Ever do the anarchy thing? Get in a big group, gonna make a difference? Going through ancient text files, found one from 1991. (I didn’t write it). Cringe, get motivated or feel old, whatever you like: tl;dr.
Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1991 09:48:01 CDT
Subj: Teenagers Wake Up!
Sender: Activists Mailing List <ACTIV-L UMCVMB.BITNET>
Okay picked up this phamplet the other day.
It is meant for a younger audience.
But still worthwhile, pass it around.
Spelling errors are mine, but the original
phamplet was pretty bad too.
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Teenagers Wake Up!
“Everyone is out to control my life!” Does this sound like you? Are you tired of being constatnly told what to do? Seems like everything around you is controlled by other people and your personal like becomes a battleground. Whether its about clothes, hair, music, curfew, dates, sex, cars, smoking, alcohol, drugs, schook, grades, attendance, church or you job it all boils down to the same old thing — being hassled and ordered around, by parents, realitives, teachers, bosses, police– ADULTS.
Maybe you can’t wait until you can move out, quit school, get your own place, your own car and your own job. Then you’ll be able to leave all this bullshit behind. You want to be treated as a real human, given your freedom and left alone.
What are you going to do until then? Get by? Bitch and moan? Party hard? Get away with as much as you can as often as you can? Drop out? Escape? Put up with all the glak? Fight back? these are all choices made by youth to get control of their lives back. Whether its forging notes to skip school or lying to your golks, they all have the same thing in common — doing wha tyou want and avoiding punishment until you can get out on you won and not ahve to worry about adults ruling you.
Well, I’ve got some news. You can stop biding your time and laying low –LIFE DOESN’T GET ANY BETTER OR EASIER ONE YOU “GROW UP.” If you don’t stand for something now, you’ll fall for anything. the orders and bullshit you take from your parents and teachers now will just get worse, and the punishments hust get bigger. You may thnk you limited now, buy you can’t get away with anything once you’re an adult. If you don’t follow the rules of your job, you get fired, period. If you can’t afford a place, you’re out on the streets. If you break a law, the cops won’t talk to your parents, they’ll bust you and throw you in jail.
You’re better off young. No matter how much they hate you, under the law your parents have to give you good, clothing, and shelter until you turn 18. Once that time is up, nobody owes you anything and nobldy will GIVE you anything. There seems to be no way out of this problem. Fi we want to get by in this society we have to “play the game.” But without a good background, money or education –we’re going to lost the game. We’ll end up with a boring dead end job, and lousy life, living from paycheck to paychec, always with someone else telling us what to do. ANyway, lets face it, almost all jobs are a waste of time, no matter how much they pay.
What’s the solution then? If we really want to “win” we have to change the rules of the game. We have to take control, fight the power, grab the pwer. We have to get beyound the little shit and concentrate on the big stuff. We have to prepare fro a future of struggle with assholes and hassles. Fight with you parents over earrings and allowances really get you nowhere in the long run. In a few more years, you’ll be able to wear whatever you want –if you can affored it — and no one will care. The hassles you deal with now are just practice runs to prepare you for the greater hassles of real life. So what can be done if it all seems so hopeless?
First realize you’re not alone. your anger and rebellion is not just a kids versus adults thing. It’s part of a larger movement of rebels and outcasts against authority, of free people against systems. A desire for freedom up agaist those who want control. See yourself as a part of this larger struggle. Learn more about it, be prepared to join it when you become an adult. get help from these people for you problems –maybe they can be solved. A group of punk in Minneapolis helped kids stop anti-skateboarding laws. Lawyers like the ACLU ofter take on free cases to protect peoples’ right –such as dress codes in schools and so on.
Secondly, be smart and organized in your rebellion. Try to make your enemies a part of your struggle. Parents woh bitch at you about stupid things should be reminded how much they hate it when their boss yells at them for no reason. A strong argument is worth much more than just defiance. We don’t want to break rules, we want to get rid of them altogether. Do it on principle just to show them you’re serious. Let them know that every rule they make is one you are going to break simpley becuase it’s a rule. Fi they treat you as one of them and give you a choice, you can make up your own mind. Sometimes it will be what they want and sometimes not, but it deserves to be your decision. Al arbitrary laws should be disobeyed automatically, just because.
What about the schools? Threaten an eye for an eye. If you want to be late, or skip, or eat in class, or wear headphones you should be able to -it’s your education, not the teachers’. If they let you get away with it without being hassled, be considerate and don’t push so hard you over do it. If they come down hard — disrupt the class, strike back, do anything and everyhing. Make it known you will like and let live, buy you can fight fire with fire if you have to.
The schools belong to the students and should be run by the students! A student coucil that doesn’t attack the administration isn’t doing its job. Make your presence known. If the classes are boring and the homework is useless or stupid or too hard — let the teacher know. Just ignoring them and not doing the homework is only going to piss them off and get you bd grades. If a bunch of you demand an interesting class for once or else you amke life miserable, the teacher will have to listen. Widen the struggle. make a war over issues and strustures, not minor points or single people. Teachers want you to be quiest and pay attention so you can “learn.” It’s impossible to do this if you’re frustrated and bored out of your skull. So let them know it! Let them know you want something worthwhile and fun to do, not just busywork and until then NO ONE will pay attention. This makes the teacher look bad, not you, especially if you complain to all sorts of people, and with persistance things can change for the better.
Also widen the struggle to include the teachers. Realize a lot fo them have it rough. they get ordered around by the school board and the administrators, and ofter have no control over what they are teaching you. They also getpaid very poorly. If you can, get some teachers onyour side, team up with them agaist the system. you can transform the schools into decent places not prisons. Don’t be agraid to test limits, confront your rulers, question, criticize, aact, talk to people. As a teenager you can get away with a hell of a lot.
