The Planet vs. the Prom

Long ago, when I started my job at the for-profit art college, I met a woman who was pregnant, and we have stayed friends.  That child that was in her womb is now a senior in high school.  He's been suspended for handing out fliers that informed students about a local rally on Friday to demand that government work on climate change issues.  This newspaper article will tell you more--it doesn't seem that my friend's son got any sort of warning or cease and desist request.

I wrote this FB comment:  "It seems like an overreaction to me--why not have E___ amend the fliers to say that the school isn't sponsoring the event and can't vouch for it--that way the school is covered in terms of lawsuits, and E___'s 1st amendment rights are protected, and everyone gets to go to prom (or pick up extra hours at work when everyone else goes to prom--oh, wait, that's my unremarkable high school prom memory)."

I thought about my own student days--for what would I have risked suspension? 

The big issues in those days were apartheid in South Africa, nuclear weapons proliferation, feminist issues, the threat of Communism, the risk of nuclear reactors, and various Latin American dictators that were repressive in different ways.  In high school, though, I didn't really do much politically, beyond fretting.

In college, I went to some protests and demonstrations.  I wrote letters.  I went to prayer vigils.  I know that my dad worried that I would do something radical that would affect his security clearance, but he needn't have.  I was a good girl at heart, too worried about my permanent record to blunder in that way.

Of course, many students make unanticipated blunders, leaving all sorts of wreckage in the wake.  But I didn't.

I have Baby Boomer friends who bemoan the lack of activism in students these days.  But they are likely remembering their own student days inaccurately.  Students--and older humans--have always been working on issues of social justice, in a wide variety of ways.

It will be interesting to see what happens on this day of protest and what happens next week, at the UN Climate Change Summit.  I have a vested interest in this issue, but then again, we all do.  I'll lose my house before many people are seriously impacted.  My floorboards are two feet above sea level. 

But the last decade has shown us that many more of us are likely to be seriously impacted than we first thought.  It's not just those of us on the coast.

I am heartened by the way that people are waking up.  I am always heartened when the numb become aware.  I believe that God delights too.