ListenFor quite a long time now, there has been a movement in CYC to locate ourselves in relation to our work and scholarship. This has taken several different forms including our relation to land acknowledgment as visitors, guests, settlers, or Indigenous inhabitants. It has also included intersectional coordinates such as race, gender, sexuality, and age. On occasion, we have also located ourselves (or been located by others) by theoretical affiliation or status in the field as beginning practitioners or elders. In some cases, we have even located ourselves in terms of our spiritual or religious foundations. The one area that we seem to shy away from is locating ourselves in terms of political roots and orientations. I am not sure exactly why political orientation is such a taboo, but we tend not to identify ourselves in terms of our political investments.
Indeed, some of us would argue that politics should not be involved in CYC work at all. It is one of the things we should leave at home. Our work should focus on the best needs of those young people in our care, and any political agenda might skew our perceptions in ways that could blind us to their actual needs. That is to say, we could begin to see our work as advancing a political agenda rather than the needs of the young people that we engage in our work.
I would argue that these arguments leave out the fact that we live in a world saturated with very real world politics that have profound effects on the lives of the young people, their communities and families. To the degree we deny this reality, we do a disservice to the reality of politics as a significant variable in the ability of young people and the rest of us to be able to thrive. In addition, the political realm is fraught with tensions and schisms that have direct implications for how much latitude we have to speak out on injustices that young people and their families experience. In nation states around the world there has been an increase in movements towards authoritarianism and control over what can be said, who people can be, and what kinds of political positions are acceptable. In some cases, this has led to violence, incarceration, and even death for anyone who promotes rights and freedoms for all people.
For some of us in CYC this might seem a bit too large for a field that is just trying to build relational work with kids so that they can do as well as possible under impossible conditions. What difference does it make what our politics are when we are in the trenches working on the day-to-day struggles that make up our work in residential programs, runaway shelters, schools, and on the streets among other places we work? I would suggest that in an age where the ability to advocate and speak out for the needs and desires of the young people we serve is under ongoing attack from those who would silence such efforts, it is more and more important that we locate ourselves in terms of where we stand in the politics of our time.
This came into focus for me when in September of last year, the president of the United States issued executive order NSPM 7 “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence.” On the surface the title isn’t so radical. After all, who is not opposed to domestic terrorism and organized political violence. However, as is the case with so many pronouncements these days, the devil is in the detail. There is a lot to say here about who is left out of the definition of domestic terrorists (white nationalists and neo-Nazis for example), but I will leave that aside to focus my attention on who is included, because for me that is a whole lot more personal. The definition of who is a potential domestic terrorist includes anyone who is “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”
As I read the list, I recognized myself to varying degrees in every descriptor. As I recently wrote in a column for this journal, I am without a doubt an American. I have dual citizenship as a Canadian, but my deepest roots are here in the U.S. To say that I am ambivalent about that aspect of my identity is a significant understatement. I am very dubious about the American project given its roots in land theft and enslavement and the nation’s unwillingness to take any material accountability for the harms caused to millions of human beings and other living things. So, while I am by heritage an American, I am anti-Americanism as a hyper-colonial and capitalist project.
Which takes me to the second descriptor of what defines a potential domestic terrorist. I am without a doubt anti-capitalist and have been for over half a century. Beginning in the 1960’s and early 70’s my lifestyle and political investments as an active participant politically and socially in the “counter-culture” was deeply rooted in attempting to put together a way of living that produced an alternative to capitalism. My work in CYC from the late 1970’s to the turn of the century focused on unhoused young people and worked to create relational practices that challenged profit driven conventional models of human service, psychological, and psychiatric practice. When I retired into academia in 2003, my purpose was to re-think the incursions of capitalism into CYC and human service practices and institutions. To that end, I worked to develop what I called radical youthwork where youth and adults could work together for common political purpose. In a way though, I am not so much anti-capitalist as I am interested in developing an alternative way of living based in the actual material needs of all living things. In that sense, I am less interested in opposing capitalism than simply moving beyond it.
