by controlling the narrative around whether or not we made any progress

justcallmepoppy:

justcallmepoppy:

I disagree that Millenials were never able to gain traction in any movement. Occupy was a huge movement, marches drew thousands of people, there were camps in every major city in the US for months and some in smaller towns also.

The problem wasn’t traction, the problem was that we weren’t able to control the narrative because it was an issue that was easily dismissed by people who didn’t live in our world. It was easy for people to paint us as entitled whiners who wanted everything handed to us because they’ve never personally experienced having a job that doesn’t pay for a degree, and having a degree but not being able to get any job related to it and having to take five part-time minimum wage jobs just to barely get by. And those people who have struggled with money and being able to get a job just think, “Well I did what I had to to get by, why can’t you?”

The difference between this and something like Occupy is that this is something people can’t ignore as a matter of life and death. There’s no painting this as children whining about not being handed free money and high-ranking management jobs with no work. There’s no claiming “Well I got shot at in school and I was fine” because they fucking weren’t.

Also, just talking directly about Occupy, because that’s the one I know the most about since I got super personally invested in that one:

Just because the camps emptied and people aren’t carrying around “We are The 99%” signs as much any more doesn’t mean that the Occupy movement died, it just evolved, and it did actually make some really important strides and continues to have influence today.

Occupy brought police violence back into the mainstream conversation. Everyone remembers Pepper Spray Cop, right? Those students were Occupiers and that guy became the poster child for unnecessary force against the movement. Lots of Occupiers went on to throw their full-hearted support behind the Black Lives Matter movement partially because of the police violence they witnessed through Occupy, because it opened their eyes to just how disgusting the police force in this country truly is. (To be clear I’m talking about us white Occupiers specifically, who, had we not been following those multiple Twitter live-feeds of police raids and seeing all of the pictures coming out of things like Pepper Spray Cop, lets be honest, would have probably been on the same “Well [victim] must have done SOMETHING to deserve it #notallcops” side our brethren have been.)

Occupy started the conversation about raising the minimum wage. Part of the dialogue from the beginning was pointing out to critics that inflation and tuition increases are a thing and that a minimum wage job in the ‘70s could cover more tuition than a minimum wage job now can. People started actually looking at the numbers and seeing this huge discrepency and realizing that there aren’t just college students taking these jobs trying to pay for school, it’s adults just trying to live their lives and provide for their families.

Occupy also started the conversation about free secondary education, since it started in NYC and one of the college’s in the city had famously been free up until very recent to the start of Occupy. They not only started that argument, they were able to convince several schools to set up free tuition policies.

Basically everything you know about economic inequality in the US, the unfairness of college tuition and loans and minimum wage and unpaid internships is thanks to Occupy. The minimum wage getting raised and colleges starting to be held accountable for excessive tuition is thanks to Occupy.

Hell, Occupy basically write the rules of successful protesting in the 21st century. I haven’t been to a protest or demonstration since that hasn’t utilized techniques that Occupy solidified. Which isn’t to say that Occupy didn’t take techniques from the movements that came before it, but that’s the whole point. These movements don’t end they just evolve.

I just hate to see those people who essentially made themselves homeless to bring attention to the severe social inequality and the profound impact that it’s had on Millenials and younger generations be written off as a movement that “didn’t get any traction.”

And that’s to say nothing of the Black Lives Matter movement, which has ALSO been largely Millennials, and I genuinely welcome people more involved with it than I am to talk in-depth about how it’s brought police violence into painfully sharp focus in the mainstream, how the violence has been inordinately weighted against black people, and how the mainstream coverage of it tends to ignore black women and particularly trans women.

Like, how can people genuinely say that Millenial protest movements haven’t gained traction when the most high-profile movement in the past five years has been Black Lives Matter?

I don’t understand.

Don’t let the mainstream media color your image of what Millenials have been fighting for and how successful they’ve been. For the sake of everything we are fighting for, for the sake of the younger generations after us and after Generation Z, for the sake of their movements and their protests, for the sake of not fostering a culture of Millenials vs Generation Z.