#the repercussions of the 2016 elections are going to haunt us for the rest of our lives

[centaurianthropology]

I very much hope that the six supreme court justices that voted to allow businesses to discriminate against LGBT people--despite the original complaint being completely fabricated--get treated to a lifetime of businesses discriminating against them.  I hope that every time one of them walks into a restaurant or requests a service, they are told that they have to leave because “we don’t serve your kind here”.  

It’s only fair for those fucking ghouls to reap what they sow.

[for-your-therapeutic-smile]

They Never Teach You How to Stop

Rarely do I lack the words to express myself. Perhaps this reflects my failure to maintain my journal consistently throughout 2020. Here goes an honest attempt to capture and document my mental state and the fatigue of Covid, the inertia of this shelter-in-place, the anxiety of this political crisis we face as a nation, the pressure of being a 1L in law school against the backdrop of civil unrest and Justice Ginsburg’s death, coming out - my dad told me he was disappointed -, the possible erosion of my relationship with someone I love, and this feeling of absolute dread and resentment for a system that continuously fails my and future generations (robbing us of a social contract that promised life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness), among many other things I’m too tired to consider. When did we accept a $0 baseline as the American Dream? Oh, to be debt free - free from this punishment for having pursued an education. Stifling the educated to prevent them (myself included) from organizing and mobilizing the masses so we can supplant this system with a better one is the overall objective of the oppressive class (read: Pedagogy of the Oppressed); it’s the conflict between the bourgeois and the proletariat. The proletariat has swallowed the middle class, leaving only the ruling class. I am essentially on autopilot, forcing myself to go through the motions so I can survive another day. I know others join me in this mental gymnastics of unparalleled proportions, one social scientists and medical researchers will soon study and subsequently publish their findings in an attempt to explain the unexplainable. Despite a lack of air circulation, we are breathing history; the constitution, like our societal norms, must adapt accordingly. Judge Barrett: there is no place for originalism. While I seldom admit weakness or an inability to manage life’s curveballs, this series of unfortunate events seems almost too much to bear. 

And yet somehow I continue to find the energy to submit assignments due at 11:59 p.m., write this post at 1:38 a.m., “sleep”, wake at 7 a.m. so I can read and prepare (last minute!) the assigned material leading into my torts or contracts class. I find the energy to text my boyfriend (or ex-boyfriend) so I can attempt to salvage the real and genuine connection we have, cook elaborate meals to find some solace, wrestle with whether or not to hit my yoga mat (I don’t), apply to a fellowship for the school year and summer internships, prepare my dual citizenship paperwork, manage a campaign for two progressive politicians, and listen to music in an attempt to stay sane . . . ~*Queues John Mayer’s “War of My Life” and “Stop This Train”*~ . . . I realize I have to be kinder to myself, give credit where credit is due. I hate feeling self-congratulatory though.

Mostly, I am too afraid of the repercussions if I stop moving at a mile/minute, that I can just work away the pain and be the superhuman who numbs himself from the low-grade depression and nervous breakdown. My body tells me to slow down, as evidenced by the grinding of my teeth, but I take on more responsibility because people rely on me. I must show up. I am a masochist in that way. This is what I signed up for and I’ll be damned if I don’t carry through on my promise to do the work. Pieces of my soul scattered about like Horcruxes, though they’re pure, not evil, so I hope nobody resolves to destroy them. 

My mind rarely rests. It’s 3:08 a.m., one of the lonelier hours where night meets morning; it’s the hour for and of intense introspection. It makes you consider pulling an all-nighter, one you reserve for an “important” school or work deadline. We always put our personal lives on the back-burner. 3 a.m. sets the tone for a potentially awful day. But that doesn’t matter right now. I’m letting some of my favorite albums play in the background: Joni Mitchell’s Blue, Mac Miller’s Circles, Rhye’s Blood, Alicia Keys’ ALICIA, Coldplay’s Ghost Stories, Frank Ocean’s Blonde, Miley Cyrus’ Dead Petz in addition to other playlists, Tiny Desk performances, and tracks (I unearthed last week, like When It’s Over by Sugar Ray). I need to feel something. I need to feel anything. I need to feel everything. We experience such a broad spectrum of emotions throughout the day that we lose track of if we don’t pause to absorb them. Music reinforces empathy; it releases dopamine.

