#young activists

[thefloralmenace]

If you're really young (teens through 20's) and trying to get into activism, I want to go ahead and inoculate you against the disappointment you'll probably encounter at some point when you're trying to work exclusively with other young people on a project. There's this stereotype that it's the young people who will change the world and that it's like a right of passage to get into activism while you're young, but it's also REALLY HARD to start an organization or to have people consistently commit to a project when everyone on the team is in their teens through 20's, and that's not because young people are undedicated or flaky; it's because young people's lives are so prone to change and chaos. People in this age range are physically moving a lot, finding out they have mental/physical health issues, changing jobs/career paths, having kids, getting married, going back to school, leaving school, etc, in a way that people with fully established homes and lives don't. That's why so many boards of volunteers and non-profits are filled with the 60+ crowd. They're stable. They're not moving. They're not having any more kids. They have disposable income and free time if they're retirees. Don't get your hopes crushed if your 20-something friends SWEAR they will commit to some project with you only to be like "oh sorry, my courseload is too heavy" a month later. It gets really frustrating, and it can be easy to blame them for "not being dedicated enough" to the idea to pursue it through life changes, but that's what happens very frequently when young people get together to form an independent project. That's not to say it's impossible - of course there's all kinds of start-ups and programs started by young people that end up in the news and on TV, but I want you to know those successes are possible but not the common experience, and the media makes it look a lot easier than it is; you need more than pure enthusiasm to carry the team.

Ex: I ran an art contest in my college's science department to encourage people within science to also create and experience art. I had THREE other people signed on to help me with this, one grad student and two other college students who were in another club with me. Throughout the whole project, they did not answer one of my emails. When I physically found them in person and asked them to do stuff, they'd promise they would then get overwhelmed with coursework and not do it. And for context here, I was asking them to do stuff like open their emails and vote on the images of art pieces I had sent to them. Stuff that didn't require any physical effort and would take under 10 minutes. When I eventually got really frustrated with this and confronted them about it, two told me they just got really overwhelmed with school, and one was like "oh sorry, I've been having medical issues."

I would say that if you're a young person encountering an extenuating circumstance like that, please please please communicate it to the people you're working on projects with. Like honestly I still haven't completely forgiven them for leaving me to do the whole thing by myself because they didn't even update me so that I would know I could no longer plan on having their help. But that is what my common experience has been working with younger people on projects - they get overwhelmed with the changes in their lives, and they don't communicate that to you. The latter is something for those people to work on because there's not really a good excuse for that unless you physically have no means of communicating to others, but the former is something you should just expect: young people who say they are dedicated to a project and are ready to see it through really mean that... but will often find out that they can't keep that promise because they just couldn't conceptualize the toll that a life change would really take on them (partially because every change is usually a new experience - first moves, first semesters, first jobs).

Another example: A friend of my mine in college volunteered to be on a team of people (also college students) working on identifying the lowest-income schools in the area and trying to get them more resources. Said friend wasn't even the leader of the project, and he's the only one who did any work on it past June. The entire thing fizzled out because the project's creator who you'd think would have the greatest dedication to the idea got overwhelmed and dropped it.

And I say all this from my experience as a young person working with other young people. I'm not prejudiced against young people at all and fully believe in the ideas and capabilites of the younger generations. I just want to warn you that while there is immense value in working in groups, you might get more done as a young activist working exclusively on projects that you can carry out by yourself or by joining community groups that have a diverse range of ages involved so that there are people with more stables lives around that can carry the cause when others are going through some form of life turmoil.

In any case, don't let the difficulty of carrying out group projects or working with others discourage you from doing things or give you the impression that that's always how it will be. You will eventually find the right people to work with you, but that might not happen consistently until you and your group members are at an age where you're more insulated from personal change.

