A Generation Impacted

 15 year old Sean Kealiher on being assaulted by a police officer

Photo by Ray Whitehouse, The Oregonian

I watched this video today, provided by Occupy Portland, of a 15 year old Portland boy named Sean Kealiher who had been purportedly struck three times by an officer of the Portland Police during a protest.  It filled me with somber introspection as I attempted to put myself into this young man's shoes.  I understood his shock and disenfranchisement and it called up yet another image that I had seen just a couple months ago of  yet another 15 year old boy, Walker Prettyman, within the same city.  When I first came across that photo, the initial thing that caught my eye was the dried blood all over his face but then I was drawn, inexorably, to his eyes.  His eyes told me everything of his current mental state, captured eternally within that single photo.  Fear, horror and disbelief in comprehending what had just occurred to him brilliantly captured on celluloid by photographer Ray Whitehouse of The Oregonian.  Prettyman is clearly traumatized in this photo.  In an interview just a few days after the incident,  Prettyman's thoughts seem to echo Kealiher's sentiments in the questioning of why the event occurred at all and the actions and decisions of the police department as a whole.  (Located here: Prettyman Interview )  Why did this happen?  Why were the police dressed the way they were?  Was it not an excessive response to peaceful protesters?   Both have been clearly and profoundly impacted by the incidents.  Kealiher speaks less like a normal 15 year old boy but with more of a wisdom that should be beyond his years.  Their similar responses to the traumas incurred, however, are not within the normative response of a victim of trauma. 

The element of questioning why something happened is very much within the norm but victims of trauma frequently internalize their inward questioning of events.  Both Prettyman and Kealiher show signs of awareness that their incidents hold some sort of social value and importance by actively voicing them within a public forum.  This difference could be answered by the nature of the incidents themselves.  Both were purportedly assaulted by police officers, individuals that each seem to have been raised to trust like many of us instruct our children to do so today.   Both incidents were publicized in some form through either the news media or Youtube whereas for other victims of trauma, their incidents are generally not a public matter.   Both Kealiher and Prettyman chose to speak, however, on the events that had befallen them.  Kealiher was not actively sought by any news media but, instead, voiced his concerns directly within a public forum, which simply happened to be filmed at the time.  Kealiher's action is important to consider because this was not a matter of him being forced into interview but instead, having the impetus of the incident become a driving force towards direct engagement of the subject, itself.  Very contrary to what one would normally see within a victim of a trauma. 

I think the answer for this difference is both held within the nature of the trauma, that is it being the action of a trusted authority figure, and also within the generational stereotype for both of these boys.  Both could be considered to be a part of Generation Y, also called Millennials.  As a generation, Millennials are known not only for their idealism but also for some degree of skepticism in authority figures as well.  Furthermore, expression and the ability to freely express ones opinions are of stark importance to Millennials.  Comprehending these boys' generational characteristics helps explain both their responses to what happened to them and their ability to air their questioning of the events and actions in a very public manner.  Additionally, it also explains why they seem to be ahead of their respective trauma responses in that both could have already held some degree of skepticism in the first place.  They have, essentially, been raised to become skeptical and airing their questioning in the face of their skepticism.  Having potentially found answer to the question of why they are responding in this manner, the next question to ask is what is the effect of such a response?

A couple months ago, while reeling from the shock of what I had been seeing through livestreams of protests, I called my mother.  My mother is your typical Baby Boomer.  When I, distraught by all I had seen, informed her of my shock, she was downright blase in response and even perhaps a little irritable and embittered.  In a snippish manner, she responded that she was well aware of what could happen in these kind of protests having seen the same things occur during the Free Speech, Civil Rights, and anti-war movements of the 60's. Furthermore, I wasn't even alive to recall what had happened to student protesters at Kent State so don't I dare tell her about how upsetting it all was.  After the phone call promptly ended, I was shocked for a different reason.  It wasn't simply what I had seen but the sheer fact that my mother had, throughout the course of my life, never revealed an inkling of her own distrust of authority figures or state anything at all on the subject matter of police activities during these movements.  Utterly riveted by this epiphany, I listened to Martin Luther King Jr's final speech, "I have been to the mountaintop".  Within this particular speech, as plain as can be, he spoke of just such similar activities not solely by the police but also the curious reporting methods of news agencies during times of protest.  In many ways, it was oddly comforting to know that what we were simply encountering was the endless repeating of history. 

It's almost ludicrously ironic that the very generation who experienced the activities within the 60's and 70's is now the generation that is at the helm of society itself.   Our political system and the chief executives of some of our largest corporations are still predominantly filled with Baby Boomers.  Although these movements did generate a change in direction for the country, the generation most poignantly impacted in their formative years by them were, for the most part, assimilated into the systems, themselves.  Before we can simply rely on the idea that what is happening now is simply history repeating itself, we have to consider if history is indeed repeating itself and if the outcomes will be similar.  There is one key, fundamental difference between these two periods of protest movements.  Thirty years ago,  Baby Boomers had more opportunities in which to become assimilated into the political and capitalist systems.   The same cannot be said for the Millennials. 

The Millennials are entering into the world not only with a greater sense of idealism and strength of expression and self-importance of their own individual views but also into a world whose leaders have a very fundamentally different sense of self and worldview and where the opportunities for assimilation into the American dream have profoundly declined to near non-existence.  For Baby Boomers, success was relatively defined as accumulating material wealth and the road to success was paved through education.  Millennials, on the other hand, have a tendency to be more selective of their employers and their respective ethical activities and are currently finding themselves obtaining degrees with little assurance of gainful employment at the time of graduation.  Whereas the "American Dream" may have existed for the Baby Boomers,  the knowledge of it seems to be more of a bitter dream lost to Millennials.  Through the economic situation that we currently find ourselves in, the Millennials are unlikely to be assimilated as the Baby Boomers were previously within the very fabric of our society.

We cannot always use the past to comprehend the outcomes of the future.  Were there young men like Prettyman and Kealiher speaking out and blatantly questioning authority figures in the 60's?  Mario Savio was one of those individuals but was in his mid 20's--not a young teenage boy still unable to legally drive. Therefore, the answer to that question is probably lost due to time.  However, it is clear that, although history has the innate tendency of repeating itself, the outcomes of such a historical repeat upon one of our largest generations cannot be predicted by looking backwards.   If Millennials are unlikely to be assimilated as were the Baby Boomers previously, then the possibility arises that this could be an increasingly disgruntled generation.  As such, it is likely that protests will continue and potentially grow in scale.  The outcomes of such a thing are ones that I fear to express.  However, how this all is engaged and played out within the near future is of distinct importance for our future.  Our options are either to listen and engage with what is being said or to simply fuel the fire with blase, discarding attitudes such as my mother's.   We must think again of what is being held in the eyes of Prettyman and the words of Kealiher.  We need to ask ourselves what society, as a whole and not just within these boys' generations, is going to do to bridge this generational gap in order to cushion the impact on this generation.