Throughout history, there have never been very many successful youth uprisings. Most people have difficulty naming a youth revolt, much less being able to tell you whether or not it was successful. In today’s media all we hear about is political revolts in the Middle East, especially with all of the political turmoil in Libya. In Little Brother, however, Doctorow decides to have a younger set, high school students more specifically, attempt a revolt against a particular authority. Although they do not succeed, it provides a good insight to Doctorow’s opinion on whether or not there can be a successful youth revolt.
Doctorow shows that he believes that a youth movement cannot happen, as clearly shown by Marcus getting caught by the Department of Homeland Security in his book. However, by mentioning events like the Free Speech Movement, he shows that he believes that fighting for your freedoms is something worth fighting for.
One youth movement that is focused in Little Brother is the Free Speech Movement. This youth movement was pivotal in the civil liberties movement in the sixties and was overall a great success. Now, I found it interesting that Doctorow would include such a successful and famous movement in a book where ultimately his characters performing the revolt end up failing. At a second glance, I realized that it was not whether or not they failed, but what they were fighting for. The youth in Berkeley were fighting for free speech, and the characters in the book were fighting for relatively the same thing. Free speech is an important topic to Doctorow, and he makes this especially clear by basing a large portion of his novel around the fact that Marcus is simply trying to get his own point of view out to a crowd that is doing everything in their power to silence him.
In Little Brother, the authority that is abusing its power is the Department of Homeland Security. In the real world, really any form of authority can abuse their power—the government, the police, even teachers. Authority surrounds us every moment of every day, and every so often someone decides that enough is enough and they start a rebellion. In the world of Little Brother, the amount of authority was so much to the point where it was impractical, and it reached the limit where rebellious characters like Marcus enjoyed breaking the rules and rebelling against the overwhelming amount of power. When it comes to maintaining peace, a person or group in power must be very careful about how they exert their authority. If done in a way that is too forceful or harsh, they will create a situation much like the one in Little Brother and will end up right in the middle of a large group of very unhappy people.
As well planned and thought out that Marcus’s plan was, it was not going to go very far from the get go. As critical as it sounds, Marcus was not fit to be a leader of such a large movement. He was too hotheaded and much too eager to overpower an organization that was much larger than he was, even at his highest point of rebellion. What was so effective about the Free Speech Movement was that no one tried to overturn Berkeley’s campus police. There was nothing hostile about the Free Speech Movement; all it was was strategically placed sit-ins with a multitude of participants and a goal that was very manageable. Getting Cal Berkeley to allow on-campus political activities as well as the acknowledgement of free speech and academic freedom is a much more easily accessible goal than trying to overthrow the Department of Homeland Security.
Despite Marcus having an extremely intricate plan figured out, he was still unsuccessful in carrying out a successful revolt, whereas the Berkeley students involved in the Free Speech Movement got exactly what they wanted relatively easily. The leader of the Free Speech Movement made himself a personable figure in the revolution; he made himself known and approachable, whereas Marcus did not have a choice in the matter. He had to remain elusive and anonymous for his own safety, otherwise he would have been thrown into prison by the DHS. In an interview with a very important figure of the Free Speech Movement, Barbara Garson talked about her involvement as well as how the leader, Mario Savio took over his role. She discusses how their involvement was purely with a “vision of a better world”. (http://0-web.ebscohost.com.sculib.scu.edu/ehost/detail?sid=323bd677-a680-4f8f-8f68-973f0f8807d8%40sessionmgr113&vid=1&hid=125&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=apn&AN=ALTP29316) Now the crucial difference between this and Marcus’s movement was that Savio’s main dream concerning his movement was to try to do whatever he could to right something he saw as wrong, whereas Marcus’ sole reason for doing what he did was to get back at Homeland Security and prove that he was right. The motives were extremely different and I feel like it played a crucial role in how successful each movement was.  People with negative motives often have their true goals become overshadowed by such strong negative emotions. Marcus had angry motives and thus was unable to carry out a successful revolution.
            Free speech is something that people have been fighting for, for a very long time. Even now, in a time where it appears that most social troubles have been put to rest, there are still certain places in the world where people are very repressed. Even here, at Santa Clara, ethics classes bring up the topic of free speech, and a question that is frequently asked is “How far can free speech go?” As Americans, free speech is one of our basic liberties and something that all should be entitled to. However, the debate carries on. People struggle every day to try to find a standard base that everyone can “say this is right, and that is wrong.” Certain individuals believe that the state should have the power to be able to censor what is and is not appropriate to be said. However, I and I am sure Doctorow would disagree with this statement. The whole plot of Little Brother revolves around a government agency attempting to regulate how much people know about a situation and an individual deciding to stand up for his own freedom as well as the freedom of the rest of his countrymen.
As much as I wish that I could provide a substantial answer as to how far can free speech go, I feel as though in our complex society today the path leading us to an answer is one that is going to be extensive and with many roadblocks along the way.
            Censorship is an aspect in our lives that many of us do not even pay attention to, solely because of the fact that it is so difficult to be able to find on a day-to-day basis. The government and the media have reached the ability to ensure that if there is something happening that they do not want the public to discover, we will not. I am sure the public would like to think that censorship only goes as far as shutting down certain websites, or putting an end to strikes, but governments will go to all lengths to shut down revolutionaries, ranging from banning certain things that they deem unacceptable to throwing individuals in prison. Despite Little Brother being fictional, certain actions taken by governments such as the Patriot Act, which was enforced in 2001, seem incredibly similar to the harsh actions taken by the DHS in Doctorow’s book.
So is it possible for there to be a youth revolution? According to Doctorow, it is not possible. Regardless of all of the effort, a group of teenagers are just not able to successfully overthrow such a massive organization with the solely the help of the Internet and just with sheer masses of people.  And on top of all that, the leader’s motives were not appropriate for such a large challenge. However successful the Free Speech Movement may have been, that was only out of luck, because really, how many successful youth movements are there in the news?  To imagine that such a young group of people could come together in such a way that they would be able to take down an organization that is so much larger than they are. However ideal it may be to believe that at such a young age that they would be able to change the mentality of so many people and potentially make a permanent impact seems a little farfetched. The fact that the Free Speech movement was so successful was just extremely lucky and only happened due to the fact that the Berkeley students in charge were extremely resourceful and took advantage to all of the help they had access to. Doctorow uses Little Brother to give his opinion on multiple topics in modern day society, but I feel that the way he represents his opinions on youth revolutions was uniquely portrayed and very successful.