“for all that remains of the children,
their eyes,
staring at us, amazed to see
the extraordinary evil in
ordinary men.” – Lucille Clifton

To understand the rise and decline of the U.S., one must take into consideration the killing of children. Though such an act of historical and contemporary witness may seem extreme, it will offer us a window into what’s happening around us. As we speak, future generations and young people all around us are being sacrificed. A gerontocracy that crosses both sides of the political aisle has remained true to a legacy of disposability that destroys youth in this country and around the world. Recent events like the disastrous flash floods that swept through central Texas, as well as the systematic dismantling of public health infrastructure, and the ongoing genocide in Palestine, speak to this. None of it’s surprising when we consider the ritualistic nature of it all in establishing the empire that the U.S. became. Still, beyond detailing what has been bad in the past and what’s bad now, we should consider the criticality of youth liberation in these times. 

As headlines zeroed in on catastrophic weather in Texas, many people were shocked by a deluge of unrelenting floodwaters. The damage claimed over 100 lives. Many news reports focused on a summer camp where at least 27 campers and counselors died. The loss of the children in attendance led some to question if shock and devastation would lead a conservative region to reconsider its political positions. In 2021, Kerr County commissioners and residents debated the allocation of federal funds, dismissing them as “Biden money” that could have been used for essential infrastructure upgrades. Additionally, Texas state officials rejected Kerr County’s requests to fund a warning system, and the efforts by the Trump administration’s Federal Emergency Management Agency were severely delayed. Mechanisms employed to prevent and avoid needless death should always prioritize saving lives, but instead, making the most vulnerable among us pay the price is a defining characteristic of U.S. politics. 

It’s not just about bad weather either. The same discourse that objectifies the lost lives of children in Texas is the same back and forth that shapes the gun debate. After every school shooting, gun sales surge while those opposed to lax policies surrounding firearms point out that children will be unnecessarily victimized. Since the infamous Columbine school shooting, Sandy Hook, the Uvalde school shooting, and the Parkland high school shooting all showed that these avoidable tragedies that define the U.S. have become normalized. This is a country where people can take weapons of war into classrooms and slaughter young people because much of the country is OK with risking their children and others. The reactionary right-wing that’s OK with this does not change, even though much of their idea of themselves is about supposedly protecting children. 

The fascistic right-wing overreach that went after bodily autonomy is hypocritical. The state governments and Christian fundamentalists who led the charge against abortion have the weakest maternal support. They place more kids in foster care, entangling them in family policing, and they have higher rates of child poverty. “Life” and children, to them, are merely talking points to exact vengeance on their political adversaries. To make this point even more straightforward, just look at U.S. foreign policy.

In Gaza, where the U.S. has facilitated an open genocide against Palestinians, the death toll is estimated to be much higher than the tens of thousands counted dead. More than half of those counted are women and children. Images of children being maimed, tortured, and murdered in every way possible barely rouse a large segment of the U.S. public. And again, the faux concern over children with anti-abortion rhetoric mirrors the manufactured outrage behind a “beheaded babies” hoax used to rally support for Israeli occupation. When Palestinian babies are dismembered for everyone to see, it’s of little to no consequence to these same parties. The disregard for future generations is amplified when exported. Just look at Somalia, where, as the U.S. bombs al-Shabab (which translates to “the youth”), it’s cutting aid to the families who will suffer as a result. When we also recall the My Lai and My Khe massacres of children in Vietnam or think about the devastation of children in the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions, all of this is unsurprising. These atrocities are imperialist externalizations that reflect the internal practice of destroying children to build up and satiate the bloodlust of empire. 

We should not expect a country that’s proud about its campaigns of terror against children to be repentant now. The legacy of genocide against Native people can be summed up in the words of Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman. Determined to exterminate Native resistance, during assaults, he instructed, “The soldiers can not pause to distinguish between male and female, or even discriminate as to age. As long as resistance is made, death must be meted out” (emphasis added). This celebrated Union general put into words the importance of indiscriminate killing. A long campaign of endless murder upends the myth that women and children are safe in war. His words, alongside mass killings like Sand Creek and Wounded Knee, were not as long ago as they seem. And a defining feature of the countless incursions was taking young lives. Alongside enslavement, where children were exploited for labor, sexual violence, and entertainment, the U.S. poisoned itself from the start with this sort of depravity. 

All of this death and ruin is a call for youth liberation. Climate change inaction, endless wars, and deteriorating public health resources will sabotage the young people growing up right now. Those of us who are older should support and reinforce the efforts of young radicals to overthrow regimes threatening their right to exist and age. However, they’re subjected to bipartisan paternalistic authoritarianism. It’s not separate from the conception of the family, “where wife and children are the slaves of the husband,” that radicals have long sought to abolish. No matter who the parent is, adopted or otherwise, young people should not tolerate abuse. They also should not accept the standards of oppression handed down by their forbearers. To assume that youthfulness automatically means imprudence and shallowness neglects the fact that all of our lives are being put at risk by elder tyrants and despots. Still, like any form of identity, it doesn’t automatically guarantee virtue. What it does indicate is that younger people still have much life to live if they so choose, and we have a collective responsibility to support youth liberation that makes sure that’s a life worth living. 

Younger people still have much life to live if they so choose, and we have a collective responsibility to support youth liberation that makes sure that’s a life worth living. 

June Jordan helps us understand what’s at stake, writing in “The Voice of the Children” that “Children are the ways the world begins again and again. … If we cannot learn to bless their lives (our future times), at least we can try to find out how we already curse and burden their experience: how we limit the wheeling of their inner eyes, how we terrify their trust, and how we condemn the raucous laughter of their natural love. What’s more, if we hear them, they will teach us what they need; they will bluntly formulate the tenderness of their deserving.” We can expand this respect and recognition to young people of different ages without being patronizing. It’s about embracing our mortality from every part of the spectrum. 

Life as we know it is not just about being alive, but the conditions we endure. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic should have taught us this, but like the disabled and immunocompromised, children were one of the populations we’ve seen treated as expendable. The resurgence of lax child labor laws and austerity cuts to SNAP benefits present an uphill battle for impoverished young people. Attacks on “DEI” used to target queer and trans youth (who are disproportionately houseless) demand an unflinching dedication to defending each other. The powers ruling over us are making it very plain that if we do not have a strong youth liberation politics, whatever lies ahead of us will surely be bleak. 

This society is the household we cannot be a part of. The family has long been a micro expression of the larger organization of monopolized violence we call “the state.”  Let’s no longer tolerate this kind of family—not family as in relatedness, kinship, or bonding, but rather property-based relations that make some of us dispensable. Anything that turns us into coal to fuel capitalism can’t be accepted. So denounce these parents, the ones who care so little for their children and others’ children. Leave the family behind that makes you a sacrifice for an oppressive world that you didn’t get to choose.

Editorial Team:
Lara Witt, Lead Editor
Carolyn Copeland, Top Editor
Rashmee Kumar, Copy Editor