The question of being anti-Christian is a bit more complicated. As someone who was raised as a Christian and moved away from the Christian faith and institutions, I am not so much anti-Christian than I am simply not Christian. I certainly support all Christians in their right to worship as they please. However, I resolutely oppose any actions that would promote Christianity as a dominant political force that would shape society in ways that would restrict other systems of faith and belief. I am a firm believer in freedom of religion and plurality of spiritual practice and ceremony. I am anti any form of Christian nationalism as a state sanctioned religion. So, I suspect that I fit the anti-Christian definition in the Executive order.
Do I support the overthrow of the U.S. government? Over my six decades of political engagement, I have yet to see the overthrow of an established government yield anything but new forms of fascism. That said, I am opposed to the state as an institution of centralized governance, but I believe that change comes evolutionarily from people beginning to live differently in significant numbers. The goal is not to overthrow the government but to make it irrelevant by creating radical local forms of direct democracy that are truly responsive to the desires and needs of people and the environment in which they live. Such a withering of the state form would be seen by those invested in that form as a form of overthrowing the government. So, if such forms of life and culture threaten the existing system of rule, then perhaps I fit this definition as well.
The question of migration is also an area where I fit the definition inferred in the executive order. The order identifies anyone who supports extremism in migration. It will be no surprise to anyone who has read this column that I consider the current U.S. administration’s policies on migration extreme in all aspects of implementation and its foundations in overt white supremacy. That said, I am perhaps extreme in the other direction. I am in favor of open borders to anyone who wishes to move across any and all national boundaries. I would argue that borders have no actual function in protecting us from drugs, political violence, or other kinds of danger. There seems to me to be ample evidence that in the 21st century there is no real possibility of excluding drugs or violence by closing borders. In addition, there is a long history of immigration restrictions being premised in varying forms of racism and xenophobia. These current immigration restrictions have an often brutal effect on immigrant young people and their families. In fact, I would suggest that the only real effect of closing borders in our time is to promote exclusionary agendas based in varying forms of bigotry and exclusion. Open borders would allow for the free movement of people seeking new ways of living and I am certainly extreme in my support of that.
The order also identifies extremism in race. I am not sure what this means exactly, except that the administration has come out strongly against efforts to teach or implement Diversity, Equity and Inclusion curriculum or policies. They have also opposed and demonized Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality. In addition, they have spoken out against historical accounts that detail foundational and ongoing racism in the story of the United States. As someone whose teaching and scholarship encompasses and, in many ways, centers all these accounts of race, I can assume that my work would be considered extremism in the area of race.
The order is also aimed at extremism in gender. Anyone who has been following this column knows I have written extensively here and elsewhere on gender equity, plurality, and transgender rights. In particular in this column, I have opposed the January 2025 executive order, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” So, again I guess I would be considered extreme in relation to gender.
The final section of the executive order identifies those potential domestic terrorists who have “hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.” As someone who had written very strong critiques of the traditional family including “Down with the Family’ in this journal, I hold views that could be seen as hostile to traditional family values. I have spoken to religion above so I will allow those comments to stand. In terms of morality, I have scholarship that is quite critical of conventional standards of morality including a column “Beyond Good and Evil: Towards an Amoral Youth Work.”
Overall, I am not surprised but appalled by the executive order and its potentially chilling effect on anyone whose politics differs from that of the current administration. In fact, I have had colleagues and friends tell me that they will far more circumspect in their political statements because of the kind of implied threat embedded in the order. I am not a domestic terrorist, and I am opposed to political violence, but this order paints me and my politics with that brush. Among many other similar efforts around the world, the purpose is to silence anyone who wishes for a different way of life than the one we are living now. I would argue that it is imperative that those of us who are invested in young people, their families, and communities refuse to be silenced. For me, I am locating myself here as an act of refusal. I am hopeful others in CYC might do the same. The possibility of another way of life must be sustained if we are to leave a world worth living for those generations who follow.
