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Youth Activism

‘Business As Usual Is A Death Sentence’: Hundreds Of Youth Activists Sit In At DNC Headquarters To Demand 2020 Debate On Climate Crisis

Hundreds of youth activists held a sit-in at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee on Tuesday to demand a climate-specific presidential debate that treats the planetary crisis with the urgency and seriousness it deserves. "People everywhere are hurting from pollution and climate disasters, yet our political and media establishment routinely ignores these crises," Destiney Lee, a 22-year-old Sunrise Movement activist who took part in the protest, said in a statement. Agreeing to host a debate centered around the climate emergency, Lee said, is "the absolute least" DNC chair Tom Perez can do.

Hijacking The Congolese People’s Victory

The Congolese people were determined to rid themselves of Joseph Kabila’s regime on 30 December 2018, the date of the presidential, legislative and provincial elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). For two years the people had made tremendous sacrifices in life and freedom in a deadly battle against President Kabila, who was bent on remaining in power by any means necessary. Those means included killing, jailing and driving into exile anyone who demanded that he organize elections and step down from the presidency.

Why Students Of Color Are Stepping Up To Lead Climate Strikes

The youth-led movement builds on the momentum of the increasingly Black and Brown leadership behind the Green New Deal. Kawika Ke Koa Pegram has lived his entire life in island communities and is all too familiar with what sea level rise looks like firsthand. Pegram, a 17-year-old junior in high school, recently moved back to Hawai‘i—where he was born—from the Philippines. Two years later, Hurricane Walaka hit the state. “It was one of the worst storms the island has seen in modern history,” he remembers. “It had floods that went up to your knees and legs.”

Global Climate Strike In Pictures: Millions Of Students Walk Out To Demand Planetary Transformation

"We are facing the greatest existential crisis humanity has ever faced. And yet it has been ignored. You who have ignored it know who you are.” All over the planet on Friday, millions of children and young adults walked out of their classrooms in an unprecedented collective action to demand a radical and urgent shift in society's energy and economic systems in order to avert the worst impacts of human-caused global warming and climate change.

Love & Rage Against The Machine: Sitting In At The Yale Investments Office

The Sunrise Movement, an organization of young people that made its debut after the 2016 election, helped elect several new pro-climate action members of Congress this year and has been raising hell in D.C. since the election, sitting in (and getting arrested) in Nancy Pelosi’s office and visiting the offices of dozens of other Congressmembers – a thousand-strong – to demand that they support a Select Committee for a Green New Deal that would treat the climate crisis as the emergency it is, and includes a jobs creation piece that would provide employment in the clean energy sector for anyone wanting a job.

We Have 12 Years To Stop Climate Catastrophe. These Young Activists Have A Plan.

On a clear and sunny morning in San Francisco’s downtown SoMa district, 40 people stand side by side with interlinked arms blocking the entrance to the San Francisco Federal Building. Just a couple of weeks ago this city was shrouded in a suffocating blanket of wildfire smoke that had traveled down from giant blazes in the north. But the haze has since cleared, and its absence has revealed a clarity of vision which stretches far beyond a healthier air quality index. “I’m here today because we have a 12-year deadline,” Lydia Macy, 18, told HuffPost from behind a 40-foot banner that she was helping to hold up. “Climate change is the No. 1 issue that we’re facing in the 21st century, and if we don’t fight we won’t have a world to live in.”

On 65th Anniversary Of Korean Truce, Activists Criticize US For Delaying Real Peace

South Korean peace and justice activists have been writing to us complaining that the United States is not responding to the positive steps being taken by North Korea before and after the meeting between President Trump and Chairman Kim. Their views show a great divide between the United States and the calls for a permanent peace which includes removal of US troops as just last week the Congress passed a National Defense Authorization Act which forbids removal of US troops from Korea. The activists argue that the temporary halt in war games which practice nuclear and other military attacks on North Korea are insufficient. They want to see movement toward a real peace treaty and, they want US military forces out of Korea, permanently.

‘This Is Zero Hour’: Youth-Led Marches Across the Globe For Climate Justice

Declaring that climate change is "an issue of survival" that must be confronted with urgency, young activists across the globe on Saturday kicked off three days of marches and demonstrations to pressure elected officials to "reject the corrupting monetary influence of fossil fuel executives," ban all new dirty energy developments, and safeguard the planet for both its current inhabitants and future generations. "Climate change is our last chance to either fix colossal systems of inequality and emerge as a more efficient, better equipped society as a whole, or reach a chaotic state where your privilege ultimately decides if you live or die," said 16-year-old climate activist Ivy Jaguzny,

Young People Leading Growing Movement Against Low Pay And Precarious Work

Strikes have taken place at McDonald’s and TGI Friday’s restaurants across the UK in recent months. These strikes are the first of their kind in the UK, instigated by a new generation of trade union members fighting for better pay and fairer working conditions. At the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research, Data and Methods (WISERD for short), we’ve been following these strikes on social media and at the picket lines, to discover what’s driving this fledgling movement, and how it differs to those that went before. Most young people in the workforce have experience with low pay and zero hours contracts. At TGI Friday’s, table staff were told earlier this year, with two days’ notice, that 40% of their tips from card gratuities would be taken and redistributed among kitchen staff, as part of the move towards a central pool of tips called a “tronc”.

