Is Occupy Wall Street a Youth Movement?
Over at The New Inquiry, Malcolm Harris is taking a look at the dismal circumstances today’s young people find themselves in. Youth unemployment is at record levels. Youth arrest rates are skyrocketing even as youth crime plummets. College tuition is going through the roof, as is youth debt, and household incomes of youth-headed families are lagging far behind those of other age cohorts.
It’s ugly.
And that ugliness is the cause, Harris says, of Occupy Wall Street:
It isn’t a stretch to call the recent wave of American occupations a youth movement. Originating from student struggles against high tuition — in California, New York, and most militantly, Puerto Rico — the occupations channeled young Americans’ fear and insecurity into often inchoate action. … President