Are Our Youth Leading or Are They Being Led?

As a true believer in youth empowerment and leader of a Zionist youth movement, I’ve struggled with several weighty questions over the past few days while watching the encampments on college campuses across the country.

Should there be limits to youth empowerment, or was this type of action among the risks we took in empowering the youth to lead? Have they simply gone off the rails and need us adults to step in and set some guard rails?

I thought it may be a hypocritical stance to stand in front of today’s college students and say, “Sorry, I don’t agree with your stance, so you have to curb your leadership,” but deep down something feels off. As it turns out, this is not youth empowerment at all, rather a hijacking of youth idealism by groups of adults with ulterior agendas.

As reports have started to come out about the funding and backing of these encampments by adult actors, it saddens me to say that these seemingly empowered youth have simply been pawns in a larger adult-driven agenda.

Aside from the worry and fear that these encampments have evoked, I feel further resentment and anger that they are not authentically led by our youth but rather by some corrupting groups of adults exploiting the youth voices by appealing to their liberal and activist sensibilities.

I am sure that amidst the masses there are individuals who truly believe what they chant and demand, but by and large, the opiate of the masses has become about “the right to protest” and less about the actual injustices for which the protests are seemingly fighting. And it is we, the adults, who have backed ourselves into a corner and disempowered our youth. On the one hand there is a set of adults, law enforcement or university administrators, who are shutting down the youth protests to maintain safety and calm on college campuses, and on the other hand, there is another set of adults, organized groups who are funding and inciting the youth protests to further for their own agendas.

So where is the real youth empowerment?

I would like to see an amplification of the voices of actual youth, speaking up for themselves in this moment. Don’t let us speak for you or co-opt your activism for our causes. Don’t be persuaded by social media, funding, or propaganda, instead be fueled by your own ideals, morals, and values. Fight for the world you want to see, after all, you will have to live with it. Stand up for what is right. Dig down deep into your gut for moral clarity, back it with some historical perspective and fuel it with your youthful idealism. Find your voices!

I trust you and believe in you.