Ah, Youth

A couple of months ago I borrowed Wal-Town from our public library. It's a National Film Board documentary about six activists from Montreal who embark on a cross-Canada campaign against that Walmart box-store juggernaut that you may have seen parked on the edge of a home-town near you.

This ten minute trailer pretty much sums up the whole movie.

Now, I wasn't ready to sign up for the cause by the end of the film, but I thought it raised some important issues about Walmart's response to organized labour, and about the impact of the box-store phenomenon on the common-weal of society. I've shared some tentative thoughts elsewhere about ways our Faith might inform where and why and how we shop for stuff. Wal-town seems to be asking some similar kinds of questions about whether or not the "bottom line" should be our only bottom line when it comes to making decisions about where we spend our money.

But these weren't the issues in particular that stuck with me.

What stuck with me is the poignant and compelling portrait of youth the film evokes. Here are six college-aged young people honestly trying to make a difference: taking on a larger-than-life multi-national corporation with nothing but a sling of optimism and five smooth pamphlets, because they can imagine a world where things are different.

And there's something beautiful there. And there's something beautiful in lines like: "I don't know how to react when people refuse to take information." ""We're gonna stay unless the police ask us to leave..and..uh..thank you." [Customer returning pamphlet to activist]: "You can hand this crap to someone else." [Activist]: "Okay."

I was part of a Youth Parliament when I was in university, where we got together and passed resolutions on issues like fair labour, free education, child exploitation-- where we tried to speak into existence the world we could imagine where things are different. This film helped me see that youthful, world-changing imagination as something beautiful.

It reminded me of the imaginative vision and determination that a real cause can ignite in youth.

And it reminded me of something I heard Tony Campolo say about the church. He was talking about how this generation of youth, more than perhaps any in recent memory, are hungry for a cause... longing for something they can commit to, that will put all their creativity and energy and optimism to the ultimate test. Then he said: if the church looses this generation, it won't be because they made Christianity too hard. It will be because they made it too easy.

As I mulled over the closing credits of Wal-town (six activists, 36 towns, 1 corporation), I started to think he might be right.