[gwydionmisha]

Trump's anti-climate orders draw lawsuit from young activists citing life, liberty

Jen Psaki talks with Riley, a young climate activist and one of 22 plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the Trump administration in which they ar

[broken00dreamed]

Please share our wonderful stop motion film 🌍✨🌏

We are all crew! Children and young people are most affected by the climate crisis. The film takes three recent disasters from Pakistan, Germany and South Africa as examples.

Our demand for Climate Justice. Emphasizes the responsibility of all of humanity.

[pagesandposeidon]

Beyond the fact that media does have a real life impact, one of the things that bothers me most about people saying “why are you spending your time complaining about this book/show/etc when there are more important things?” is that media crit is often one of the first and most accessible forms of activism for young marginalized people.

A lot of us don’t have the influence or ability to affect the larger, overarching oppressive system. We can’t make political leaders do or not do things. We can’t arrest people or shut down bigoted organizations. We don’t have the resources to make change on a large scale.

But we can inform people within our own sphere (our own fandoms) about everyday bigotry and issues. We can fight for changes in smaller groups where are efforts are more likely to have an affect.

And since there’s a lot of young people active in online fandoms, for some folks that’s how they start their activism, their learning about social issues—they start it from what is accessible for them: their own interests and the people around them.

[brehatano]

There is a new force of nature at hand, stirring all over the world. They are the young people whom frankly, we have failed, who are angry, who are organized, who are capable of making a difference. The most important thing that we can do for them is to get the hell out of their way.

Harrison Ford, UN Climate Action Summit 2019

[siriuslydandy]

Greta Thunberg isn't the only trailblazing young climate leader. Activists from the Amazon to Nigeria share their ideas for battling the cli

Hundreds of young people from countries around the world have their own ideas about how to solve the climate crisis.

Keep kicking all the ass! 👏👏👏

[justbuffalowritingcenter-blog]

Political Pranksters: An Artivism Workshop with Adam Drury

With April Fools’ Day approaching, this week at the JBWC teaching artist Adam Drury led another Artivism workshop. This one was inspired by the political pranksters, the Yes Men and invited young writers to create hilarious, culture jamming “pranks” that inspire and motivate people to take positive action for what they believe in.

After viewing a few clips of the Yes Men’s most recent activist antics, Adam encouraged participants to consider causes that are important to them and the powerful entities that might get in the way of meaningful solutions.

Here’s one prompt from the workshop:

PERFECT PITCH Example: Halliburton SurvivaBall™

Despite all this talk of technological innovation, the biggest, most epic, most pressing and urgent problems of our time are still in search of their solutions. The entities responsible for these problems always say they have the answer, but things are just getting worse!

So you decide to highlight all the #fails of corporate solutions by proposing a hilarious, absurd, ironic, farcical solution of your own.

You’ve tricked a group of investors and business leaders into hearing you out. Pitch your perfect idea for solving X with a brilliant, ingenious solution that highlights how little is actually being done to make things better.

STUDENT EXAMPLES

Working in groups, students decided to draw attention to issues involving standardized testing and school safety measures in response to recent school shootings. Students began by creating fake interest groups/organizations that might be proposing the absurd solutions they brainstormed.

Lucy and Eden became spokespeople for Students Helping Incentivize Testing. They presented a new incentive program that would reward students receiving high test scores with luxuries such as paper and counseling services. Depending on their classes’ success, teachers would receive cash bonuses or paycheck deductions. Check out their press conference here.

Sage, Trinity, and Carson became spokespeople for the Association for Student Safety. Their goal was to combine testing with school safety by requiring students to take standardized tests on the use of weapons and how to protect their school in the case of an intruder. Those with high scores receive weapons, those with low scores receive band-aids. Here’s their press conference.

To reiterate, our students would like us to remind you that these are SATIRICAL videos. This is dark comedy, folks, for a dark time.

The late writer Ursula Le Guin once said that “resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art: the art of words.” These Artivism workshops give young writers a space to experiment and play with the many ways their words can improve their communities and change their world.

[rowanblanchardfanclub]

Row x Yara x Grace