By Sirajum Sandhi

“Justice is an intergenerational project that requires the centering of children at a fundamental level.”

– Toby Rollo 

Dear Social Change Colleagues, 

I am writing this letter after a long period of sleepless nights as I struggled to peel my eyes away from the bloodshed and decapitated bodies of children on my screens. As I write this, Bangladesh is going into another internet blackout as the Awami League government continues to suppress the youth-led anti-quota turned anti-corruption movement that brought the country to a standstill for weeks. The image of Bangladeshi students flooding the streets of Dhaka is a common sight in the newly independent South Asian nation. In 1952, students of Dhaka University protested against the West Pakistani government’s refusal to recognize Bengali as a state language. They faced a brutal crackdown, which resulted in numerous student martyrs, and became the catalyst of the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation Movement. Liberation from the oppressive Pakistani regime was fought and earned only 53 years ago. If history is any indication, the lifeless bodies of the students have marked the dawn of the next revolution.

In recent global history, young people have been at the forefront of leading social movements. Mass uprisings against sexual & gendered violence, racism, fascism, Hindutva, Zionism, and a climate catastrophe have seen an impressive number of young people leading and shaping our calls for change. People are fighting for the right to life, dignity, and safety. Have you wondered why young people are at the front lines of these movements, putting their bodies on the line and demanding systemic changes? When you were younger, were you more likely to disrupt, raise your voice, or stand up for what you believed to be right? Do we simply become jaded or hopeless as we grow older? Since you are here, you must still have some hope; you must still believe in change, in dismantling oppressive systems. 

Working as a youth advocate (as a youth myself) with survivors of gender-based violence in an intergenerational workplace made me curious as to why we were a distinct category of the population. My clients, aged six through twenty-four, presented a spectrum of needs, interests, and abilities. However, they had one thing in common: their relationship with adults and adulthood. Most of my clients experienced abuse at the hands of the adults in their lives and struggled to name it as abuse. It was rationalized as a rite of passage. They were desperately waiting for their membership into the privileged class of adulthood to find agency and power over their lives. They were waiting for their turn to be allowed to be fully human. 

Perhaps young people are at the forefront of calls for change because they have the least power in society. Psychiatrist, Dr. Chester Pierce, observed that discrimination against children “is the basic form of oppression in our society and underlies all alienation and violence, for it teaches everyone how to be an oppressor and makes them focus on the exercise of raw power”. Not only in our relationships with young people are we taught how to think and act like an oppressor, but all the systems that govern our lives are created by adults, for adults, resulting in an oppressive sociopolitical power relation. Adultism is the oppression experienced by children and young people by adults and adult-tailored systems. To center young people and heed their calls for change, dismantle racism, sexism, ableism, and capitalism, we need to dismantle adultism. 

If we have young people in our lives, at our places of work, or in our movement, we must address and challenge behaviors and systems that perpetuate adultism. We may struggle to center youth autonomy as we likely experienced a lack thereof when we were younger. We may be confronted with traditions and cultures that privilege adults or older people with unquestioned reverence and power. If we are committed to ending cycles of violence, however, we must dismantle oppressive power structures, including adultism. 

In struggle,

sirajum sandhi (they/them)
8/4/2024