I spent the past two hours reading through old journals and posts, as scattered as they were, on a wide range of topics: poems I had written about falling in and out love, anecdotes about my world travels, and entries on personal, political, and professional epiphanies. The other night I found one of my favorites, a previous post from my time living in Indonesia, centering on the dualities of technology. It resonated with me more than the others. To summarize, I wrote about my tendency to equate the Internet with a sense of interconnectedness (shoutout to Tumblr for being my digital journal; to Twitter for being a place of comedy and revolution; to Instagram for curating my *aesthetic*; to Facebook where I track my family’s accomplishments and connect with travel buddies displaced around the globe all searching for a home). And yet I feel incredibly lonely and disconnected whenever I spend too much time using technology, so much so that I set screen time limitations on my phone recently to curtail this obsession with constant communication and information gathering. Trump and Biden admitted that it’s unlikely we’ll know the results of the election on November 3rd during their first presidential debate. Push notifications don’t allow us to learn of trauma within the comforts of our own homes. I’m already fearing where I will be when that news breaks. 

This global pandemic and indefinite shutdown of the world (economy) undeniably exacerbates these feelings. This is some personal and collective turmoil. But I was complicit in the endless scrolling and swiping of faces and places long before Covid-19. Instead of choosing to interact with my direct environment (today’s research links this behavior to the same levels of depression one feels when they play slot machines), I am still an active on all these platforms, participating the least in the most tangible one: my physical life. I am tired of pretending. I am tired of being tired. I am tired of embodying fake energy to exist in systems that fail me. I am tired of the quagmire. Like Anaïs Nin, I must be a mermaid [because] I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living. This particular excerpt from that 2016 entry was difficult for me to read: “The fantasy of what could have been if a certain plan had unfolded will haunt you forever if you do not come to peace with the reality of the situation. I hope you come to terms with reality.” I am not at peace with my current reality. But is anyone?

It’s a bit surreal for my peers to have suddenly started caring about international relations theory. It’s transported me back to my 2012 IR lecture at Northeastern: are you a constructivist or a feminist? Realist or liberalist? Neo? Marxist? The one no one wants you to talk about. Absent upward mobility, this is class warfare. But I cannot be “a singular expression of myself . . . there are too many parts, too many spaces, too many manifestations, too many lines, too many curves, too many troubles, too many journeys, too many mountains, too many rivers” . . . It feels like America’s wake-up call. But I know people will retreat into the comforts of capitalism if Biden wins and, well, we all enter uncharted waters together if the Electoral College re-elects #45. For those who weren’t paying attention: the world is multipolar and we are not the hegemon. Norms matter. People tend to be self-interested and shortsighted. Look to the past in order to understand the future. History, as the old adage goes, repeats itself. Once a cheater, always a cheater. Taxation without representation. Indoctrination. Welcome to the language of political discourse. Students of IR and polisci have long awaited your participation. Too little too late? Plot twist: it’s a lifelong commitment. You must continue to engage irrespective of the election outcome or else we will regress just as quickly as we progress. Now dive into international human rights treaties (International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights; International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights), political refugees, FGM. No one said it wasn’t dismal. But it’s important. We need buy-in.  

While I am grateful for the continuation of my education, for this extended time with family, for this opportunity to be a campaign manager for two local progressive candidates (driving to Boston to pick up revised yard signs as proof that the work never stops), it would be remiss of me, however, not to admit that I am lonely: I am buried in my books, in the depressing news both nationally and globally, and in precedent-setting Supreme Court cases (sometimes for the worst, e.g. against the preservation of our environment). In my nonexistent free time I work on political asylum cases, essentially creating an enforceability framework of international law, for people fleeing country conditions so unthinkable (the irony of that work when my country falls greater into authoritarianism and oligarchy is not lost on me). I am fulfilling my dream of becoming a human rights lawyer which stems back to middle school. I saw Things I Imagined (thank you Solange). I have held an original copy of the Declaration of Independence that we sent to the House of Lords in 1778 and the Human Rights Act of 1998 while visiting the U.K. Parliamentary Archives as an intern for a Member of Parliament. This success terrifies and exhausts me; it also oxygenizes and saves me. Every decision, every sacrifice, has led me to this point. 

