Gun control, climate: a new US generation takes to the barricades

NEW YORK: In the United States, David Hogg is a leading campaigner for gun control, while in Europe, Greta Thunberg fights to defend the climate.

They may only be teenagers, but both have drawn worldwide followings for their clear messages and fierce commitment -- symbols of a generation of surprising militancy. Hogg, who is 18, is a leader of the March for Our Lives movement, launched by students from his high school in Parkland, Florida, where a heavily armed gunman massacred 17 people on February 14, 2018.

The movement, pushing for stricter gun control legislation, has mobilized hundreds of thousands of young Americans. Thunberg, a pig-tailed Swedish student who looks younger even than her 16 years, has become the European face of the fight against global warming, inspiring huge crowds of young protesters to take to the streets, including in Germany, which had not seen such massive turnouts since the heady days of reunification.

Thunberg has come far from the days when she mounted a brave but lonely protest standing on the steps of the Swedish parliament. She is now mentioned as a possible Nobel Peace Prize winner for 2019.

Were she to win that lofty award, Thunberg would be the youngest laureate ever, younger even than Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai, who at 17 won the 2014 Nobel for her fight -- even after being shot by a Taliban gunman -- for education rights for girls and women.

Some members of this new generation are even more precocious. Consider American schoolgirl Alice Paul Tapper, who was only 10 in 2017 when she started her "Raise Your Hand" campaign to encourage girls not to let themselves be intimidated. The movement caught fire on social media, boosted by help from her Girl Scout troop and also by the celebrity of her father, CNN newsman Jake Tapper.

Her new book "Raise Your Hand," published this week, briefly ranked 12th on Amazon’s list of "hot new releases." According to several experts, these examples illustrate a rise in youthful involvement not seen in years -- akin, some say, to the activism seen during the US civil rights protests of the 1960s.

If youth has always been synonymous with protests, the trend seemed to have gone latent for years. "We went through a generation or almost two when we were not seeing a lot of activism," said Elizabeth Matto, a Rutgers University specialist in youthful political participation.

"The teenagers we are calling Generation Z now," she said, are showing a "real inclination to engage in expressing their political voice." "They are starting to recognize what a force they are to be reckoned with... a generation that wants to make things better and who does not really see their age as a barrier."

As proof she cited the involvement of Americans aged 18 to 29 in last November’s US congressional election: some 31 percent of them voted, the highest rate in 25 years, according to Tufts University’s Centre for Information and Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (Circle).