I wrote this story because I'm exhausted by a particular kind of silence.
Not the silence of people who have nothing to say, but the silence of people who have been taught that speaking will get them killed. The silence that gets mistaken for acceptance. The silence that systems of violence depend on to sustain themselves.
For years, I've watched a generation come of age in contexts where staying quiet was framed as wisdom, where keeping your head down was called survival, where acceptance of the unacceptable was repackaged as pragmatism. And I've watched that same generation begin to reject that equation entirely.
This story isn't journalism,it's a thought experiment about what happens when a generation realizes that the "safety" their parents bought with silence wasn't safety at all. It's about the moment when people understand that acceptance is just death in slow motion, and that the cage was never actually locked.
Why It Matters
Because acceptance is always political. When we accept violence as inevitable, corruption as unchangeable, or death as "just how things are," we're not being realistic,we're participating in the system that produces those outcomes. The youth in this story understand something profound: the system survives because people accept it. Take away acceptance, and the entire structure becomes unstable.
Because every generation inherits the compromises of the last. The parents in this story aren't villains. They made rational choices in impossible circumstances. They stayed quiet because speaking up got people killed. They paid the protection money because refusing meant death. They taught their children to survive because they loved them. But those survival strategies, multiplied across millions of people over decades, became the foundation that made continued violence possible.
Because documentation changes everything. One of the most important threads in this story is Río and the digital infrastructure. The youth aren't braver than their parents,they have tools their parents never had. They can document. They can encrypt. They can distribute evidence faster than it can be destroyed. They can make it impossible to forget. That changes the calculus of resistance entirely.
Because questions can be more powerful than demands. Camila's question,”Why is wanting to stay alive treated like rebellion?",cuts through every layer of complexity and excuse. It names the foundational absurdity of systems that require citizens to accept their own deaths. It's not a policy proposal. It's not a negotiating position. It's a question that can't be answered without admitting what everyone already knows.
What I Hope Readers Take From This
This story is about Mexico, but it's not only about Mexico. It's about any context where violence has been normalized, where corruption has been institutionalized, where fear has become background noise.
It's about the moment when people stop asking "Can we win?" and start asking "Can we live with ourselves if we don't try?"
It's about understanding that realistic often just means accepting the unacceptable, and that being called naive by people who've spent decades managing decline might actually be a sign you're onto something.
It's about the power of refusal,not refusal backed by force or ideology, just the simple, absolute refusal to treat murder as normal.
The Bigger Picture
We're living through a moment when young people around the world are looking at systems that have been presented as inevitable and asking: Why? Why this way? Why not something else?
They're not asking politely. They're not waiting for permission. They're not calculating odds or conducting cost-benefit analyses. They're just refusing to accept frameworks that treat their deaths as acceptable losses.
That refusal is its own kind of power. It doesn't guarantee victory. It doesn't make the fight easier. But it changes what's possible by changing what's acceptable.
The youth in this story understand something that often takes older generations decades to learn: you don't need permission to stop accepting the unacceptable. You don't need a perfect plan or guaranteed success. You just need to stop pretending that normal is acceptable when normal is killing you.
That's why I wrote this. Because I wanted to capture that moment of refusal. That instant when acceptance breaks and something else becomes possible.
Whether it's enough, whether it works, whether they win,that's not the point. The point is they're trying. They're refusing. They're showing up.
And sometimes, that's where everything starts.
If this resonated with you, I'd love to hear why. And if you think others need to read it, share it. Stories about refusal need to travel.
The story ‘No Mas’ and your comment here touches me really because it resonators with my heavy feelings and thoughs, since the past years the Madness accelerated. I’m a mother of two teenagers.
I see and hear anger and fear are the emoticons they carry all the time with them. They are not fully socialised and brainwashed yet and understand the reality they live in clearly. And they see the imagmes and hear messages from teens around the world. They understand what’s happening and what will come when nothing changes. And because they know, I can’t comfort them anymore, It hurts.
They feel anger, because they realise the adults ‘stole their safe and fair future’ ( climate, political en economical stability ) and still do little about it. They see the rise in authoritarianism and violence. They fear what’s comming . They see adults behaving like everything is fine and ask their kids to work hard so they can become succesfull in the future.
My douchter tells me there’s no good future and so she wants to have fun now, because when she will have my age, fun will be over and degrees useless. . She tells me that everybody who’s not angry about how society is going, is or delusional or stupid. She’s afraid, really affraid that she will be prosecuted in the near future for how she is and did not choose to be. She cries. She asks me if I would shelter LGBTQ girls or girls wanting abortion fleeing from the USA. I said yes but thought that maybe very soon they and she as well wouldn’t be safe here in Europe either , if we are not able to stop the Madness. It took my breath away.