“It’s the choosing that’s important, isn’t it?,” Lois Lowry of The Giver rhetorically asks. This post is not intended to be woe is me! I am fortunate to be in this position, to have this vantage point at such an early age, and I understand the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. My life has purpose. I am committed to the work that transcends boundaries; it is larger than life itself. It provides a unique perspective. But it makes it difficult to coexist with people so preoccupied in the drama they create in their lives and the general shallowness of the world we live. It feels like there is no option to pump the brakes on any of this work, especially in light of our current climate, and that pressure oftentimes feels insurmountable. Time is of the essence. It feels, whether true or not, that hardly anyone relates to my experience, so if I don’t carve out this time to write about it, then I am neither recording nor processing it. 

Tonight, in between preparing tomorrow’s coursework, I realize that I have an unprecedented number of questions about life, which startles me because typically I have the answers or at least have a goal in mind that launches me into the next phase of life or contextualizes the current one. These goals, often rooted in this capitalistic framework, in this falsity of “needing” to advance my career as a means of helping people, distract me from asking myself the existential questions, the reasons for why we live and what we fundamentally want our systems to look like; they have distracted me from real grassroots community organizing until now. They distract me from the fact that, like John Mayer, I don’t know which walls to smash; similarly, I don’t know which train to board. Right now feels like we are living through impossible and hopeless times and I don’t want to placate myself into thinking otherwise despite my relatively optimistic outlook on life. As we face catastrophic circumstances – the consequences of this election and climate change (famine, refugees, lack of resources) – I do not want to live in perpetual sadness. I am searching for clarity and direction so I can step into a better, fuller version of myself. 

It’s now 3:33 a.m. Here is the list of questions that I have often asked myself in different stages of life, but recently, until now, I have not been willing to confront for fear that I might not be able to answers them. But I owe it to myself to pose them here so I can have the overdue conversation, the one I know leads me to better understanding myself:

Are you happy? Why or why not?

What do you want the future to hold? What groundwork are you going to do to ensure it happens?

What does your ideal day/week/month/year/decade look like? Why?

With whom do you want to spend your days? Why?

Who do you love and care about? Have you told people you care about that you love them? Does love and vulnerability scare you?

What do you expect of people – of yourself, of your partner, of your family, and of your friends? Should you have those expectations? Why or why not?

What do you feel and why?

What relaxes you? What scares you? What brings you joy?

What do you want to improve? Why?

What do you want to forgive yourself for and why?

Does the desire to reinvent yourself diminish your ability to be present?

Do you have a greater fear of failure or success? Why?

How do you escape the confines of this broken system? How do you break from the guilt of participation in it and having benefited from it?

How do we reconcile our daily lives with the fact that we’re living through an extinction event? This one comes from my friend (hi Jeanne) and a podcast she listened to recently.

How do you help people? How do you help yourself? Are you pouring from an empty cup?

How will you find joy in your everyday responsibilities, in the mission you have chosen for yourself? What, if any, will be the warning signs to walk away from this work, in part or in its entirety? Without being a martyr, do you believe in dying for the cause?

So here are some of the lessons I have learned during this quarantine/past year:

“I’ve Got Dreams to Remember,” so do not take your eyes off them. Chasing paper does not bring you happiness.

Be autonomous, particularly in your professional life.

Focus on values instead of accolades.

Do everything with intention and honest energy.

Listen to Tracy Chapman’s “Crossroads” & Talkin’ Bout a Revolution for an energy boost and reminder that other revolutionaries have shared and continue to share your fervent passion . . . “I’m trying to protect what I keep inside, all the reasons why I live my life” . . . When self-doubt nearly cripples you and you yearn a few minutes to run away when in reality you can’t escape your responsibilities, go for a drive and queue up “Fast Car” . . . “I got no plans, I ain’t going nowhere, so take your fast car and keep on driving.”

With that said, take every opportunity to travel (you can take the work with you if absolutely necessary). Go to Italy. Buy the concert ticket and lose yourself in the moment. Remember that solo excursions are equally as important as collective ones. But, from personal experience, you prefer the company. Find the balance.

Detach from the numbers people keep trying to assign to measure your personhood.

Closely examine the people in your inner circle and ask them for help when you need it.

“And life is just too short to keep playing the game . . . because if you really want somebody [or something], you’ll figure it out later, or else you will just spend the rest of the night with a BlackBerry on your chest hoping it goes *vibration, vibration*” (John Mayer’s Edge of Desire) . . . so love fiercely and unapologetically.

Be specific.

Go to therapy even when life is good.

[nadiawrites14]

voice of gen z

word count: 2784

for english class. tw for school shooting and police brutality mention

AN INTRODUCTION.

“GEN Z is too afraid to ask a waiter for extra ketchup but will bodyslam a cop.”

