29/09/2021
TODAY’S YOUTH are eager to engage in politics, provided that it entails sleeping in trenches, standing on top of the table, grabbing by the throat those in authority, toting clever banners, chanting something scandalous and posting it on social media next to a trending hashtag.
This is excellent. Participating in protest movements is a good thing. Protests are identity-defining activities, allowing one to integrate politics into the most important emotional activity of early adulthood: creating one’s social persona. Since all politics is to some extent identity politics, this is a great way to mobilise people.
Yet at the risk of sounding like a harrumphing gramps, it is important to point out that in politics, political movement protests are a sideshow, not the main event. Participation in protest movements have now proved the risks of becoming a substitute for engagement in party politics.
Marching is great—but letting it crowd out more substantive forms of political activity is not.
Today’s popular movements, from the KY movement and SUUBI and T.J (Solida), the People’s government and People Power that followed 2021 election, have been extremely successful at mobilising supporters and gaining media attention. But are they producing the change we or they seek??
