A YES campaign group has pledged to put young people at its heart, claiming that too often they are being patronised by older independence supporters.
Aberdeen Independence Movement said one of the reasons they had formed was because they felt the Yes movement in general often let down young voices even though the 2014 indyref campaign gave young people a platform “without being belittled and dismissed” to advocate for the change they wanted.
“It’s time we got that back,” said the group in a statement. “Young people in our movement far too often face ageism, being patronised, treated as a tick-box, are ignored.
“As a group, we have decided that we need to reinforce that Aberdeen Independence Movement (AIM) is a safe space for young voices. We pledge that we will promote young voices, treat young voices as equal at all times, we shall not patronise and we shall not treat young people as a tick box. Young people will be allowed to lead, not follow.”
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Speaking to the Sunday National, one of AIM’s founding members, Theo Forbes, said he had experienced verbal abuse from others within the independence movement when expressing his opinions.
“Young people’s voices should be respected,” he said. “Although there are generational differences it is not something we should be ashamed of or that we should hate each other for. We all still support independence and we should be able to debate and argue with each other respectfully.”
He said the point of the pledge was to stress that young people’s voices should not be “shoved to the side”.
“We inspired them in 2014 and if we want to do it again we can’t be going down the road we are going by shutting young people’s voices down,” said Forbes. “The pledge has been made to show that AIM is a voice for young people in an independence movement which often does have patronising rhetoric towards them.”
While young people were not more important than any other age group, he said they would be “instrumental” in winning independence and the abuse was “absurd” as an “overwhelming” majority of young people support independence.
He said that it is young people who are “shaping the argument for independence”.
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