Dated June 5th, on Twitter. Many of us sit holed up in our rooms, laptops resting in our crossed legs as we scroll through social media, or the blue light of a phone screen on our face as the world around us is sleeping. Many of us are also the ones organizing, the ones leading, the ones fighting. News spreads that in Dallas, Providence, and in many more cities, teenagers were the ones organizing, the ones fighting. Teenagers were the ones turning viral memes into protest signs, organizing protests and sharing methods of resistance through apps like TikTok and Instagram. It echoes the methods of the Hong Kong protestors, using technology to battle their government head-on. 

Teenagers who dance along to songs such as Megan Thee Stallion’s “Savage”, as well as teens who live in the world of ‘deep-fried’ memes, whose bizarre absurdity reach ungodly levels of abstractism, are the ones leading in this young revolution. Teenagers are the ones who chant ‘no justice, no peace’ in filled city streets; teenagers are the ones working to create graphics and share information, a new form of armchair activism. K-pop fans fill conservative hashtags with videos of their favorite performers, burying rhetoric and dismissal of the protests with dances and songs. In hours, #BlackLivesMatter trends. It’s hard to believe that these new pioneers and leaders in activism and technology are children who are scared to give class presentations, share Juuls in bathrooms, and find humor in the most strange and ironic of places. While the old term goes that ‘the revolution will not be televised’ in many ways, this growing movement will be televised, publicized, expanded, through its own means and methods.

I.

We are the generation of school shootings. 

December 14th, 2012. My mom tells me, as I hobble out from the red doors of my elementary school in Stamford, Connecticut, that something very bad has happened. I don’t understand. Nobody does. I see the faces of startled adults. I don’t remember the rest of that evening, or the day that followed it. Every time I think about Sandy Hook, the senseless school shooting that left 28 dead, I think about the multicolored walls of my school’s hallway, my sneakers on the white linoleum, the fear in my mother’s voice and in her eyes. That day was the first day I began to accept that I was a child in the United States of America in the 21st century. That day, and the brutal and confusing months that followed it, solidified something in my peers and I. Not just in Stamford, or even Connecticut, but within all young American students. The people in power didn’t care that a gunman marched into a wealthy and predominantly white Connecticut neighborhood and slaughtered kindergarteners. Because as I grew older, I saw the patterns, the televisation of suffering and permitted slaughter among my peers, our youngest, our posterity. This was normalized to us, just another school shooting, another period of brief outrage followed by inaction. The slaughter of children, the preventable slaughter of children shouldn’t be normalized. But it was.

February 14th, 2018. A gunman kills 17 students in Florida. As I’m waiting in a doctor’s waiting room with my mother, I lean over and tell her, “On Monday, all my teachers will talk about is school shootings.” I was wrong. School was another silent funeral march, my teachers quiet and solemn as they assigned us our work and progressed with their work. At dinner with my dad, I tell him, “It’ll never change.”

That isn’t entirely true. Leaders are found in teenagers who now walk through haunted hallways with clear backpacks. They are the face of a new movement, a march for our lives. Many are summoned to Washington and elsewhere a month later to organize, to fight. On March 27th, a day meant for students to walkout and protest the preventable slaughter of students, my school barricades the doors.

No legislation is passed. Nothing changes. The resistance lulls and fades, despite a number of school shootings following the tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Gen Z is a symbolic Sisyphus, haplessly pushing a boulder of pleas up a mountain of indifference.

II.

Suzanne Collins published the Hunger Games on September 14th, 2008. It finds its way into the hands of teenagers of all shapes and sizes years later, and it has its cult following. Maybe the televised murder of children strikes a chord within the audience of young adults, as does the story of a growing revolution and a coup against a selfish government.

Gen Z gets its hands on theory at a young age, through Wikipedia and the uncensored vastness of the internet that we are handed. We are denoted as the generation born with the phones in our hands, but all I can remember is having a technology class from a young age, where we were measured on our abilities to type and memorize a keyboard. Our ability to cite and surf and stay safe in the face of danger. This wealth of information at our fingertips molds us.

Dystopian fiction is popular among young teens and young adults. Titles like Divergent the Giver, Harry Potter, the Maze Runner, all influence the devouring young readers. We are raised to see atrocity, in a place where atrocity is accessible to us in every way, shape and form. We are exposed and we are no longer innocent as we rise to 6th, 7th, 8th grade. Girls wear makeup for the first time and scream at the sight of bloodstained underwear. Boys become privy to the joy of video games and self-exploration. In this time, the internet truly consumes. There is no more script taught in classrooms, whiteboards have been replaced with Prometheans, and chromebooks are becoming normalcy.  

