Young people offer urgent moral clarity to do-nothing adults | David Gergen and James Piltch write for CNNOpinion
David Gergen is a CNN senior political analyst and professor of public leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he founded the Center for Public Leadership. James Piltch is Gergen's chief research assistant. His writing on civic life and education has appeared in The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. The views expressed in this commentary are their own. View more opinion articles on CNN.
At certain points in history, when institutions and established leaders have failed to step up and take action, it falls to the youngest among us to take charge. That is happening again these two weeks as a 16-year-old girl from Sweden, Greta Thunberg, is stepping onto center stage to mobilize the world against climate change.
David GergenJames PiltchThose of us who are older are well reminded of how the young of this country rose up some 50 years ago in the Civil Rights era. In May of 1963, more than one thousand young people in Birmingham, Alabama, marched through the city to call attention to racial injustice. When many of the children marched again the next day, the notoriously racist sheriff Bull Connor set vicious police dogs on them.
Greta Thunberg sails across Atlantic in zero-emissions yacht 01:57Fortunately, those younger generations are now stepping forward, changing politics and providing a model for budding leaders everywhere. A year ago, after another mass shooting at a high school, this one in Florida, politicians and the NRA performed yet another tap dance, counting on the horror to be soon forgotten. But the surviving students would not allow such avoidance to take place again.
Some might criticize Greta and her fellow climate crusaders as zealots or as short sighted, just as many said that about the Parkland students. But even if one disagrees with their proposed solutions, don't dismiss the power of children in the streets -- calling for change -- to create an impetus for action. At least once before, a children's movement was a core inspiration for our country to address its greatest injustices. Today, the young speak with moral clarity again.
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