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Somerville High students walk out in protest of gun slaughter
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Kids today
Are light years ahead of my teenage years, can cities like Somerville give 16 year old citizens the right to vote in municipal elections?
Under one condition
No more eating Tide pods.
Ah yes
The generation that forced its children to eat soap over using "special" words that only grownups were allowed to say is weighing in on Tide Pods.
According to the AAPCC less than 100 people actually ate
Tide Pods. At least most kids these days are smart enough not to smoke cigarettes, unlike the teens of your (and my) generations.
I disagree they are "light
I disagree they are "light years" ahead..
Killing each other with guns was not a thing we did to each other when we were kids. I'm not just talking the mass murders, I'm talking kids having "beef's" with others that they only solve with guns.
Nope, we were better than that.
Sorry, but that's bull
Murder is not one of those things that never happened before the year 2000.
Untrue
Juvenile crime was at a 30 year row as of 2014 http://jjie.org/2015/02/26/ncjj-report-shows-juvenile-crime-keeps-fallin...
So I guess they are "better" than you.
Vogue.
Don’t be fooled by the selfie generation. The Kendall Jenner “cool protester” TV commercial was controversial simply because it exposed the truth: that protest for this cohort is commonly just fashion, not something intellectual. We all know teens who have been to a half dozen protests already. They show their best act or demonstration to the cameras, because everything is for the camera! Look at me, boo, I’m the new Rosa Parks - retweet. The selfie generation brings only the emotion, perfected by their actor and actress icons in media, but the selfie generation is largely hollow and shallow inside the facade of their extreme emotionality. Please don’t let them vote until they are 26 (the Obamacare age of fully formed brain). These dramatic narcissists who find their way to identifying as victims through intersectionality and other transitive properties are far from ready to govern us. These kids are only ready for their semi-accurate reenactments of political activism and other recitals. Strike a pose, there’s nothing to it.
OK, gramps
Nobody's talking about electing an 18-year-old as you Supreme Leader. In the meantime, settle back into your easy chair on put on some Fox News.
And, no, that commercial wasn't controversial because it exposed anything, because it didn't. Advertisers have been trying to co-opt protest movements since at least the '60s, and the disgust was along the lines of what we saw after that Super Bowl commercial using Martin Luther King's words to sell pickup trucks.
lolsure
because the only student protests that ever meant anything were the boomers, amirite, back when smoking weed really MEANT something.
I'm an (older) millennial and I gotta say, I'm super proud of this oldest edge of the new gen z cohort. my generation ended up kind of disillusioned and worn out and nihilistic between the recession and loans and housing prices and the unending being shit upon by boomers; these kids are here and passionate and angry about the injustice of it all. yeah, they take selfies, because they understand the power of selfies and visibility and uniting in visible ways. they express themselves online because the old media is stacked pretty ridiculously against them, and isn't interested in helping their cause. they've figured out where we fucked it up with occupy and blm and all our other movements that tried to establish legitimacy in a system that wasn't ever interested in helping those causes.
don't let the bastards grind you down, kiddos.
It's really not that hard to
It's really not that hard to understand. 2012, a generation of children lived in terror that they would get gunned down in their own elementary schools just like the kids at Sandy Hook. 2018, that same generation of teenagers live in fear that they would get gunned down in their own secondary schools just like in Florida. Twice they lived through this, twice they've seen leaders do nothing to protect them. The GOP and NRA, through their own inaction, are creating an entire generation of soon to be voters who want an end to guns and who know the GOP isn't looking out for them. So by all means, keep doing nothing and you'll be extinct as a party in less than 10 years.
26 is too young
I remember myself at 26, and I'm not sure I should have been trusted with the franchise. So make it even older.
Voting by the elderly also has its problems, however; memory loss, ingrained habit, lack of exposure to information about how other people live today, and, of course, good old dementia.
I have fed all these concerns into my Voting Age Optimization Program, and it has informed me that people should not become eligible to vote until they are forty-six, and that such eligibility should expire when they turn thirty-eight. I've tried to reason with it, but to no avail.