So my message for all the kids and teens: use your anger, make the adults shiver. To wake us up, because we, the adults should lead this fight so you could have a future you deserve.
Your message hits hard, and in a necessary way. You are seeing what many adults refuse to look at. Your kids are not afraid or angry for nothing. They are responding to a world that feels unstable, dishonest, violent, and full of mixed signals. Their clarity is not a weakness. It is awareness.
What stands out is how deeply you listen to them. You are not brushing off their fear or forcing fake optimism. You are standing with them in the truth, even when it hurts, and that takes real strength.
Your daughter’s fear about the future, and her instinct to protect others, shows a moral core far beyond her age. She is scared, but she is awake. That matters more than she knows.
And your message to teens is powerful: use your anger, shake the adults out of their sleep. You are right. The responsibility is on us. They should not have to carry this fight alone.
Thank you for sharing this. It is raw, real, and incredibly moving.
Mexico is in a gawd awful situation with the cartels, and has been for decades. Not to mention that our own US Government aided and abetted these same cartels, who continue to evolve with youth, that has the same capabilities if not more, then the brave protesters you write about here.
How does a country or for that matter a hemisphere, eradicate this murderous disease these cartels have become?
I wish I had the answer……..
Is Trump right to use our military? Maybe, but to what end, at what cost, and what is driving his real interest…..OIL?
While reading your article I could not help but think about our own youth here in the US.
41 million members of Generation Z were eligible to vote in the 2024 presidential election. But, the few who actually took the time to vote, voted for Trump!
I see that as the same “acceptance” the elders had in your article but, to one man, not a cartel. Which in my eyes is even worse. Normalizing Trump is the same acceptance.
My hope is that Gen Z has finally seen the light in that Trump & the Republicans have sold them, as well as the rest of the country a bill of goods, not worth the paper it was documented on, and will finally put an end to their chaos by voting en masse in all of our upcoming & future elections.
You’re right,Mexico’s been living with this nightmare for generations, and we haven’t exactly been innocent bystanders on our side of the line. There’s no magic fix. It takes choking off the money, the guns, the demand, rooting out corruption, and giving the next generation something better than a cartel paycheck. Slow work. Hard work. But the only alternative is letting the violence run forever.
The young people feel the current system steals their future and betray them . They understand in an instinctif way it can’t just be fixed. They’re desperate for deep change. They choose extremes, and depending on their ‘bubble’ and the environment they grew up in, they choose a far right strongman or a far left movement or they just opt out. But when they see they are betrayed, they dump them. Trumps approval ratings with young people dropped dramatically.
The poll's say Trump's approval ratings with young people have dropped dramatically.
But, will this turn into votes, or as you say will they "just opt out" ????
Who knows ???? Only time will tell.
But, whomever is running for election or re-election, they better start reaching out to this 41 million voter bloc if they have any hope whatsoever of winning. JMO
Yes violence is bad. Under the present govt it continues. But at least the economy works better for more people and the people recognize that. The protests were not as widespread as chacterized and are supported by wealthy patrons. I wonder why.
I read that the group of young people that started the protests, were verry angry that right wing groups used the protests to discredit the president and her soft ‘left wing’ policies. They wanted to make a general statement to the whole of society that they failed, to find real solutions
Thanks Tom. for the roadmap. First it's one, then several, then many. Kent State was a turning point in 1970. If enough of us stand up, it won't happen again.
Greg, I have been wanting to talk to someone since I wrote it but no one seemed that interested. Researching this article was amazing. All these young people in this story are real. I believe what they accomplished Could actually be a road map of things our young people could do too.The only problem is I don’t think they are that interested.
Yeah, change takes time. More time than most folks have. Prevention is a better path, but one we are not well-adapted to.
Anger often breeds action, but mostly stupidity in motion. Even intelligent planning is a thin guarantee of a better outcome. But without action, there is no change.
Yeah. Change asks more of us than most of us have in the tank. Prevention is the smarter road, but it’s hard to walk toward a fire you can’t yet see. People move when they’re angry because anger feels like fuel. It’s messy, it’s loud, and half the time it sends us stumbling in the wrong direction. But doing nothing isn’t an option either. Nothing changes on its own.
And an explosion of anger wakes people up. The outcome is unknown. . But things were bad, and would get worse, so at least the problems are made explicit and a change for the better is a possibility. We should relearn to embrace anger, even if anger is scary and power will crack it down and we fear what comes after
Why I Wrote "No Más"
I wrote this story because I'm exhausted by a particular kind of silence.
Not the silence of people who have nothing to say, but the silence of people who have been taught that speaking will get them killed. The silence that gets mistaken for acceptance. The silence that systems of violence depend on to sustain themselves.
