Generation Y Puts a New Face on the Peace Movement

Friday, July 07 2006 @ 01:19 PM UTC

Contributed by: Admin

New Market, TN – As the death toll of US troops in Iraq tops 2,500, and the nation turns 230, a diverse gathering of Americans under 30 will gather to strategize about building their generations’ movement to end the war in Iraq at the historic Highlander Center in rural Tennessee. Generation Y Puts a New Face on the Peace Movement

For Immediate Release

CONTACTS:

Katie Joaquin, smartMeme STORY Program (Oakland, CA)
<mailto:Katie@smartmeme.com>Katie@smartmeme.com, 415.255.9133

Doyle Canning, smartMeme STORY Program (Burlington, VT)
<mailto:doyle@smartmeme.com>doyle@smartmeme.com 802.860.1155

Lovella Calica, Iraq Veterans Against War (Philadelphia, PA)
<mailto:lovellacalica@yahoo.com>lovellacalica@yahoo.com, 989.621.1934

Generation Y Puts a New Face on the Peace Movement
Youth Anti-war Organizers & Young Iraq Vets Talk Strategy On Ending The War

New Market, TN – As the death toll of US troops in Iraq tops 2,500, and the nation turns 230, a diverse gathering of Americans under 30 will gather to strategize about building their generations’ movement to end the war in Iraq at the historic Highlander Center in rural Tennessee.

From July 7-9, young members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, student peace activists, and youth leaders from across the nation will meet together at the historic Highlander Center, site of key leadership gatherings of the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and 60s. Representing more than 20 key progressive youth organizations, participants in the “STORY Collaborative to End the War” are working to redefine what their “peace movement” looks like. Building diverse alliances led by youth and young Veterans, these savvy young activists are using new media, digital story telling, and cultural strategies to send their peace message.

“Young people today are up against some major challenges, including putting an end to this illegal war that is morally and fiscally bankrupting our country, and impacting our entire generation,” said Katie Joaquin, an organizer of the STORY Collaborative from Oakland, CA. “We are converging at Highlander to share our stories – from personal accounts of Fallujah to kicking Army recruiters off our campuses - and, as young people who are inheriting the ‘war on terror’, we are strategizing about how to build a real future of peace and justice.”

The STORY Collaborative is a partnership of Iraq Veterans Against the War, the War Resisters League, and the Student Farmworker Alliance, convened by the STORY program (Strategy, Training and Organizing Resources for Youth) at smartMemea progressive multi-issue strategy organization. This unique alliance has tapped into diverse youth based constituencies from coast to coast and is using new communications strategies to organize the next generation of the peace movement. Participants are coming from California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, North Carolina, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, New York, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Puerto Rico.

Through digital story telling strategies, and using personal media tools like ipods, myspace, and cell phone camcorders, STORY Collaborative participants are documenting their experiences on the y(our) story online blog pages at changingthestory.org/iraq. As the collaborative convenes, youth and young veterans will be using this web space to continue their dialogue and share their insights and stories with their peers.

“We are the echo-boom, Millennial generation and we are online, networked, and have a lot to say about the atrocity that is the war in Iraq,” said Stephen Funk, a young Conscientious Objector from San Francisco. “We are students, war resisters, veterans, artists, visionaries, media makers, bloggers, bike riders, baristas, and storytellers. We are part of military families. We are part of Immigrant families. We are the new face of the peace movement and we are getting together to, talk strategy, share our stories, make music, create and collaborate to end the war in Iraq.”

The STORY Collaborative to End the War strategy retreat runs July 7-9, 2006. More information at: <http://www.changingthestory.org/iraq>www.changingthestory.org/iraq . To give: <http://www.smartmeme.com>www.smartmeme.com .

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War Resisters League
339 Lafayette St.
New York, NY 10012
212-228-0450
www.warresisters.org
wrl@warresisters.org

Generation Y Puts a New Face on the Peace Movement | 11 comments | Create New Account

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Authored by: angelofthefallen on Friday, July 07 2006 @ 04:25 PM UTC

You know, I really hate the term generation Y.
Generation X was given that title because they for th emost part, as a generation didn't really do anything (aside from the quickly belly up .com boom of the 90's). Gen Y had the name before the oldest in the generation were even in college, and only had the name because they were after X. There was another name for the generation bandied about for a while, and it is much more fitting, and that is the Net Generation. It makes a crapload more sense, gen y was the first group to grow up with computers and the internet surrounding them.

Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, July 07 2006 @ 06:15 PM UTC

The term "Generation X" had nothing to do with what that generation did, and the dot.com boom didn't take place until seven to nine years after the term "Generation X" became popular.

"Generation X" was popularized first in a novel by Douglas Coupland in 1991, then in a nonfiction book called 13th Gen. The term came from the idea that people born in this particular age period (roughly 1960 to 1981) had to deal with the mess that was left in the wake of the '60s generation, which included declining expectations all around, as well as the big shadow cast by the prior generation, which loved to leave the world with the feeling that they were the last generation that mattered (although most of the well-publicized aspirations of the '60s generation had proved a failure, because so many people had either sold out or bottomed out (depending on which class they were in or wound up in)).