Nonsense, and this is nothing new
And probably more common today (thankfully) than in recent decades, with some exceptions: When I was a senior in high school, student government organized a sit-in that shut our school down for a morning to protest the Town's cuts to the school budget that resulted in the layoffs of five popular non-tenured teachers (If I recall correctly, some of the positions were restored a month later when Town Meeting reconvened and passed a new municipal budget that funded the positions). The excerpt cited above states it was 150 students protesting, but to the best of my knowledge, it was likely closer to 900 -the vast majority of the student population in all four classes. I also remember the school administration handling it very well. They let us have our say: they listened, let the press do interviews, addressed the issues, and then when it was done, told us it was time to resume classes (with the threat of suspension, etc for those who didn't end it), in the end, we respectfully ended the protest, but it was talked about for the rest of the day. It was a valuable lesson in civic engagement.
Only restrictions for guns
Only restrictions for guns used for mass murdering. Okay for to use any gun to shoot at each other in our own city's neighborhoods is okay, though? Remember the 2017 stats that came out on the number of deaths to young black men due to gun violence in Boston? Let's try to stop that also.
Guns
Pretty sure these protesters are opposed to easy access to guns for anyone. It's not just about school shootings.
Kudos to these kids
As an old Boomer, I am sensing something in these students that (forgive me for painting with a broad brush) I did not see in millennials who seemed more flighty and entitled. These kids mean business.
Kudos to these kids indeed.
Kudos to these kids indeed. But many Millennials are in their 30s now. We sure as hell didn't have smart phones or social media to plan protests and tell Marco Rubio he sucks. If there was a protest, sites like Uhub were pretty much non existent to report on them. Maybe just don't generalize a billion people.
Social Media and Smart Phones Not Needed
"We sure as hell didn't have smart phones or social media to plan protests and tell Marco Rubio he sucks. If there was a protest, sites like Uhub were pretty much non existent to report on them."
That's limited thinking. The 1960s generation didn't have social media or smart phones either and they did a darn good job of organizing and protesting things like the senseless war in Vietnam, and organizing massive (and effective) marches for civil rights.
Don't generalize?
Like you do with drivers?
These kids
piss themselves when you take their back-lit screen away from them. I will refer you to the recent story of a group of teens beating down a 70 year old woman at Tino's Pizza in Milton when the owners told one of them they couldn't charge their phone there.
Gen Y/ Millennials learned pretty quick that we were screwed, that we wouldn't have it better than our parents, that the boomers did all the drugs, had all the sex, and basically ruined everything for future generations, so why try?
I commend these young kids for their spirit. It hasn't been broken yet. It will be when NOTHING meaningful happens in the way of gun legislation and the next mass shooting happens, or the lead Boomer takes us to war with North Korea, or Kim Kardasian says something racist or announces her plans to change her gender. These events won't even make foot note status in the history books.
How many high-school seniors do you know, exactly?
And really, you make a conclusion about all teenagers, all millions and millions of them, based on a single incident involving three or four punks in Milton?
Sex and Drugs
"the boomers did all the drugs, had all the sex, and basically ruined everything for future generations,"
You mean the boomers used up all the sex and drugs for future generations?
Waaaaaaaah
Dude, I cannot believe that you're simultaneously crapping on both Gen Z and boomers, both with absolute bullshit generalizations, in the same rant. You are one whiny bastard.
Since we're painting with broad brushes here...
I sense in boomers a tendency to overstate their own hardships, overlook the problems they created for future generations, (economic, environmental, diplomatic, etc) and then mock those who got stuck dealing with those problems.
Since we're throwing around generalizations,
why as a Boomer did you decide to raise Millennial's to be flighty and entitled? They sure didn't ask for the participation trophies you gave out.
You skipped a generation
The Boomers were Gen X's parents, Gen X are the Millennial's parents. So you Gen X needs to take the blame for the participation trophies. The Boomers are guilty of a lot of sins, but that doesn't happen to be one of them...
Wrong
Gen X's parents were the Silent Generation - people born during the latter part of the depression and WWII.
Nope
Boomers begat millenials. Gen X was a tiny generation - unless they had 15 kids each, this isn't an issue.
Later millenials and gen X maybe - but this is all boomer by the numbers.
Boomers were our older brothers and sisters, not parents.
Millenial here
30 y/o. My parents are Boomers. My dad is actually only barely a boomer - if he had been born a year earlier he would have been a Forgotten.
Soooo....no.
