OUR KIDS HAVE A SHAKY LAUNCHING PAD – Meihzu Lui

You're young and living in the richest and mightiest country in the world. Your path to the future should be amazingly bright, stretching before you like a smooth, open road toward a shining city on a hill, a virtuous and democratic society that has nothing to hide from the gaze of the world's people. Your elders should be widening that road, and making the city more beautiful than ever to prepare it for your entry.

But something is wrong. For many of our nation’s children, the paths are unmarked, the way ahead rocky, the city tarnished. Hey, where are the grownups around here?!

Those of us with limited money are urged to show our concern for our children by camping overnight in Wal-Mart’s parking lot to line up for some new video game. You can afford it with that pack of credit cards that came in the mail. Consume today, and worry about the bills tomorrow.

Similarly, for our nation, the rule is: Consume today, and forfeit future investments. Far from leaving no child behind, rules seem more and more designed to hurt our children. Let’s look at what’s happening to the underpinning of democracy — education:

? A steady diet of tax cuts, fed to the few who already can well afford to send their kids to private boarding schools, makes a high quality public education unaffordable for the rest of us.

? Many children in our schools have parents from other countries. Partly because they know what it's like to live in places where the only road out of poverty leads out of their home country, they are often hard working and highly motivated. Yet we won’t let undocumented-immigrant class valedictorians attend college at in-state tuition rates.

? For young people who live in poor rural areas, especially in the South, joining the military is often the only way to get more education. But while average army privates make $25,000 a year risking their lives for their country, and earn educational benefits far less than their granddads got with the GI Bill, the average defense industry CEO gets $7.7 million a year, without worrying about any self-sacrifice.

It doesn't have to be this way! As the recent election has shown, a shift in thinking about misplaced priorities is beginning. Beyond personal responsibility, we need social responsibility in order to create a good life for all our nation’s children.

As in dysfunctional families, sometimes the children are more "together" than the so-called adults. All over the nation, young people are organizing to ensure that they have a voice and a future.

For example, Youth Speaks is a youth of color organizing project in San Francisco. In conjunction with United for a Fair Economy, it will be putting out a Hip-Hop brochure, "Vote the Dream," that will inspire young folks to get involved in the 2008 election. Leaders are educating their fellow students on topics not covered in school, and finding their friends thirsty for information relevant to their futures.

And youth are not buying anti-family messages. When young folks were told to support privatizing Social Security so they wouldn’t have to pay for their grandparents’ retirement, in an unusual alliance with AARP, they publicly voiced their refusal to throw granny from the train.

Our children will make the road again by walking it, and the rest of us will need to put our shoulders into the effort as well. The next generation is poised to broaden civic participation, widen the pathways to success, and get this country back on the road. We’ll say with pride: "There goes our Brendan/Lesha/Tran/Roberto/Rachel/Anya/Nkomo/Auguste/Keuilin…."