Traditionally, in any tribe, youth was valued and appreciated for their physical abilities and their high community contribution, they had an indisputable status.
Currently, the situation is very different.
The youth sector no longer only covers from 16 to 30, it extends much further. There is a generation dancing the conga that has been left behind on a fine rope, a rope that seems to be the balance between making it to the end of the month or asking parents for money with their heads down looking at the ground... so as not to fall, from the rope of course.
Young people have been called everything, as if we had done nothing:
"Ninis", "Millennials", "Narcissistic Generations", Generation Y, Impatient Generation, "The one with the posing at all hours on Instagram" and anything else that sounds like not lifting a finger. However, all young people are united by the same identifier, that of the Deceived Generation.
They say about us that we have been given everything chewed, and that we are very spoiled. However, to address us they should also remember that we have been the great victims of a crisis that we did not create, the generation of eternal study, of eternal dependence, the generation that dreams of becoming independent.
We were promised and told repeatedly to study, to train, so as not to depend on any "man", to aspire to have a decent job, with decent pay. And we studied: Degrees, Masters, Bachelor's Degrees, Diplomas, Languages... and any other invention that has been created to give us the feeling of a false future stability. A dignified life. But those words do not exist in the Youth dictionary.
Pension and stability are a utopia for young people.
And we comply and study... and that investment was also from our parents/mothers and we have seen ourselves in a real generational crisis much greater than a financial crisis... that real estate crisis that was talked about so much... is small change compared to this. Because what happened to young people was much worse. We not only lost money, we also lost hope, patience, sacrifice. We were the worst generation in the unemployment line.
We were deceived on all sides... The most prepared generation, but... Prepared for what exactly?
Honestly, there is little to celebrate because... what are we celebrating?
The youth unemployment figures? More than 50%: 2 million young people in this country are in a situation of poverty.
80% of young people under 30 do not own a home due to their insignificant purchasing power.
And 90 percent find it impossible to save.
What mortgage are they going to pay if they can hardly afford a shared rent?
This system is quite incongruous. And it uses young people to feed its incongruity;
It wants prepared and qualified young people, but not too much so that it can pay them garbage.
It wants entrepreneurs but gives them a pat on the back of "good luck on the road". It's going to be long and hard. There is only one Amancio Ortega.
It wants to sustain the real estate system with the sale of homes aimed at the new generations, but with precarious salaries that do not allow them to save to acquire these homes, but to fight to be able to live day to day, which is already a saying.
And it wants young people to save so that they can pay their pensions because the piggy bank will only have dust inside in 30 or 40 years.
Definitely, this system treats young generations as if they were stupid, it has no respect for them and underestimates them.
And when they decide to pack their bags and leave, they lament their departure and say they "miss them..."
Young people have become accustomed to the eternal return home from their parents or the labor swing between exploitation and exploitation in those nests of false self-employed that some companies have become. So, what are we celebrating?
We celebrate the enormous frustration that the most educated generations in history are literally killing themselves to occupy a place among thousands of candidates in some opposition, or celebrate being able to give thanks for being as false self-employed in some place where they will probably have to swallow endless unpaid overtime to try to climb some step that ends up repeating itself like a butterfly effect?...
Do we celebrate the habit that these generations have of living in an eternal coming and going between unpaid overtime... and two or three precarious daily jobs?
What exactly are we celebrating? That young people are no longer needed to defend the rest of the tribe, but to carry an unsustainable system?
However, there is one thing that can be celebrated. And that is that this deceived youth, paradoxically, is the one that has the factual powers trembling with their campaigns against climate change, demanding that the planet is not a loan from their parents, but an inheritance from their children.
Young people know that if the planet were a Bank, they would have already rescued it. What these powers do not seem to know is that although there was a black box, there is no Planet B. And that young people realize this has annoyed the System. So much so that the word sustainability has become a joke in the hands of the marketing departments of companies. Basically, because capital cannot afford the luxury of young people starting to realize that the planet is screaming that it has a fever. And remember something; capitalism will disguise itself as whatever it takes to attend the Carnivals, even if it hates the theme. It is an expert in adapting to currents and the present, because it is already questioned enough to allow itself to become obsolete.
But this time it has come across something unexpected. A young Swedish woman who went every Friday of the year to put warm cloths to lower that fever (to the planet). And she is arming armies of young people with warm cloths. To lower the fever to a sick planet.
I believe in young people like Greta Thunberg, Anuna De Wever and Kyra Gantois. I believe in that generation that does not want abusive practices or to work 3,000,000 unpaid overtime hours (official data in Spain). That youth, the first thing they want is to be left with a planet. And the last thing they ask is to beg for a Scholarship-internship, (also called legalized labor exploitation).
I believe in those generations who do not want to be patted on the back and told that things will get better. As if the future were a fact.
Because those generations are much more than the ones of selfies on Instagram, they are much more than the creators of Tinder and Facebook, or any digital stamp startup you hear. Because if we want to and we propose it, we, the young people, change the world.
It is true that with the new policies in a large part of the territory there is hope, but it is undeniable that we have been lacking efficient policies for this population group for a long time. As if we didn't exist. As if young people hadn't given birth to 15-M... as if we hadn't silenced everyone who underestimated the power we have. Young people, let no one make you doubt your worth to do great things... 8M became unstoppable with you, the Wert Law was overturned by you in the streets and #Fridayforfuture is aimed at being a wave of green hope.
We know it well. Noise is not made with comments on Facebook, history is changed in the streets, which is where they are afraid of them.
See you in the streets. Because you, young people, are the only ones capable of lowering the fever of this World.
- September 20 - International General Strike for the Climate.
Amalia M. Fajardo
On the occasion of International Youth Day.