When did we start trying to label generations anyway
People are born every year to parents of varying ages, and trying to carve out broad-stroke generations across millions of families is preposterous. That said, I blame it on the Baby Boomers.
You're out of your element, Lecil
I'm a Millenial with two boomer parents
Not really
Generally (and since we're painting with big brushes here)
Boomers: 1946-1964
Gen X: 1965-1984
Millennials: 1982-2002
Is there overlap? Of course. I have an uncle my age; technically Boomer based on his siblings's ages, but Gen X aged. But that's besides the point.
If we're going to paint with ludicrously large generalizations, (in an apparent effort to totally avoid the actual topic at hand) at least get them right!
;)
All you did was prove yourself wrong
zetag's parents both born: 1946-1964 which makes them Boomers
zetag born: 1982-2002 which makes me a Millennial
Millenials
I'm one of the older millenials (1984.) When I was in college, one of my professors was discussing the war in Afghanistan/Iraq and various social issues, and said that she didn't understand why none of us walked out or protested, because when she was in school, campus protests for political reasons were so big, campuses were shutting down. She wanted to know why our generation was different.
The answer she got from the class was:
"It's too expensive."
"Our tuition breaks down to $75 per class hour"
"$75? No that was last year, it's $82 this year."
There is a time and a place for protesting. When you walk out of class and take away class time from your own education- which benefits you, not your teachers or professors, and certainly not politicians- you are only shortchanging yourself, not "the man."
You're 33 years old
...and you call yourself a millenial? You must seriously be in need to coolness points (which you aren't gonna get by calling yourself a millenial, anyway).
Demography
That's Wikipedia.
That's Pew Research.
Time keeps marching on, Millenials are mostly adults now and about 1/3 of adults are Millenials.
You weren't paying enough attention
tl;dr: bug off
Longer: I'm an older millennial. I was in high school in 1998-2002. Remember when we wanted to protest things and could take out our phones and make Youtube videos and post them on Twitter? No? Because none of those things existed. The first image shared from a phone was in 1997. We had IRC and AIM. AOL was actually cool. We could sort of hack stuff together in html. That's about it.
So maybe the TL;DR wasn't appropriate: you had no way to pay attention. In 2000, my class was the guinea pig year for MCAS: 13 hours of meaningless testing, with no long-term ramifications. (And, no, I'm not equating this with the #NeverAgain movement, but then again no one was coming in and shooting up our schools with AR-15s, although Columbine scared the shit out of us. Also we had an assault weapons ban, which we at least still have in Massachusetts, which is why the guy in Winchester killed one person with a knife and didn't shoot up the whole library.) Students hated it. Teachers pretended not to have opinions, but it was clear they weren't fans. Was there an easy way to have a statewide boycott which would render the test meaningless (basically: everyone leaving it blank)? Nope, not really. Because it was hard to get beyond talking to each other, and making posters to hang in the halls.
The upside of this is that we developed a lot of skills which the younger millennial set didn't. The ability to read a map and get somewhere without your phone yelling directions. The ability to write a letter using words and punctuation and grammar and not emoji and little pictures and GIFs and abbreviations.
But, yeah, sorry we didn't make you aware of our concern for things using technology we didn't have.
(And, also, as an older boomer your cohort is responsible for everything we're dealing with, so maybe you should be the ones out on the street.)
Boomers organized THIS
Without cell phones or social media:
http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/chronologyentry/1963_0...
"your cohort is responsible"
At some point you'll understand what an asinine statement that is. If you google "1%" and think about it, you may even understand it today.
Positions
More like the position they are going to assume when begging on the street for pocket change after graduation. That photo looks like any street in modern day Seattle.
Attention seekers playing the role of victim off someone else' tragedy.
Angry man is angry
Keep going, kids, it's working
Yeah, why don't these kids
Yeah, why don't these kids just put a smile on their face while republicans prostitute themselves to the gun manufacturers who put weapons in the hands of people that kill children?
I am glad you are being replaced by a better and more tolerant generation. You will not be missed and the world will be better off without you.
Founding Fathers
Remember when the Founding Fathers all huddled in the streets with doe eyes, looking for attention. Remember how that got the attention of the King, and he got off our back with the taxes and all was well?
