Youth activism

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Youth activism is best summarized as youth voice engaged in community organizing for social change. Around the world young people are engaged as activism planners, researchers, teachers, evaluators, decision-makers, advocates and leading actors in the environmental movement, social justice organizations, and anti-racism and anti-homophobia campaigns. As the central beneficiaries of public schools, youth are also advocating for student-led school change through student activism and meaningful student involvement.

1 Forms
2 In the United States
3 See also
4 Examples
5 External links

[edit] Forms

There are three main forms of youth activism. The first simply relies on youth involvement in social activism. This is the predominant form of youth activism today, as millions of young people around the world participate in social activism that is organized, informed, led, and assessed by adults. Many efforts, including education reform, children's rights, and government reform call on youth to participate this way, often called youth voice. Youth councils are an example of this.

Youth-driven activism requires young people to be the primary movers within an adult-led movement. Such is the case with the Sierra Club, where youth compel their peers to join and become active in the environmental movement. This is also true of many organizations that were founded by youth who became adults, such as SEAC, National Youth Rights Association, Global Youth Action Network, and Free the Children. Such is also the case with the European Youth Union.

The third form of youth activism is the increasingly common neologism youth-led community organizing. This title encompasses action which is conceived of, designed, enacted, challenged, redesigned, and driven entirely by young people. While there is no current national or international movement that is entirely led by youth, a number of local initiatives serve as examples, including Seattle Young Peoples Project in the US and Article 12 in Scotland.

[edit] In the United States

Youth activism as a social phenomenon in the United States truly became defined in the mid- to late-nineteenth century when young people began forming labor strikes in response to their working conditions, wages, and hours. Child laborers in the coal mines of Appalachia began this trend, with newspaper carriers, soon following. These actions isolated youths' interests in the popular media of the times, and separated young people from their contemporary adult labor counterparts.

This separation continued through the 1930s, when the American Youth Congress presented a "Bill of Youth Rights" to the US Congress. Their actions were indicative of a growing student movement present throughout the US from the 1920s through the early 1940s. The 1950s saw the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. bring young people into larger movements for civil rights. This led to the outbreak of youth activism in the 1960s.

In recent years, scholars such as the Paulo Freire, Henry Giroux, Howard Zinn, Alfie Kohn, and Jonathan Kozol have all called for young people to become central actors in the guidance of schools and communities. Community organizations such as Children's Defense Fund, Sierra Club, and The Freechild Project have supported this call, providing training, resources, and other support. Advocates have included John Holt, Myles Horton and William Upski Wimsatt.

Another example of youth activism is seen in the anti-globalization movement, which is made up largely of young people. A small group of youthful anarchists gained international attention during the WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999 when, in a formation known as a black bloc, they smashed windows of multinational corporations and clashed with police.