In 7th grade I receive my phone. The niches and underground media I discover shape me. I find acceptance, friends, in places where I had lacked them before. As my classmates begin to enter into weeklong flings that end in Instagrammed tragedy, I take a quiz online to find out if I’m gay. I begin to think for myself, and I find independence and a voice on internet circles.

By the time we are promoted to high school, something has shifted. Something is different. Something’s coming, something good. Gen Z keeps calm and carries on.

III.

Donald Trump is inaugurated on January 20th, 2017, to much outrage, but also to much support. In my town, there is a protest around his building that overlooks much of our city center. It’s peaceful, energetic, and beautiful. A Planned Parenthood sticker is on my bedroom door, and I have accepted that maybe, just maybe, I’m into girls.

In 2018, we are in high school. Little fish in a big pond. I don’t have friends in my grade, but stick closer to my premade friends in the Class of 2021. My teachers are lovely, kind, and supportive, and I shine in this new environment. Politics is a force in my life as I begin to write, and as I begin to form opinions and do research. 

It’s easy to say that all of Gen Z is progressive, but this isn’t true. It’s actually very incorrect. The internet is a miraculous tool, one that can provide and produce and create new forms of communication and spread new ideas. But it is still an ocean that is widely uncharted, and young teenagers will fall into holes constructed by right-wing superstars. The racism and homophobia circulated by 4chan is on the internet for anybody to see. New popular figures and icons pledge their vote to Trump. Right-wing rhetoric overtakes in the forms of Ben Shapiro, Pewdiepie, 4chan, Reddit. There’s a neutrality to all things, but the dogwhistles and the normalization of prejudice are dangerously overbearing. As the 2016 election divided our country, it divides the new generation. A divided house cannot stand, and that is for certain. 

It is around this time, in my Freshman summer, where the politics makes a crescendo. I have broken 1K followers on my Instagram art account, where I draw fanart for a variety of musicals and plays. I discover Shakespeare, and lose myself in Hamlet. I am happy with my identity and with myself, and as the 2020 election nears, I stay informed on current events, common issues, the things that need changing.

Sophomore winter. My dad and I take two-hour drives spanning Connecticut, and we talk. He says, “You know, your generation’s fucked. You’re the ones who are going to have to cope with our mistakes.” I tell him I know. I tell him about my feelings towards racial injustice in America, the battle for a higher minimum wage against growing costs, issues in healthcare, housing, poverty, climate change, all thrown aside and discarded. Our generation, of course, when most of our white and male politicians are dead and buried, will have to deal with the repercussions of rising sea levels and global temperatures, volatile weather and crippling natural disasters, all overlooked due to blatant ignorance. “You guys are going to have to fix all of this.”

“I know.”

I’m sick of the battle being placed on the backs of teenagers. I’m sick of our faces being the fight for climate change, the faces of Greta Thunberg and Emma Gonzalez and young revolutionary congresswomen being mocked and heckled by throngs of keyboard warriors. I’m sick of the battle our leaders and representatives should be fighting being placed on our backs, when we are already our own Atlas. Ignorance is dangerous, biting, and overwhelming. We look back to the images and words we were raised upon, the story of the Hunger Games and the broadcasting of school shootings for us all to see. 

It is 2020. Happy new year! I watch from my living room as the ball drops. A brief Twitter moment about a newly discovered disease pops up in my recommended, I brush over it. Photographs of Australian fires are surfaced, and we joke about what a fantastic start it is to the year. 

Sisyphus reaches a fork in the road.

MMXX.

At around 11PM on Wednesday, March 11th, I send a strongly worded letter to the principal and local superintendent. The coronavirus has picked up worldwide, and has made its way into the states. Johns Hopkins has an interactive map that shows bubbles above cities where cases have been reported. Stamford, Connecticut Dead: 0

Recovered: 0 Active: 3.

New York’s cases are on the rise. On that same day, I began to realize the severity that would soon overtake us. I spent the afternoon first at what would be our last rehearsal for our school musical, James and the Giant Peach, and then I went to the library. I did my homework, read The Cripple of Inishmaan by Martin McDonagh, then bought a Subway cookie from the mall. I always keep a copy of King Lear in my backpack, and as my dad pulls up to the sidewalk I gloss over Edmund’s first monologue.

