Neil Young, after the Kent State shootings in 1970, penned the lyrics: "Tin soldiers and Nixon coming/ We're finally on our own/ This summer I hear the drumming/ Four dead in Ohio."
At Kent State, four college students were killed by the Ohio National Guard during an anti-war protest. The raw emotion expressed in the song contributed to the growing discontent already bubbling over in the country. Soon, hundreds of thousands of people spilled onto the streets demanding an end to the war. College students nationwide vented their anger by paralyzing universities and marching on Washington.
That was 40 years ago. Neil Young isn't so young anymore. The era of spirited engagement which so vividly characterized the '60s and early '70s came and went. Which got me wondering: What will we be able to say about our own contributions? Our generation has been called too complacent and too self-absorbed to act forcefully. While I am not going to bad-mouth our generation or our way of doing things, I do think that as informed and energetic college students we have largely failed to make ourselves heard when it counts most.
I was motivated to write this piece following Howard Zinn's passing on Jan. 27. When I heard the news, I decided to read his acclaimed book "A People's History of the United States" (1980) from cover to cover. As Matt Damon so eloquently puts it in the film "Good Will Hunting" (1997), the book will surely "knock you off your ass."
Zinn tells the reader that, in his view, the study of history should be used as a kind of protective shield against those who would try to persuade us to fall victim to the great follies of our age — violent racism, colonial paternalism, blind nationalism and unjustified warfare, to name a few. As such, the book is widely different from the average history textbooks we receive during our schooling in that it recounts, in stupendous and unrelenting detail, American history from the eyes of the common man — not, as we are used to, from the perches of government and state views. History seen by the common man is, to use a phrase borrowed by Zinn, catalogued as the mere "natural selection of accidents."
The point of the book that Zinn unyieldingly reminds us of is that the rights and freedoms which we enjoy today are almost solely the result of rebellious activism. Everything from the Bill of Rights, the gradual right for landless white men to vote, the nominal inclusion of blacks, women's suffrage, the civil rights movement, the right to organize, the end of child labor and the 40-hour-long work week have all been products of tireless pushing back against a conservative government prone to preserving the status quo. Government is rarely prompted into action by its own will. It must be brought to the edge of a cliff before it realizes it must choose between its own survival and a degree of compromise. At various times, the ones responsible for presenting the government with this stark option have been the dispossessed, the oppressed, the poor and those who were acting by conviction — agitated farmers, abolitionists, free blacks, women, anti-rent rioters, socialists, teenagers, anti-war protesters, students and the like. The only thing they have in common is that they were fighting for a better tomorrow.
Today, we have been lulled into believing that significant change can only come through the system while we remain politely unobtrusive. True, legislative change often comes about when the aggrieved party has the chance to sit down with government officials and create a new reality. But the two parties rarely ever get the chance to engage without serious provocation from a turbulent public. Though we might not always like to admit it, it is beyond the cries of conspiracy theorists and cynics to say that government is largely made up of and serves the interests of the financial elite, of industry, of business and of commerce above the interests of the masses. Legislative reform is usually passed when a certain part of the system is on the verge of collapse or when the people simply won't take it anymore. If the people are not shaking things up, government has no reason to be on the edge of its seat.
Here at Tufts, we pride ourselves on being an institution dedicated to academic learning and active citizenship, but we often miss the mark. Many of us are prone to indulge in dead-end debates over partisan differences instead of choosing to assist the neediest people on the home front. Some of us have dedicated time to travel to third-world countries that have been devastated, among other factors, by serial exploitation from thuggish capitalist corporations. Yet when we come back home, we find that our houses are full, our fridges stocked and our backs clothed with the products which these same companies produce. It's sort of like coming back from a lecture about human rights abuses in an auditorium where the beverage menu included an array of Nestlé products, a company which has a long history of unsavory, inhumane policies. And while this doesn't always translate into hypocrisy, it does reflect a certain lack of vigor and commitment. Again, I don't mean to disparage or criticize and I certainly don't want to give the impression that the wonderful things we do as a community are somehow irrelevant. Tufts students are, thankfully, more involved than the average college student. But we have lost the nerve to do what it takes to effect real change. We have forgotten that we even have the power to do so.
Where are our protests? Where is our dedication? Why, for example, at a time of unrestrained greed and irresponsibility, are we not demanding to see where our endowment funds are invested, let alone demanding real answers and swift action from government officials who have barely lifted a finger to try and help millions of Americans? Why do we automatically make excuses and rationalize government decisions such as fighting two wars on a bankrupt economy as millions are losing jobs at home? Why are we more likely to become civically involved by campaigning for, as Helen Keller said, "Tweedledum or Tweedledee" instead of fighting to prevent more house foreclosures or protesting against the unbelievably out-of-touch decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to grant corporations the right to give unlimited funding to political candidates?
Where is our voice?
It is a dangerous time indeed; trust in government is laughably low while at the same time, civic involvement to counteract its appalling unresponsiveness is sluggish as well. Real hope, real change, does not come through one man or one party. It comes from a unity of purpose combined with a dedication to see it through. And we should not be discouraged by starting small, for, as Zinn famously said, "small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world."
The people, you and I together, must speak! The people must take action! The time is ours.
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Amit Paz is a junior majoring in International Relations and political science.