8 Lessons For Today’s Youth-Led Movements From A Decade Of Youth Climate Organizing

On March 24, I stood in the rain in front of City Hall in Bellingham, Washington with some 3,000 people for the local March for Our Lives demonstration. It was one of 800 similar events happening nationwide that day, with about two million people participating coast to coast. The March for Our Lives against gun violence is one example of the wave of massive demonstrations that have swept the country since the Trump administration took office. From the Women’s March, to responses to Trump’s attacks on Muslims and immigrants, to protests against police violence, rallies for healthcare, and uprisings against pipelines, the last two years have been characterized by mass movements unparalleled in the United States in decades. Many, like the March for Our Lives, involve young people in leading roles. As someone who spent most of the past decade as a “youth activist” — in my case, a climate activist — I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time.

Role Of Youth In The Coming Transformation

The eruption of youth protests over gun violence in schools and other issues is another indicator that the 2020s could be a decade of transformation where people demand economic, racial and environmental justice as well as peace. Students who are in their teens now will be in their twenties then. They will have experience in how protests can change political culture. Some view the youth awakening in these protests as reminiscent of youth movements in previous generations, others are less optimistic. We cannot predict the role this generation will play, but throughout the history of mass movements, youth have been a key factor by pushing boundaries and demanding change.

Change Is Coming

The cries of loss and anguish become public, at last. A million young people seize the truth: “Half of my seventh grade class was affected by gun violence. My own brother was shot in the head. I am tired of being asked to calm down and be quiet.” The stories went on and on, speaker after speaker. We marched for our lives this past Saturday. I was one of the thousands of people who endured a bitter cold morning in Chicago to be part of this emerging movement, this burst of anger, hope and healing. Violence in the United States of America is out of control. It has its claws around the lives of its own children. It’s a terrifying symptom . . . of a society built around fear, of a political structure devoted to war. Something has to change. The Chicago march was one of more than 800 marches throughout the U.S. and all across the world.

March For Our Lives Awakens Spirit Of Student And Media Activism Of 1960s

Student journalists used media as a key tool for activism in the widespread social movements of the 1960s, journalism scholar Kaylene Dial Armstrong writes in her book “How Journalists Report Campus Unrest.” One notable student protest happened in Washington, D.C., 50 years ago. In the spring of 1968, student demonstrators occupied the administration building at Howard University, a historically black school in Washington to protest racial inequality. Starting on March 19, more than 1,000 students shut down administrative operations at the university until March 23. One of the lead organizers, Adrienne Manns, was the editor-in-chief of Howard’s student newspaper, The Hilltop. The Hilltop supported the protesters from the outset. “It is the responsibility of The Hilltop to present issues and suggest solutions,” read a front-page editorial on March 8, 1968, in the lead-up to the occupation.

Meet The Oregon Middle Schoolers Fighting For Net Neutrality

Luca, a 12-year-old student at Mt. Tabor Middle School in Portland, Oregon, first learned about net neutrality through an Instagram post. “Before it was repealed, I was just trying to tell people about it,” Luca tells Gizmodo. Soon, she’d gotten her two friends, 12-year-old Athena and 13-year-old Lola, interested in net neutrality—an issue that is of vital importance for the internet but one that is wonky and complex even for many adults. A month after Luca saw that Instagram post, the Republican-led Federal Communications Commission led by Chairman Ajit Pai voted to overturn the agency’s net neutrality protections, which prevented internet service providers like Comcast and Verizon from blocking or throttling online content and prohibited them from making “paid prioritization” deals—so-called “fast lanes” for companies willing to pay more to have their content delivered to customers at a higher quality than competitors who don’t pay up.

Badass Breakfast Club Turns Detention Into Yet Another Gun Reform Protest

Lookit These Kids Redux: Over 200 students at Pennsylvania's Pennridge High who defied their school's ban on joining last week's nationwide walkout have transformed their ostensible punishment into Civil Disobedience 101 by turning their detention into a silent, moving sit-in. Days before the planned walkout, school officials had announced a Remembrance Assembly featuring a 17-minute silence and slide show to honor the Parkland victims; citing "safety concerns," the school board also said any students who joined the walkout would "face consequences.” Somewhat defensively, the Superintendent clarified that students would be disciplined, not because "they expressed any particular viewpoint or opinion," but for "willfully breaking a school rule about leaving the building without permission."
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