As the dream that was America crumbles before our eyes,  it is time to learn from our children

The past couple of years we have seen ongoing protests across the nation — from DREAMers taking over politicians’ offices to the recent Ferguson Die-ins. One of the salient aspects of these mobilizations against injustice is that not only are they populated with young people, they are led by the young. 

And we — the older generations presumably already giving shape to our nation — are being righteously schooled. It is time to learn from the young. 

Protesting the educational dystopia

This week, students at the University of Pennsylvania interrupted the university president’s holiday party with a Die-in. It was one of many Die-ins that have taken place in our city and nation in the past several weeks since a Ferguson Grand Jury decided not to indict Officer Darren Wilson for the shooting death of unarmed Black teenager Michael Brown. 

UPenn President Amy Gutmann gamely joined in the Die-in and stretched out next to the protesting students. But that’s the easy part. Philadelphia isn’t Ferguson and so expressions of solidarity decrying racism in the outcome there cost us nothing. Thankfully, the young protesters at UPenn didn’t let Gutmann (and with her, the rest of us) off the hook. 

“Selective disinvestment in black and brown communities is racism,” says the Change.org petition the UPenn students have started. “Every day that Penn lobbies against PILOTs [Payments in Lieu of Taxes] it writes a new page in this country’s legacy of racial injustice.”

What that refers to is that the University of Pennsylvania — with its more than $9 billion dollar endowment the 11th wealthiest university in the nation according to the Public Accountability Initiative — as a non-profit organization pays $0 in local taxes. Which means $0 to public schools in a principally tax funded district that has seen itself forced to shut down schools, drastically cut staffing and beg extra money from state and city legislatures simply to keep some doors open. 

The University of Pennsylvania is not alone in this exemption: Drexel University, Temple University, St. Joseph’s University, La Salle, etc., all reap considerable benefits from their non-profit status.

PILOTs is strictly voluntary, and Gutmann and other university administrators — in an oddly mission-opposing way — are barely contributing. 

UPenn was established by Quakers, a religion that has a long and active tradition of upholding social justice. St. Joseph’s and La Salle are Catholic schools with a similar call to work for social justice. Drexel was established by the very Catholic family of Philadelphia’s Saint Katharine Drexel, who showed a special interest in underserved African American communities. And Temple University was founded by a minister who saw how lack of access to education entrenched a system of haves and have-nots, and so set up a college specifically to serve factory workers, poor laborers and  immigrants who could only go to school at night after putting in a full day of work. 

What boggles the mind is that these are the institutions refusing to voluntarily put money into the school system of a city with a 29 percent poverty rate; the “poorest big city in America ... with the highest rate of deep poverty — people with incomes below half of the poverty line — of any of the nation’s 10 most populous cities.” (Philadelphia Inquirer, Sept. 26, 2014) 

Young people are clearly smarter than we are — or have watched more movies and read more books that outline dystopias wherein pockets of livability are surrounded by a general population made socially immobile by lack of education and poverty. While we’re generating excuses for stakeholders seeking to sidestep the common good (we’ve got to support our eds and meds! they’re a draw for tourism! they improve the neighborhood they’re in!) the young are all up in our faces, telling it as it really is. Opportunity begins by investing in education in every neighborhood, not just University City and other Penntrifying sections of the city.

Impunity is a hallmark of dystopia

The Die-ins at universities, transit hubs and sporting events are all centered around 4.5 minutes of laying on the ground — symbolizing the 4.5 hours Michael Brown’s body was left lying on a Ferguson street.  

While some dispute the specifics of what happened in Ferguson, what is undeniable is that a member of a group we’ve given huge and virtually unchecked authority to — the police — killed an unarmed young Black man. As police do so frequently that from 2010 - 2012, according to a report released by ProPublica, the rate of deadly police shootings of Black men between the ages of 15 and 19 was 31.17 per million. That’s astronomical ...  more than one young white man in the same age group would have to be killed PER WEEK to attain the same rate.

And since it’s the young people marching in the streets  that are teaching us about how far we’ve let things tip into the realm of dystopia...

Ursula Le Guin, an acclaimed writer of fictional dystopias, addressed the students of Bryn Mawr with these words in 1986. (We’ve swapped out where she specified “women” to young people, because we see the young — particularly those of color — as the agents of change today): 

“...when young people speak truly they speak subversively — they can’t help it: if you’re underneath, if you’re kept down, you break out, you subvert. We are volcanoes. When young people offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains ... You young Mount St. Helenses who don’t know the power in you — I want to hear you.”

And the rest of us? We need to listen.