Community is a powerful product of youth activism, as well as a motivator for continued engagement.
I was a child of the 1960s. As the seventh of eight kids, my older siblings were involved in protesting the Vietnam war, talking about the Civil Rights movement and how DDT was poisoning birds of prey. Protest songs were the soundtrack of my youth. On the first Earth Day, we hiked up to Sunfish Pond to clean up trash. My friends and I were involved with early recycling efforts, where we (as young teenagers!) would stand in the bed of a giant dump truck, smashing glass bottles with a pickax. [That’s where I got my first set of stitches, from broken glass.
My second set was also from recycling!] It was a natural outgrowth then to protest reciting the Pledge of Alliance in middle school—my friends and I sat, silent, during Homeroom—and to go on to create a student protest newsletter in high school.
In my college years, I would say in reflection that my activist work shaped me far more than my academic studies. It was through political protest that I found my “pod” — my friends, many of whom are still very dear to me almost 50 years later. We advocated for the first college Women’s Center, held the first Take Back the Night march in our town, participated in civil disobedience and got arrested at the Women’s Pentagon Action in Washington, DC.
We laid down in front of the dump trucks at the Warren County, North Carolina PCB dump, which is now recognized as the birth of the Environmental Justice movement in the United States. We marched up Broadway in New York City, blindfolded, wearing giant animal masks to represent the forest animals blinded in a nuclear holocaust. We cried as we walked.
I was raised to leave the world a better place, and I hope I have done my small part to do so. The need now is sadly even more stark…So to all the young folx out there I would say: find your people, build your pod, and take up the mantle. Interconnect. We need you.
This same group of friends that I found through my organizing formed the core of gay and lesbian organizing in Durham, North Carolina, my home. We created the first Pride March, and then later the Triangle Area Lesbian and Gay Alliance (back in 1986, there was no universal recognition of the “BTQIA++” element of queer identity). The rainbow flag was not yet a household symbol—we sewed our own banners and flags.
In fact, the first Pride March in North Carolina had its roots in a potluck dinner. Some friends said, “We should have a Pride March down here! They do one every year in Boston.” From there, we built our organizing committee, and made it happen. It was about Pride, yes, but it was not just about having a party. It was about changing our culture and insisting that we be recognized as deserving full rights and equal treatment in the eyes of the legal system, our workplaces, and our families.
What really strikes me is how incredibly involved we were in each other’s lives. We were friends, housemates, lovers, and exes. We were completely intertwined. In those days, when we wanted to communicate, there was no email, no cell phones, no conference calls. We’d plan meetings weeks in advance; make a flyer; post it on a telephone pole or bundle it into a newsletter which was placed in the mail. In order to communicate, we had to meet, to be in the same place. If we were meeting, we might as well have a potluck dinner as well — and so, we were completely intertwined.
This called for a far larger social component than I see today. We had fun! We danced! Nowadays, many youth activists communicate via social media such as Signal and WhatsApp — if there is a meeting, it’s often on Zoom or another video app. A face-to-face environment is less common. While they still get the job done, I do wonder about the depth of the social fabric that develops.
I know that for me, as someone who is close to 65 years old, it feels much more disconnected. I believe that the truest, deepest change comes about through relationship, through interconnection. The best advocacy strikes at the heart to create change. It’s not just about receiving a piece of information and undergoing a sea change.
Looking back as I approach the age of 65, I wouldn’t trade any of these experiences. I was raised to leave the world a better place, and I hope I have done my small part to do so. The need now is sadly even more stark, as we have weapons that can do more damage, the rise (again) of authoritarian governments, and an increasingly warmer Earth. So to all the young folx out there I would say: find your people, build your pod, and take up the mantle. Interconnect. We need you.
Image Credit: Ben Tavener from Curitiba, Brazil, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
