The Problems of a Young People’s Movement

licensed from adobe stock

Recently, there’s been a lot of attention being paid to a group of high school students who were survivors of a horrific gun attack in Florida. While they’re not the first students to suffer from such a crappy situation, what made this tragedy even more significant was that the students didn’t remain the backdrop of the event but have now taken front stage and are literally the movement itself.

This has resulted in a number of unexpected outcomes. First, the “usual” response of “this isn’t the time” to discuss gun violence was completely drowned out by the survivors themselves who refused to allow pro-NRA pundits to dictate the terms of the conversation. And the opposite side, the political operatives who have been screaming into the wind for decades about gun violence, were also taken a bit by surprise because as much as they have wanted to do so, they’re not dictating the message but having to listen alongside everyone else who is seeing this dynamic group of young people demand and focus attention.

And this is part of the problem that I fear because as Mancur Olson pointed out in “The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups” (1965) and reinforced by Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward in “Poor People’s Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail” (1977), getting a movement started is a lot easier than sustaining one…