For years, I've watched a generation come of age in contexts where staying quiet was framed as wisdom, where keeping your head down was called survival, where acceptance of the unacceptable was repackaged as pragmatism. And I've watched that same generation begin to reject that equation entirely.
This story isn't journalism,it's a thought experiment about what happens when a generation realizes that the "safety" their parents bought with silence wasn't safety at all. It's about the moment when people understand that acceptance is just death in slow motion, and that the cage was never actually locked.
Why It Matters
Because acceptance is always political. When we accept violence as inevitable, corruption as unchangeable, or death as "just how things are," we're not being realistic,we're participating in the system that produces those outcomes. The youth in this story understand something profound: the system survives because people accept it. Take away acceptance, and the entire structure becomes unstable.
Because every generation inherits the compromises of the last. The parents in this story aren't villains. They made rational choices in impossible circumstances. They stayed quiet because speaking up got people killed. They paid the protection money because refusing meant death. They taught their children to survive because they loved them. But those survival strategies, multiplied across millions of people over decades, became the foundation that made continued violence possible.
Because documentation changes everything. One of the most important threads in this story is Río and the digital infrastructure. The youth aren't braver than their parents,they have tools their parents never had. They can document. They can encrypt. They can distribute evidence faster than it can be destroyed. They can make it impossible to forget. That changes the calculus of resistance entirely.
Because questions can be more powerful than demands. Camila's question,”Why is wanting to stay alive treated like rebellion?",cuts through every layer of complexity and excuse. It names the foundational absurdity of systems that require citizens to accept their own deaths. It's not a policy proposal. It's not a negotiating position. It's a question that can't be answered without admitting what everyone already knows.
What I Hope Readers Take From This
This story is about Mexico, but it's not only about Mexico. It's about any context where violence has been normalized, where corruption has been institutionalized, where fear has become background noise.
It's about the moment when people stop asking "Can we win?" and start asking "Can we live with ourselves if we don't try?"
It's about understanding that realistic often just means accepting the unacceptable, and that being called naive by people who've spent decades managing decline might actually be a sign you're onto something.
It's about the power of refusal,not refusal backed by force or ideology, just the simple, absolute refusal to treat murder as normal.
The Bigger Picture
We're living through a moment when young people around the world are looking at systems that have been presented as inevitable and asking: Why? Why this way? Why not something else?
They're not asking politely. They're not waiting for permission. They're not calculating odds or conducting cost-benefit analyses. They're just refusing to accept frameworks that treat their deaths as acceptable losses.
That refusal is its own kind of power. It doesn't guarantee victory. It doesn't make the fight easier. But it changes what's possible by changing what's acceptable.
The youth in this story understand something that often takes older generations decades to learn: you don't need permission to stop accepting the unacceptable. You don't need a perfect plan or guaranteed success. You just need to stop pretending that normal is acceptable when normal is killing you.
That's why I wrote this. Because I wanted to capture that moment of refusal. That instant when acceptance breaks and something else becomes possible.
Whether it's enough, whether it works, whether they win,that's not the point. The point is they're trying. They're refusing. They're showing up.
And sometimes, that's where everything starts.
If this resonated with you, I'd love to hear why. And if you think others need to read it, share it. Stories about refusal need to travel.
https://open.substack.com/pub/joadt/p/no-mas?r=5ccpro&utm_medium=ios
The story ‘No Mas’ and your comment here touches me really because it resonators with my heavy feelings and thoughs, since the past years the Madness accelerated. I’m a mother of two teenagers.
I see and hear anger and fear are the emoticons they carry all the time with them. They are not fully socialised and brainwashed yet and understand the reality they live in clearly. And they see the imagmes and hear messages from teens around the world. They understand what’s happening and what will come when nothing changes. And because they know, I can’t comfort them anymore, It hurts.
They feel anger, because they realise the adults ‘stole their safe and fair future’ ( climate, political en economical stability ) and still do little about it. They see the rise in authoritarianism and violence. They fear what’s comming . They see adults behaving like everything is fine and ask their kids to work hard so they can become succesfull in the future.
My douchter tells me there’s no good future and so she wants to have fun now, because when she will have my age, fun will be over and degrees useless. . She tells me that everybody who’s not angry about how society is going, is or delusional or stupid. She’s afraid, really affraid that she will be prosecuted in the near future for how she is and did not choose to be. She cries. She asks me if I would shelter LGBTQ girls or girls wanting abortion fleeing from the USA. I said yes but thought that maybe very soon they and she as well wouldn’t be safe here in Europe either , if we are not able to stop the Madness. It took my breath away.
So my message for all the kids and teens: use your anger, make the adults shiver. To wake us up, because we, the adults should lead this fight so you could have a future you deserve.
