Young people across the world are protesting broken promises from governments
Student and youth protests are spreading across several continents, and columnist Gordon Brown argues that the anger reflects promises to young people that have been broken.
Youth protests are spreading across several countries at once, and columnist Gordon Brown argues that the anger reflects a generation that feels its governments have broken promises made to them. He describes the moment as a global youthquake that is putting liberal democracy under strain.
The movement began in France, where young people climbed the July Column at Paris's Place de la Bastille. Brown writes that it is the largest outbreak of student demonstrations in 60 years, though he notes that it has not yet reached the scale of the 1968 protests, when students at the Sorbonne helped trigger a crisis that eventually brought down the De Gaulle government. In Italy, students who occupied a high school in Rome opened their demands with the words « like in France ».
The protests extend well beyond Europe. In India, demonstrations linked to the so-called Cockroach movement have met a repressive response from the government. In Albania, students have been on the streets for nearly five months, demanding not only an end to corruption but the replacement of the government itself.
Brown's central argument is that these demonstrations express more than local grievances. He presents them as evidence that young people across different political systems share a sense of betrayal, and that the rage now uniting them is a serious test for liberal democracy. He argues that understanding this anger is essential for political leaders who want to respond to it rather than suppress it.
Source: theguardian.com
4
