Concluding Comments

I was looking at back at my introductory entry just two months ago and read “not only is my generation failing to express an adamant resistance to war, we are not making any of our political platforms and perspectives clear to our government officials and to the rest of the community. I will use this blog to . . . investigate why protests are losing value and power.” Not only did my investigation shift direction, but my thesis has completely changed. My generation is indeed making our opinions clear; we are just doing it using new methods that are equally as powerful, and more relevant than the methods of the sixties. A lack of personal connection to issues, such as a draft linking young people to war, may explain a decreased forceful opposition to war, but on the whole, students of today are as active as they ever have been. Media censorship limits coverage of this activism, and new protest methods have not yet been acknowledged. There has been a notable decline in physical presence, though, which may explain the judgment that we are not active. Indeed we are not out protesting with pickets and staging marches and demonstrations like we once were, but online petitions and blogs have skyrocketed. Anonymous methods of activism are huge among my generation who use them to articulate political platforms without attaching personally to those opinions. Internet blogs and petitions have replaced picket signs, coming to represent peace and politics in the minds rather than hands of my generation. If the vast size of the internet yields any predictive power, the voice of the youth will be heard loud and clear. Move On, generation now. Move On to great things.