Remember ANY TIME in history that squatting down in the street to make a show for the media got any respect from anyone? The heroes of the left get a special place in history for their huddling in fear for the cameras. Remember Cindy Sheerin lying in a sewer ditch at the Reagan ranch protesting war? How did that work? Remember the girl who lay down in front of the bulldozer in Gaza?
It gets pity.
People pity those fools.
I pity those fools with all their jibber jabber.
Oh honey
Go walk the freedom trail, idiot.
They were out rioting, honey - that's why there is a big metal thing in front of the Old State House.
Moron.
Remember ANY TIME in history
Yes. It's pretty famous. You should look it up.
Remember how the king was an elected official who needed to be concerned with public opinion?
Tank Maaaaaaaaaan!!
Tank man was the bomb.
Tank man went right to the source. No pity. No fear.
He has my respect.
I bet there were others that day in Tianemman square. Cowering in fear, looking for pity. For some reason, no one remembers them. But we remember Tank Maaaaaaaaaaaaan!!!
do tell us, pops
Tell us a nice story of how you would have run in unarmed, despite legendary bone spurs.
Yeah, tell us a story.
There were other protests,
There were other protests, closer to home, that focused on sitting in places too.
Can't recall what they were called though...hmm..
Remember when police and firefighters blocked the highway?
http://bluemassgroup.com/2015/01/interesting-throwback-in-1981-firefight...
Ah yeah...
And who respected that? I sure didn't.
But is *does* rise above playing victim for pity.
"No arrests made"
You might not respect it but someone with authority did, seems to matter more than your personal opinion.
File photo
Crawl back under your rock, you hateful schmuck.
Something Deeper
"Attention seekers playing the role of victim off someone else' tragedy."
That's exactly how I would have felt 5-6 years ago.. Even much of the Occupy Wall Street counterpart in Dewey Square seemed like posing to me, Millenials playing at being rebels. I even remember one of them saying on the news "I've been waiting all my life for something like this". There is something deeper with these students. Lives are being lost. It's not just the "I want a high paying job" or whatever the still undefined goal of the Occupy era was.
Go back under the bridge
You troll
Yawn
RIP David Bowie
Marches and protests get
Marches and protests get short-term attention, and participants feel like they're being heard, but honestly, I don't feel they accomplish anything in the long run.
If these kids really want to change the world, maybe they could examine how they treat each other in their day to day lives.
So many kids are ostracized and shunned by their peers for being different. Being ganged up on by their peers in person and especially on social media is devastating and easily sends kids over the edge to commit suicide or pick up a gun.
Is banning guns the answer, or changing the behaviors that lead someone to think that killing themselves or others is the only way out?
citations needed
Oh and "treat each other in their daily lives"? Right. Because baby boomers were the kings and queens of hazing and hating.
it can be both
lets get rid of assault weapons and be nicer to each other.
problem(s) solved.
[quote]Is banning guns the
[quote]Is banning guns the answer, or changing the behaviors that lead someone to think that killing themselves or others is the only way out?[quote]
yes
Porque no los dos?
Speaking from experience?
Tell us about your experience with protests and marches, do, and how none of it was effective. Oh...define "effective" too, please.
They look miserable
They look miserable
That's part of the point
You'd be miserable if you had to shelter in place from somebody with a gun and lots of ammo, too.
Ascribing a set of behaviors to people based on their age
...makes as much sense as ascribing a set of behaviors to people based on their pigmentation.
If you are right
If you are right then we should stop this 21 years old to buy a gun nonsense.
If you are right.
It wasn't that long ago that
It wasn't that long ago that children were taught to huddle under their desks for fear that they, their classmates, and everything within 25 miles would be vaporized. As an adult you wonder why, the desk certainly isn't bomb proof. Hiding on the ground today just makes you an immobile target.
This stuff is why there are so many conspiracy theorists.
Long enough ago that I wasn't
Long enough ago that I wasn't taught that, going to school in New York City--and I was born when Kennedy was president.
Maybe because my teachers knew how useless that would be. A basement might be some good against fallout, though--if missiles are being fired across the ocean, they're not aimed at a particular corner of a public school, so "immobile target" is irrelevant.
Um
Hiding under the desk wasn't supposed to protect you if the bomb hit overhead - it was supposed to provide some protection if the bomb went off 25 miles away and all the glass windows blew in.