Choose to fight back
A life which means something
By Sean Healy
If these were the extent of our choices — life on the dole, exploitation in the work force or an expensive (non)-education at a university — then life wouldn't look great.
Fortunately, these aren't the real choices. The real choice is between: taking the options they set for you and accept what they're trying to do with your life, or organising and fighting back.
There are struggles in each of these areas — by university students against fees and funding cuts, by apprentices against junior wages, by high school students. And it's only a matter of time before a group of conscripted young unemployed get so pissed off with work for the dole that they start a riot.
The number of young people who decide that "enough is enough" is only going to increase.
All these issues are linked. They're the result of deliberate government policy and the workings of an economy which we have no control over. The "choices" it presents us with are phoney.
But from the point of view of the "captains of industry" and the politicians, these are the only choices they're prepared to offer. Decent wages in a job that means something (no, not McDonald's) or an education which isn't about turning us into slightly more skilled robots are not priorities of the capitalist economy.
So young people, regardless of where we are shunted — into work or university or the dole — have a common and direct interest in rejecting all this and getting organised to fight for what we want. Fundamentally, we have a common interest not just in fighting governments' particular measures, but in fighting the system as a whole.
That's a real choice — to reject their imposed "choices" and choose a life of resistance, a life which means something.