Kids: The Re-appropriation of Political Development

Democracy implies the participation of all in public life and, in particular, the participation of adolescents and children.

No question here of excluding them from politics, as if it were impure and degrading for them or else too grave and too serious.

It is no longer a question, here, of bringing in neat and tidy school children to wave their little flags along the route of presidents and benevolent generals.

Here, politics, real politics, becomes everyone's business, particularly of those who up to that point have never been able to make their voices heard: women, the poor, the illiterate, the elderly, and children.

Here, children have a right to citizenship and to free expression. Their participation in politics is neither granted nor manipulated, but conquered enthusiastically.