Thank you @Tom Joad for your story.
Thank you so much for reading and your support.
Your message hits hard, and in a necessary way. You are seeing what many adults refuse to look at. Your kids are not afraid or angry for nothing. They are responding to a world that feels unstable, dishonest, violent, and full of mixed signals. Their clarity is not a weakness. It is awareness.
What stands out is how deeply you listen to them. You are not brushing off their fear or forcing fake optimism. You are standing with them in the truth, even when it hurts, and that takes real strength.
Your daughter’s fear about the future, and her instinct to protect others, shows a moral core far beyond her age. She is scared, but she is awake. That matters more than she knows.
And your message to teens is powerful: use your anger, shake the adults out of their sleep. You are right. The responsibility is on us. They should not have to carry this fight alone.
Thank you for sharing this. It is raw, real, and incredibly moving.
As always, great article Tom.
Mexico is in a gawd awful situation with the cartels, and has been for decades. Not to mention that our own US Government aided and abetted these same cartels, who continue to evolve with youth, that has the same capabilities if not more, then the brave protesters you write about here.
How does a country or for that matter a hemisphere, eradicate this murderous disease these cartels have become?
I wish I had the answer……..
Is Trump right to use our military? Maybe, but to what end, at what cost, and what is driving his real interest…..OIL?
While reading your article I could not help but think about our own youth here in the US.
41 million members of Generation Z were eligible to vote in the 2024 presidential election. But, the few who actually took the time to vote, voted for Trump!
I see that as the same “acceptance” the elders had in your article but, to one man, not a cartel. Which in my eyes is even worse. Normalizing Trump is the same acceptance.
My hope is that Gen Z has finally seen the light in that Trump & the Republicans have sold them, as well as the rest of the country a bill of goods, not worth the paper it was documented on, and will finally put an end to their chaos by voting en masse in all of our upcoming & future elections.
RESIST !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You’re right,Mexico’s been living with this nightmare for generations, and we haven’t exactly been innocent bystanders on our side of the line. There’s no magic fix. It takes choking off the money, the guns, the demand, rooting out corruption, and giving the next generation something better than a cartel paycheck. Slow work. Hard work. But the only alternative is letting the violence run forever.
The young people feel the current system steals their future and betray them . They understand in an instinctif way it can’t just be fixed. They’re desperate for deep change. They choose extremes, and depending on their ‘bubble’ and the environment they grew up in, they choose a far right strongman or a far left movement or they just opt out. But when they see they are betrayed, they dump them. Trumps approval ratings with young people dropped dramatically.
The poll's say Trump's approval ratings with young people have dropped dramatically.
But, will this turn into votes, or as you say will they "just opt out" ????
Who knows ???? Only time will tell.
But, whomever is running for election or re-election, they better start reaching out to this 41 million voter bloc if they have any hope whatsoever of winning. JMO
Beautifully crafted and deeply stirring, Tom.
Thank you.
Thank you for reading!!
I haven't had much time of late... but I will never miss an essay of yours!
You simply, never - disappoint!
Yes violence is bad. Under the present govt it continues. But at least the economy works better for more people and the people recognize that. The protests were not as widespread as chacterized and are supported by wealthy patrons. I wonder why.
I read that the group of young people that started the protests, were verry angry that right wing groups used the protests to discredit the president and her soft ‘left wing’ policies. They wanted to make a general statement to the whole of society that they failed, to find real solutions
Thanks Tom. for the roadmap. First it's one, then several, then many. Kent State was a turning point in 1970. If enough of us stand up, it won't happen again.
Greg, I have been wanting to talk to someone since I wrote it but no one seemed that interested. Researching this article was amazing. All these young people in this story are real. I believe what they accomplished Could actually be a road map of things our young people could do too.The only problem is I don’t think they are that interested.
Yeah, change takes time. More time than most folks have. Prevention is a better path, but one we are not well-adapted to.
Anger often breeds action, but mostly stupidity in motion. Even intelligent planning is a thin guarantee of a better outcome. But without action, there is no change.
Great post. Hard choices.
Yeah. Change asks more of us than most of us have in the tank. Prevention is the smarter road, but it’s hard to walk toward a fire you can’t yet see. People move when they’re angry because anger feels like fuel. It’s messy, it’s loud, and half the time it sends us stumbling in the wrong direction. But doing nothing isn’t an option either. Nothing changes on its own.
And an explosion of anger wakes people up. The outcome is unknown. . But things were bad, and would get worse, so at least the problems are made explicit and a change for the better is a possibility. We should relearn to embrace anger, even if anger is scary and power will crack it down and we fear what comes after
Maybe we aren't cut out for this thing called life. :/
Thank You TJ
Very welcome!!