A Twitter thread from Willow Naomi Curry, a fellow with Boston Review Magazine who is figuring out her role in fighting fascism, labor exploitation, and environmental degradation while caring for herself and others. Follow her on Twitter at @willathewisp.

Watching everything that’s happening as a Gen Z-Millennial cusp (born in ‘96), I see what’s happening to youth on college campuses as, on top of everything else, the logical end point of decades of neglect of and vitriol towards children and young adults. 🧵🪡 

I was a preteen when the Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooting happened, and a 16-year-old high school student when the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre happened. As I tried to adapt to a new normal of routine active shooter drills, and waiting for the day I might be next, 

I watched over and over again as Congress refused to do anything to stop children from being massacred at schools, putting gun lobby money over our lives. 

Later, as a college student, the backlash to trigger warnings and the infamous Coddling of the American Mind essay trivialized our legitimate protests of white nationalists being allowed platforms. 

We were painted as enemies of free speech, when in fact we were sounding the alarm for the normalization of White nationalist rhetoric, normalization that led us to Trump; to the Mother Emanuel AME massacre and Charlottesville and, eventually, the January 6th insurrection. 

Now, I’m seeing the utter disregard for the lives and freedoms of American youth pushed even further. Youth who have lived their entire lives in fear of active shooters have had the nightmares this country inflicted on us come dangerously close to coming true. 

As we carry the memory of children in Uvalde, Texas being massacred while 400 cops stood outside and prevented parents from entering, we see the nightmare scenario come true in the form of militarized police and ex-IDF militant agitators. 

Not only are these college students not being protected, they are being demonized, gaslit, and psychologically tortured by the entire American establishment across media, politics, and liberal institutions. 

The US government and the Israeli government are not only calling these students terrorists, but looking to actually criminalize them as such, and placing yet another target on top of a lifetime’s worth. 

Gen Z was born into a surveillance state and climate catastrophe, and grew up into the ongoing brutalization and lynching of Black Americans (so many of them children and young adults), into the global fascist turn, and now, the normalization of genocide. 

So many of us have been ravaged by multiple COVID infections because of this country’s atrocious response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and it’s worth noting that the students currently protesting bore some of the worst effects of the pandemic on their health and education. 

We’ve been fighting all along against these things even as our rights and freedoms decrease and our ability to live on our salaries—if we can even get jobs—plummets. In spite of it all, we believe in and try to ensure a peaceful future for humanity. 

If you want to declare war on us, go ahead. We have never been under the illusion that you had any desire to take action to protect us or the world. 

We are clear-eyed. We are in complete solidarity with each other and with our oppressed brothers and sisters around the world, who are being abused by the very same people who abuse us. 

We will keep fighting with each other, for each other, and even for you, even as you villify us. Because this is not about us. It’s about the future of life itself.

Willow Naomi Curry is helping Hala Zidan, a mother of two in Gaza, evacuate to Rafah. You can contribute here.