Hope in Our Youth?

It's become cliche . . . the aging "revolutionary" that never did more than sit around and complain about the "man" looking wistfully upon the youth and wondering what the fuck is wrong with them.  Revolution is supposed to be a young person's game, but the elders don't see much hope in today's youth . . . they seem to have bought in to America's culture of materialism.

The problem with this attitude is that invariably the youth revolution is centered on the bourgeois youth rebellion.  I'm all for that - the bourgeois youth should be fighting to destroy their own class interests in the name of the revolution (hell, look at me).  But the center of revolutionary power can't be in a group of privileged youth . . . it necessarily must be located in the ranks of the proletariate.  Admittedly, a quick look there doesn't appear to show much, but actually, fearless reader, I have a glimmer, a ray of hope.

To be somewhat contradictory, it's because I am a teacher and I feel this gives me a particular vantage point.  I teach the children of the American urban proletariat and they appear to have a glimmer of hope, which then, makes me hopeful.  I'm not sure I can explain it, but my students, on the whole, seem to be thinking about life and society differently than I am used to (it's been a decade).  There is a consciousness that is growing . . . not so much about the situation (they know that only too well), but about the possibilities of change.  Maybe it was Obama's election.  Maybe the frustrations and the failures of the previous generations are being forgotten (this is what I attribute as the cause of the cyclical nature of revolutionary action).  Maybe it's just time.

I hope so.