent envisioning our young people as citizens in a democratic culture? Every adult alive today grew up under political skies we felt were, like climate, never changing. Like the seasons, we took for granted that election cycles would come […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-161119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=161119"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":161123,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161119\/revisions\/161123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=161119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=161119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=161119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\ndemocratic culture?<\/p>\n
\nnever changing. Like the seasons, we took for granted that election cycles would
\ncome on the regular and would produce what they always produced: agreed upon
\nresults. Winners would win; losers would concede. We assumed confidence that
\nelections would determine leaders in an ongoing churn between the lines of the
\npolitical playing field.<\/p>\n
\nIce caps melt.
\nRain stops falling.
\nAnd democratic culture erodes before our eyes.<\/p>\n
\ncitizens in a democratic culture but as subjects to a king or an authoritarian?
\nWhen we exchange the \u201cPledge of Allegiance\u201d for the Ten Commandments,
\nwhat form of society do we imagine for young people? When elections no longer
\nend the matter of who is and who is not elected, how do we imbue young people
\nwith volition, initiative, and confidence in a fair process for making community
\ndecisions?<\/p>\n
\nmore, run off by political violence, as we saw on January 6 th and in an assassination
\nattempt, in all honesty how can we hold out the notion of wanting youth to \u201cmature
\ninto adulthood.\u201d<\/p>\n
\ninscribed into buildings once upon a time?<\/p>\n
\nonce owed to one another under a shared social contract are coerced into fealty to
\nThe One?<\/p>\n
\nwhat we once knew. It\u2019s our fault, after all.<\/p>\n
\ngenerations will need to re-imagine the young people forced to deal with those
\nchanges.<\/p>\n