But to imply that the US has been active all this time and the Irish haven’t is wrong. I was on a US college campus in the 1990s and there was no activism. Activism has been dormant in the US system for 20-30 years until just recently. But things have gotten so bad for US Millenials (fees, debt, job prospects, worker’s rights, systemic racism, social supports), that they are now seeing no other option than to protest/get active. I am also disappointed not to see a mention of the victorious NCAD Student Action campaign from last year mentioned. This was a terrific campaign including protests, occupying, petitions, letters, and national news coverage which resulted in real change at NCAD. Part of the problem, however, is national news coverage. The author probably didn’t know about NCAD because it received some but little national coverage. The author has also not referenced all of the work going on at UK Universities: People & Planet Edinburgh, Occupy LSE – Free University of London, Free Education MCR, The Free University of Sheffield, and all the work being done by SUs at these universities because these UK student movements haven’t received much national press attention. Conversely, in the US, the movements are getting high media attention.

A better argument in this article might be that things have not gotten so bad here because the welfare state (as relates to social supports, workers rights, affordable education, etc.) hasn’t been so dismantled (this is also an argument made in relation to the Right2Water campaign, it took us 5-7 years from the 2008 crash to really get a protest movement mobilised on a massive scale to achieve change). However, the 1% are now succeeding in dismantling the welfare state supports in Ireland (ie. the talk about moving to university loans) that it is starting to become a big problem. I hope students will start to see what’s going on in the US/UK/NCAD and the Right2WaterIreland and get active.