BREXIT FILES PT 2: AN OPEN LETTER TO YOUTH & ESPECIALLY THEIR PARENTS

One of the lines of spin out of the Brexit vote is about the young.

And there’s this, from Andrew Rawnsley, in The Observer, on Sunday 26 June: “Feel the anger of the young, overwhelmingly for In, as they are defeated by Out-voting pensioners. Oldsters who voted Out because they felt politics had let them down now have their mirror in young people who cast for In and feel their future has been stolen from them.”

The meme of the old stealing from the young has grown in this decade, as the recovery from the crash has not materialised for most and the world of employment has given way to the gig economy and now, in Britain, a young person’s ability to migrate to find work, love and life in the rest of Europe has been removed from the table. Some say it was because of the old … possibly. But it was far from the main reason.

If a young person you know and love thinks this way, please take them aside & explain the facts of life to them: show them photos of Kent State

Stonewall riots

Tell them about the world you found when you were 18–24: segregation legal/homosexuality illegal.

Sexism & sexual hypocrisy that is unimaginable by today’s standards.

If you are British tell them about Enoch Powell.

Tell them about your friends who fought these injustices and lost their families, went to prison, and who died.

Ask them what price they are willing to pay to keep the arc of the moral universe bending towards justice. Would they give over their whole lives to a cause? Because to remake the world into one you think is just takes more than going on a march and nipping off to the pub afterwards.

It means visiting unsafe spaces and risking a little more than being called an unpleasant name. Remind them that Bernie Sanders worked for nearly fifty years in obscurity to make his beliefs happen. Warn them their enemies will be working hard, as well. UKIP was founded nearly a quarter of a century ago and no matter how much people mocked Farage, today he is laughing loudest.

Then hug this young person close and say,

“I am old, you are young. My time is over, yours has just begun. There is a new world to be won.

Go win it.”