Addressing Youth Behavior and Societal Challenges: An Examination of Social Discontent and Responsible Citizenship

There is a video of the police making an arrest circulating on social media. When I saw it I was deeply concerned by the actions of the youth involved.

We tend to take everything from up north. I pass through these areas almost daily to get to work, and I see the degradation in the lives of our youth, I hear the misplaced vulgarity and the seeping in of downright lawlessness in our music, on public radio, at parties, dances and day-to-day relationships. Many have little respect for each other, far less the police. I see it at the primary school level where when you speak to a child and try to put him or her on the right path, the rudeness and blatant defiance in their actions and behaviour. It starts here, not at the secondary level where fights erupt in classrooms or elsewhere. It is a restlessness that to me is in part chemically induced since everyone is perpetually high on alcohol, marijuana or some other drug coupled with the double standards they see from so-called leadership and a capitalist economy that places money and trinkets above everything else.

This is not revolutionary behaviour if that is what our youth think it is. It is not Robin Hood behaviour either, when we allow drug users to sell their poison in our neighbourhoods, creating criminals of themselves and drug dependents of their colleagues, brothers and sisters who attack us in broad daylight, shoot each other any time of day and invade our homes to steal and kill and create havoc by way of the public transportation system – because, as they claim, they are on some “hustle” trying to make a dollar. We must care about each other. Being revolutionary is looking to see where the real causes of our dispossession and rape and pain emanate from and deal with them in the most effective way, not preying upon each other like untamed animals or crabs in a barrel.

And despite the criticisms of the government, I know that there is a myriad of programmes out there that benefit young people. Many are enrolled and want to make good for themselves, but there are many that want easy money and don’t want to put in the effort to move from one stage to another. It seems that our youth have for years watched us struggling and saving to get where we are and have turned their backs on such an approach. Instead, they want everything now without putting in the sacrifice. The problem with this scenario is that it places them in confrontation with me and many other people who have some old-fashioned things called morals and values. What a sad position to be in.

Ian A. Marshall