The "X" in "Generation X" probably referred to the fact that this generation was left kind of blank in the wake of the hoopla over the '60s gen. In that way, the term is also reminiscent of Richard Hell's "Blank Generation," which was really the first true punk rock anthem. Of course, it also reminds one of the British pop-punk band Generation X. (Though curiously, all of these rock performers are several years older than Generation X.) In both cases, and in much of the punk rock movement - the first cultural/musical movement of Generation X - the focus was on how to create a meaningful, effective, or at the very least visible/audible youth movement when the loudest and possibly most numerous group of "rebellious" youths in modern history had packed their bags and left, taking their whole over-inflated promise of a new future with them.

Actually, the end of the '60s probably also marked the end of so much emphasis on youth being the vanguard of rebellion or revolution (although there seemed to be some revival of this notion in the late '90s within the anarcho and anti-glob protest crowds). Probably, people should have given up trying to lend any significance to the idea of a "new generation" before all the vultures of the advertising industry swooped down (which didn't take very long).

RS (born October 1961)

l

Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, July 07 2006 @ 07:42 PM UTC

I think the boudary is a bit different than that, the people who are the offspring of the baby boomers are the succeeding generation. Since the first baby boomers were born in 1945 unless someone's parents bave birth at 15 I don't think that would place them in that generation. The bulk of said generation would have birthdates between the late 60's and the mid 80's. I hesitate to say generation x or y because they seem much more like media slogans. When people hear "Generation X" things that most come to mind are Friends, Starbuck, and grunge music. BTW 1981

Authored by: Admin on Friday, July 07 2006 @ 11:38 PM UTC

Generation X started in 1965, perhaps in the second half of 1964.. I should know because I was born in 1965. I was born during the baby bust year and had to experience the demographic effects throughout my school years, if not most of my life. All of the classes older than mine were always bigger. When I got older and entered the work world, I got to deal with the aftereffects of being a Gen X elder. Jobs were harder to find and pay was depressed because employers had so many Baby Boomers to choose from. When I worked at a theme park in my early 20s, they actually had to raise pay rates because they couldn't find enough young people to do the work.

Chuck

Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, July 08 2006 @ 12:45 AM UTC

No, Chuck, once again, "Generation X" was not completely a reference to a change in demographics. The economic/cultural change preceded the official end of the baby boom. (Once again, I suggest a review of the very accurate Wikipedia article or the original couple of books on the matter.)

I remember reading about the term when it was first popularized, when those books first came out. I looked at the specifics in one of the books - I'm pretty sure now it was 13th Gen - and thought to myself, hmm, I'm just several months into this thing called Generation X. But it made a lot of sense to me, because I knew some conditions were very different for me from what they had been for all those people who'd been at the peak of the baby boom.

I got out of college during the Reagan Recession. And all through my adolescence, I'd been experiencing the decline and malaise of the '70s. I knew that I was part of a generation that would not be as well off as the one(s) that had preceded it.

That was the experience that welcomed a true elder in Generation X. :).

Richard

Authored by: Admin on Saturday, July 08 2006 @ 07:19 AM UTC

I really don't care what Wikipedia says, the change in generations happened in 1965. That's the year of the demographic change in generations. I've read plenty of articles about this demographic boundary over the years, because people born during 1965 had a fundamentally different experience than people born during the tail end of the Baby Boomers, such as yourself. Almost every article I've ever read about this subject points to 1964/1965 as the start of "Generation X." People born during the tail end of the baby boom during the early 1960s have experienced similar things as the older Gen Xers, but again, these people were born during the boom years.

I read the Coupland book when it first came out. It was pretty good.

Chuck

Authored by: Admin on Saturday, July 08 2006 @ 07:26 AM UTC

Having said that, I'll admit that the generational boundaries during the 1960s are fuzzy. People have pinpointed the start of Gen X as 1964-1965-1966, with some arguing that it started earlier and some that it started later in the 1960. I know that the birth rate reached its nadir in 1965.

My own take is that Gen X started in August 1964. That was the month that the "assassination" babies were being born 9 months after the JFK assassination. One of our Infoshop volunteers is an assassination baby. I think that this month is a good dividing line for the generations because the JFK assassination was such a pivotal cultural event in the U.S.

Chuck

Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, July 08 2006 @ 08:55 PM UTC

is 1964-1965-1966 or before or after really pinpointing?

Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, July 08 2006 @ 06:06 AM UTC

Once again, the ethnocentric and racist attitudes of so-called progressives becomes clear. It's not "OUR" peace movement. There are resistances all over the world to U.S. imperialism that are much more effective than our little protests here at home. Also, the "historic" civil rights movement was won by people who had much more radical aspirations (even MLK was let down by the results, and, especially in his last two years, began talking about revolution.) Stupid libs taking credit for the work of militant radicals who have putting their lives on the line and watering down their messages after they're dead...grumble grumble....

Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, July 12 2006 @ 06:09 AM UTC

"Once again, the ethnocentric and racist attitudes of so-called progressives becomes clear. It's not "OUR" peace movement. There are resistances all over the world to U.S. imperialism that are much more effective than our little protests here at home. Also, the "historic" civil rights movement was won by people who had much more radical aspirations (even MLK was let down by the results, and, especially in his last two years, began talking about revolution.) Stupid libs taking credit for the work of militant radicals who have putting their lives on the line and watering down their messages after they're dead...grumble grumble...."

Actually, it is "our" peace movement as much as anyone elses taking an active part
For the life of me i don't see your point. The Iragi vets and the SFA kids have been doing the front line work. the WRL are far from being "stupid libs", and in fact welcome and include anarchists, so your rant, while well written is misaimed.

Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, July 08 2006 @ 07:05 PM UTC

At one piont Generation Y were called the Baby Busters or Echo-Boom

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