I found a Joshua Wong’s interview really interesting because of his age and the age participants in the movements he champions. Joshua Wong mentions how unusual it is for 13 year olds to be involved in strikes and direct action, and he’s right.
I think many people take for granted our generation’s ability to mobilize and be serious about social change. I often hear that we are simply “slacktivists”, who use social media as a crutch to not actually have to do the real work of acting for social change. Joshua Wong shows that this is not true. He highlights that social media plays an essential role in reaching out to and speaking the language of young generations, which I think is particularly powerful because at 13 and even 18 we still have so much of our lives ahead of us and we are being shaped by experiences more so than at any other point in our lives. By reaching people so young, activists cultivate an aware anti-authoritarian culture for the future.
Just a few days ago the President if Nigeria, Buhari, saidvthatbyoung Nigerians are lazy people who just want to use oil money and not do any work. This coming from a man that flunked out of secondary school and has not been a competent president by any stretch of the imagination. Undoubtedly, young Nigerians are extremely hard working- we have to be when our government does nothing to help us- and Africa is the youngest continent on the planet (has the most young people). Yet we have remained stagnant because of a circulation of old leaders with no new ideas, who don’t regard youth as being capable or worth listening to. Piety mean that youth are supposed to be seen and not heard.
For many of us, our frustration with the endless cycle of bad politicians, slow change and regressive politics has led to us checking out. BUt Young Africans have always found ways to protest and express their frustrations- through art and song and now social media such as Twitter. I’m interested in how Small Things Big Changes can help to amplify this, and make strategic direct action a major source of social change in Africa. If Buhari and other African leaders think we are lazy we’ll show them we’re not. Young Africans can hold politicians accountable and transform our societies by using the mediums, as Joshua Wong said, that they don’t understand, as a platform to push beyond the boundaries of the internet collective organizing against injustice.