GETTING YOUR ACT TOGETHER: Don’t let little differences divide us. We can’t afford to be seperated into cliques. Jocks, weidoes, rocker, brains, longharis, punks, preppeis, nerds, burnouts, whatever. We call each other all these names and hide out in our own littell groups — we’re only hurting ourselves by doing this! Whatever clothes you wear, music you listen to, or cars you drive, whke up and realize WE’RE ALL IN THE SAME BOAT! We’re all up agaist adults, and shouldn’t matter. We should all be able to talk to each other, get together, join forces. United we stand, divided we fall. If we all team up in our battle, nothing can stop us.
HISTORY LESSON: A lot of you probably think the hippies in the 60’s were a bunch of stupid freask who dressed funny and did alot of drugs. elieve it or not, they changed a lot of things in the schools, and you can learn from their example. They had their act together and know how to get things done. They knew that if a lot of teenagers demand soemthing and refuse to give in, it’s the parents, the schools–society–that will have to change.
It was the hippies that made it possible for girls to wear pants to schook, getting rid of other dress codes as well. Until the 60’s guys had to wear ties and have crewcuts. You wear your T-shirts, jeans, and hairstyles thanks to the hippies.
They knew how to exercise power. If there was something going on they didn’t like, they would shut the school down. Thousands of high schools were either closed or destoryed during the 60’s becasue enough people got together –and they got away with it! Hippies did everything! They got away with smoking, drinking -even having sex– in the classroooms! Where I’m from you can’t even smoke within sigh of the school! Hippies were able to increase the pressuer util they were treated like humans, not animals. They changed thir schook, their teachers, their classes -boring teachers ahd their periods boycotted.
When you mobilize –wehn youget teenagers together with a plan of action — you are unstoppable. A high school can’t expel 700 kids. Doesn’t this organization amke more sense thangetting casught and punished one-by-one?
If you create a free personal life and a free educational process when you’re young, then rebel youth, as a group, will be ready and able to take on a world of bogus laws and lousys jobs when you get out into the world. We, the teenagers, have the power totear this system down!
Don’t be fooled by parents and teachers who tell you that you have to follow rules to get ahead. What’s the point of getting ahead if you can’t escape stupid rules? And why can’t we create our OWN society where everyone gets ahead and nobldy has to bow down to bullshit? Don’t believe their lies that “you’ll get over it” “this rebelliousness is just a phase.” you only get over it if they shoot you down –or if you turn traitor and become one of them. Adults tell you its impossible to change the world. That’s because they’re too chicken to try.
Adults who see this are gonna be upset. First, becuase it challenges their authority. They think they’re the kings and queens of the whole world and they can’t stand a smart-ass. Whay they don’t know is, WE’RE ALL SMART-ASSES!
Second, they aren’t gonna like the language. Too many swear words “poisoning” your minds. What they don’t know is that we all curse already, and we do it alot, and we don’t really care it they think it’s O.K. or not. If we all stood up and an assembly and yelled “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” they’d have to accept that words like “Fuck” are part of our everyday language and they might as well stop bitching, becuase we aren’t going to change.
We’ve got to take our rebellion and anger out into the open. This is the only way we can change the system –and it can be changed. Adults have little use for us. We don’t fit into their world. There’s no room for us in their society. School is just an excuse to keep us off the streets. But we can use school as a training ground from which to take over the streets.
One last word about how you rebel –THINK FOR YOURSELF, do it your won way. For example heavy metal bands write songs thatwill piss off your parents 0they do this becuase they know that anything that will piss off your parents is something to ahve. In other words, they know kids will juy it. The same is true of campanies that make pre-ripped or outrageous chothing and disgusting products. They’re betting you’ll buy it just to tick adults off.
These poepl and companies are not on your side. They are using you, making money off your anger, frustration and rebellion. They are just as bad as the adults who want to control you. they aren’tout to see you succeed or help you — they want to channel your agression into buying their stuff and making them rich. If you ever won your freedom they would go broke. Don’t be fooled by the bastards. Decide for yourself what is good becase YOU like it, not becasue it`s “cool” or anti-parent.
– STAY TOGETHER
– STAY SMART
– STAY ALIVE
– STAY FREE
AND LET IT BE KNOWN THAT WE WILL FIGHT BACK!!
“We don’t need no education, we don’t need no thought control. No dark sarcasm in the classroom. Hey, teacher leave those kids alone!” -Pink Floyd
“School’s out for summer. School’s out forever. School’s been blown to pieces.” -Alice Cooper
“Kids don’t care about books orr ruels, all they wanna do it burn their schools! We gotta burn, burn, burn ’em down.” –Abrasive Wheels
This pamplet is broung to you by your local Anarchitst Youth Generation chapter. We are young people just like you, who have come to the realization that todays society is stifling and oppressive. The time is now to break out of this vicious cycle of isolation and destruciton. FI anything is to be accomplished, we must unite and find out strngth in numbers.
Now is the time to get together, and establish a federation of anarchist youth and youth groups. With a network of coummincation open between anarchists and youth everywhere, we can work together to gith agaist oppression and spread the ideals of youth rebellion. Communication, action, and liberation.
Anarchism is not just violence or lawlessness. It is a belief in the freedom of humanity, and the belief that we can all get along witout cops, rules, force, bosses or any other authority. Thousands of teenages around the world have fought and died for anarchy. Their fight is your fight. Join us…..