In the high-paced, technologically advanced age we live in today, news and information come to us at a breakneck speed. President Obama can’t sneeze without the nation knowing about it before someone can even say “bless you.”

With the emergence of Facebook, Twitter, blogs and text messaging, it seems our voices are well protected behind the safety of a keyboard. But in the same breath our opinions can just as easily be ignored and brushed aside without a second thought.

Campus Echo

Chris Hess

In the 1960s young people were willing to take a stand for Civil Rights and against the Vietnam War. Indeed, they didn’t just take a stand, they were arrested in protests.

There is the old saying, “If you have something to say, say it to my face.”

Tweeting and texting are not exactly like saying something to someone’s face, and there are plenty of faces with no shortage of things to say to them.

Government bailouts, the war in Iraq, health care reform … need I go on?

When I see news coverage on issues like health care reform, the only people I see screaming at our representatives are at least 20 years my senior. I haven’t seen one young face in the crowd voicing their opinion. Yet, young people are the ones who will be facing rising health costs the rest of their lives.

When AIG received billions of our hard earned tax money too much of the money went to bonuses and luxurious vacations

“ I’m really surprised no one your age is kicking and screaming about this. We would have burnt down the AIG building,” my father said to me.

He was right, simply posting “that’s messed up” as a Facebook status does not cut it. And once again it’s young people who will have to assume the debt that was created to pay for bailout.

This country was founded on angry groups of people converging and telling the government enough is enough. Isn’t it much easier for our representatives to ignore a 140 character tweet than 50,000 screaming 20-somethings at the police barricades?

We should be aware of what happens around us and realize that the ones who protested and fought in the 60s are now wearing dentures and golfing in Florida. The ball is now in our court. We are the ones everyone is looking to.

Are we going to air ball our chance to change history, or slam - dunk our mark right down their throats? The choice is ours.

Chris Hess writes for the Campus Echo, the North Carolina Central University student newspaper, which originally published this article.

Articles in the Voices section represent the opinions of the individual writers and do not reflect the views of Black College Wire.