Instructions for the Future: How to Raise Citizens in an Age of Subjects
Authoritarianism trains people to watch and wait; citizenship teaches them to notice what must happen next and begin.
I have written about Jackie and Shadow before, but the story didn’t remain where I left it. In May, I wrote about a group of fourth graders in Danville, California, who had followed the two bald eagles through a classroom livestream. When the children learned that Moon Camp, nearly 63 acres of undeveloped shoreline within the eagles’ foraging territory, could become a luxury housing development and marina, they began raising money to protect it.
That piece, “The Children Remembered What the Rest of Us Keep Forgetting,” was about hope, about children who hadn’t yet learned to treat helplessness as evidence of sophistication; they cared about two wild creatures, discovered that those creatures’ home was threatened, and reached for whatever was available to them; letters, lemonade, poster board, origami, and adults with wallets. I’m returning to Jackie and Shadow because what once looked like hope has since revealed itself as something more organized, those children were practicing citizenship.
In July, Jackie disappeared from the familiar trees around Big Bear Lake. She was eventually found grounded near Dana Point Park after a brief altercation with two younger eagles. She could defend herself, but she couldn’t fly far enough to reach safety.
Visitors and local residents stayed near her to protect her from wildlife and human interference. They tried to reach agencies, found help through a local fire station, and kept watch while Captain Dennis Jones and his team remained with her until rescuers arrived around two in the morning.
Jackie was transferred first into emergency care and then to the Ojai Raptor Center. According to the latest official update, published July 29, Jackie has been moved out of the intensive care unit and no longer requires oxygen therapy. She remains very sick, continues to receive intensive treatment and monitoring, and isn’t yet out of danger, but the move represents an encouraging step in her recovery. The cause of her severe anemia remains unknown.
Shadow continued defending the territory while Sandy and Luna explored farther from the nest. The young eagles were last seen on camera July 23 and may have begun the normal process of dispersing into lives beyond the range of human observation. As with nearly everything in this story, love has had to coexist with uncertainty.
Jackie’s rescue didn’t happen because one heroic person arrived with every necessary answer; it happened as a relay in which different people noticed, stayed, sought help, exercised institutional authority responsibly, and contributed specialized knowledge, while others donated, shared verified information, and continued paying attention after the dramatic moment had passed. No one person performed the entire rescue; each person accepted responsibility for the next available step. That may be one of the most useful definitions of citizenship we can give a child. A subject waits for power to act, while a citizen learns how to make care travel.
Citizenship is usually taught to children as a collection of symbols and future privileges. There is a flag, a pledge, a handful of powdered-wig men, and the promise that one day they may stand in a small booth and select which adult will disappoint them professionally. The lesson is arranged almost entirely around what the country is, very little around what a citizen does, and even less around what power is attempting to make of them.
That omission has become dangerous. Authoritarian culture doesn’t merely seek control of government; it tries to produce a certain kind of person, obedient to hierarchy, suspicious of difference, loyal to personalities rather than principles, and increasingly convinced that power belongs naturally to whoever already possesses it. It teaches people to experience public life as an audience in which leaders act, institutions bend, and rights disappear while everyone else watches on a screen, selecting only from an approved range of reactions.
A subject may be angry, informed, and capable of spending fourteen hours a day discussing politics in exquisite detail, but what makes someone a subject is not ignorance; it’s the belief that public life is something other people make. A citizen, by contrast, understands that power is a relationship, and that relationships change when people change how they participate in them.
