When I was learning photojournalism (as a side skill), for practice, I used to attend lots of demonstrations in Boston, and the demonstrators always seemed to be sincere.
The students (of which Boston has a ton) might have been attending different demonstrations: I mostly saw non-student adults.
Occasionally, a demonstration coordinated by a particular activism group would seem transactional: people show up and assemble, media comes out to get what might air as a few seconds of video, people leave. But even those ones, the people seemed to be sincere.
Regarding schools incentivizing "activism": that's frustrating, but not entirely new. Added to the widely-gamed college application checklist, long after "volunteering"? (I could never review college admissions applications. You can't even get mad at even the most insincere-seeming students for playing the game, since that was the game the schools put in front of them. The solution might be to not have it be a competition for scarce resources, since it no longer has to be.)
The students (of which Boston has a ton) might have been attending different demonstrations: I mostly saw non-student adults.
Occasionally, a demonstration coordinated by a particular activism group would seem transactional: people show up and assemble, media comes out to get what might air as a few seconds of video, people leave. But even those ones, the people seemed to be sincere.
Regarding schools incentivizing "activism": that's frustrating, but not entirely new. Added to the widely-gamed college application checklist, long after "volunteering"? (I could never review college admissions applications. You can't even get mad at even the most insincere-seeming students for playing the game, since that was the game the schools put in front of them. The solution might be to not have it be a competition for scarce resources, since it no longer has to be.)