It’s the last normal day for a while.

March 12th comes in like a lion. In my first period class, civics, a classmate yells out, “Trump 2020!” A period later, my friend pulls me aside in the hallways, and asks if I heard that school was closing. 

“It can’t be true,” I said.

“Schadlich just showed us.”

I take my route to my next class, and find the hallway a chaotic mess of energy and camaraderie. What was meant to be kept under wraps has been instantly transferred across the student body over Snapchat stories and texts. People dance, sing, hug. It’s branded as a “Coronacation.” Broadway announces its closure, and I walk out of the front doors for the final time in my sophomore year.

Once again, ignorance overtakes. Within months, the death toll skyrockets, spikes, as we stay holed up in our online classes. My focus wavers, but I press on. Many other students resort to simply neglecting their work, choosing to take this time to focus on their own health or fill up their new time with their own hobbies. Teenagers find solace in each other, through social media and through the connections we’ve built online. As ignorance mounts among our leaders, teenagers jokingly refer to Covid-19 as the famous “Boomer Remover”. It trends on Twitter. Graduation, prom, is cancelled. The generation whose childhood began with 9/11 is once again cut short by a tragedy of preventable errors. Gen Z is subject to adapting once again to an unfamiliar environment, and we undertake.

Protests take over the streets, screaming against government tyranny. The deaths crescendo to nearly 100,000. A video surfaces of a young black man, Ahmaud Aubery, being publicly killed on a road while jogging. Ignorance continues as cases spike, and the political climate is ripe for change. On May 25th, a black man from Minneapolis named George Floyd is killed in a brutal act of suffocation by a policeman. More names resurface -- Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Joao Pedro. Names neglected to injustice are once again in the limelight -- Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, Eric Garner, Mike Brown, Terence Crutcher, Atatiana Jefferson, and more. 

Sisyphus has had enough of pushing the boulder, and Sisyphus takes to the streets. It is the perfect storm. A storm fueled by ignorance and the preventable death of thousands, by decades of injustice, by the mere political climate in the United States of America. Gen Z, our generation, my generation, has lived the darkest hour. We were born at the cusp of a millenia, in an awkward position where society has begun to find its footing in an unfamiliar time. A time of domestic and overseas terrorism, shaped by 9/11 and a countless number of school shootings and slaughtered people of color. Where the new generation has accessibility to the injustice and wrongs committed by those before and those above, right at our fingertips. We have new ways to organize, new ways to televise, new ways to fight. In our armchairs and in our streets, wearing masks as we hold up our hands in surrender.

Generation Z marches. They lead. They throw tear gas back at officers with no hesitation. They create chants, organize through grassroots, and find a chorus of support online. 

Generation Z leads. As politicians and leaders sit in ivory towers, like President Snow in Panem, our generation cries for change. We witness and feel the repercussions of their ignorance in our daily lives, from cuts to education to the publication of school shootings to the absence of American atrocity in our history textbooks to a pipeline that directs BIPOC and low-income students to prison or the military as they step off the graduation stage. Each year, our winters get warmer as our summers turn boiling. The preventable pile of corpses rises in front of us, and we have been taught to sit by and let it occur while the world burns. 

No longer.

Sisyphus steps aside and allows the boulder to descend down the mountain. They are bruised, bloodied, their palms calloused and scuffed and their feet lacerated and sore. Up ahead, shrouded by clouds, is the mountaintop. Sisyphus wipes their mouth, finds their footing, and begins the march.

A CONCLUSION.

We have a future.

It’s awfully dim right now. Barely a light at the end of the tunnel. We began a dead march towards it from the moment we were born into this decaying way of life, held together with glue and string by leaders with fumbling hands and staunch indifference. Our backs are tired, and we are barely adults. Generation Z is tired of fighting a fight that shouldn’t be theirs. How desperately we still crave childhood joy and humor and innocence. 

Change is necessary. It is something that is especially necessary in our time. We can no longer let people die because they can’t afford food or medicine or housing. Students cannot go into school wondering if it will be their last day. Black people should not fear for their lives while wearing a hoodie, driving, jogging in their neighborhood, shopping, or sleeping in their own homes. Elderly white men which encompass most of our political elite can no longer sit on their hands as their population suffers.

The voice of Generation Z screams louder than anything else. It screams in its silence, its activism, its useless martyrdom and battle. Change belies itself within our voice, and it has gone unheard for too long.

Change is the voice of Generation Z.