Thanks Ma’am, but can we discuss an alternative?

Last week I was invited by the Prime Minister and Queen to become a Member of the British Empire for Services to Young People. With respect and some reservations, I’m making public my refusal in an attempt to appropriately leverage my privilege amidst a necessary global moment of protest.

I can’t wear a badge of the system that causes so much harm to the same young people I’ve spent my career in service to. And I can’t acquiesce to the institutions we need to overhaul if the same young people are to inherit the future they deserve.

We’ve yet to deal properly with our history of colony and empire. We’ve yet to comprehend the damage of the more recent history of a government-led evisceration of youth services under the banner of austerity. We’ve yet to prepare for the next chapter of history in which recession will have the same winners and losers as usual and a now almost irreversible ecological and climate crisis represents a real and existential threat to all young people.

I accept the flaws of this attempt at protest, but I think it’s upon us all to pull whatever levers and alarm bells are available to us. I recognise taking the edges off of an unfair system only lessens the visible symptoms, I see the need for direct action, and ultimately I believe we need a new way of organising centred around a new…