Youth Activism

Students Lead US Push For Fuller Black History Education

April 9, 2021 Mike Catalini, AP News. Create! Black History, Public Education, Public schools, Youth Activism

Trenton, NJ - Ebele Azikiwe was in the sixth grade last year when February came and it was time to learn about Black history again. She was, by then, familiar with the curriculum: Rosa Parks, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and a discussion on slavery. Just like the year before, she said, and the year before that. Then came George Floyd’s death in May, and she wrote to the administration at her school in Cherry Hill, in New Jersey’s Philadelphia suburbs, to ask for more than the same lessons. “We learned about slavery, but did we go into the roots of slavery?” Ebele, 12, said in an interview. “You learned about how they had to sail across, but did you learn about how they felt being tied down on those boats?”

Indigenous Youth Rally To Demand Biden Stop Pipelines

April 6, 2021 Jen Deerinwater, Truthout. Resist! Indigenous Sovereignty, Joe Biden, Pipelines, Youth Activism

On Thursday, the fifth anniversary of the founding of the Sacred Stone Camp on the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation to resist the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), frontline Indigenous youth and organizers held several actions in Washington, D.C. The activists called on President Joe Biden to end DAPL and the Line 3 pipeline and to “Build Back Fossil Free.” “It was our youth that led today,” explained Waniya Locke (Diné, Lakota, Nakota and Anishinaabe). The youth-led actions included a rally at the Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) headquarters, where organizers delivered petitions with 400,000 signatures demanding ACE withdraw its permit approving Line 3.

Brothers EMpowered Is Building That Village We All Need to Thrive

April 3, 2021 Eric Ortiz, Popular Resistance. Organize! Community, Minneapolis, Peace, Youth Activism

Charles Caine has a dream. Just like Martin Luther King understood civil rights include economic rights, Caine wants to give all people an opportunity to prosper. That mission starts with his two sons (ages 16 and 13) and the other youth he mentors in North Minneapolis as the president and executive director of Brothers EMpowered. Caine founded the community mentorship organization in 2014 to help men of color overcome the barriers in their lives and the lives in their communities. His inspiration came from years of struggling as a young Black man in urban America. After overcoming many challenges and barriers in his life, from gang violence to chemical dependency, the turning point came when he became a father.

Standing Rock Lakota Youth Call For Biden To Shut Down Dakota Access Pipeline

February 6, 2021 Last Real Indians. Resist! Dakota Access Pipeline, Joe Biden, Standing Rock, Youth Activism

Standing Rock - Today, Lakota youth from the Standing Rock and Cheyenne River tribal nations announced a plan to run over 93 miles back to the Oceti Sakowin Camp site to call on President Biden to shut down the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). The youth are asking for everyone who stood with Standing Rock four years ago to participate by uploading their own #NoDAPL The oil pipeline poses a grave threat to the safety and sanctity of the tribes’ water, hunting and fishing rights, and cultural and religious practices. Federal courts have sided with the tribes on the years-long litigation and have revoked DAPL’s federal easement required by the Mineral Leasing Act.

Native Youth Provide For Community And Elders During Covid Pandemic

December 28, 2020 Rae Rose, Last Real Indians. Create! COVID-19, Indigenous Peoples, Mutual Aid, Youth Activism

2020 has been a year of many trials across Indian Country. Across our many Nations, rural, city and everywhere in between, we are all coping with the catastrophic effects of the COVID-19 virus. We have missed gatherings, ceremonies, and the everyday celebrations as part of quarantine and to keep those we love safe. Our loved ones lost during this time often died alone, while those of us left behind have had to mourn them without the touch and care of being physically together. Left to pick up the pieces as we try to move forward has left so much anxiety and depression in our young, elders, and even us adults.

Young Climate Leaders Conclude Mock COP26

December 5, 2020 Olivia Rosane, Nation of Change. Create! climate crisis, Climate Justice, COP 26, Youth Activism

The youth-led Mock COP26 virtual conference concluded Tuesday with a treaty they hope world leaders will sign ahead of the official COP26 in November 2021. Mock COP26 participants presented the 18-point treaty, which includes calls for climate education at all levels, a legally recognized crime of ecocide and a green recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, to UK High Level Climate Action Champion Nigel Topping in a closing ceremony, The Guardian reported. “Mock COP26 sends a strong message to world leaders that young people can coordinate global negotiations and we have the solutions.

Peru’s Youth Have Mobilized In Indignation

November 16, 2020 Telesur English. Resist! Neoliberalism, Peru, Socialism, Youth Activism

Mass protests broke out after Peru’s parliament voted to impeach former president Martin Vizcarra on November 9th, installing Manuel Merino of the Accion Popular party, as head of state for the 5 months left till the country’s general elections. The Peruvian left are not supporters of former neoliberal president Vizcarra, but have condemned the impeachment that has been carried out by forces even further to his right, “The new government has named Ántero Flores Aráoz as president of the Council of Ministers, he is the best representative of the old politics: conservative, far-right, racist, sexist, a few years ago...

Students Push To Remove Police

November 9, 2020 Claudio Rivera, Stephanie Knezz and Shawn Smith, Truthout. Resist! Higher Education, Illinois, Police Abolition, Youth Activism

Student movements have always raised our current conception of justice and equity. From the civil rights movement and Vietnam War protests, to the anti-apartheid movement and calls to abolish the police, student protests on college campuses have a context and history linked to substantial change in U.S. policies and practices. This is a rite of passage from which we all benefit. So, it is perplexing that Northwestern University (NU) President Morton Schapiro fails to recognize this as NU students demand a different and better sense of campus safety in their demand to abolish the police...

How A Police Killing In Nigeria Sparked A Nationwide Movement

October 25, 2020 Joshua Keating, Slate. Resist! Nigeria, Police violence, Youth Activism

Nigerian security forces opened fire this week on protesters in Lagos, killing at least 12 demonstrators and marking a deadly escalation in the weekslong protests against police brutality. Since early October, tens of thousands of Nigerians have been marching in cities throughout the country, demanding the disbandment of a notorious police unit known as SARS—the Special Anti-Robbery Squad. An Amnesty International report published in June documented dozens of cases of torture and extrajudicial killing by the unit. But the incident that sparked the movement was a video of what appeared to be an unprovoked killing of a man by SARS officers in the Delta State on Oct. 3.

Youth Are Leading The Movement For Police-Free Schools

August 13, 2020 Tasasha Henderson, Truthout. Organize! Black Youth, Police Abolition, Police in Schools, Youth Activism

In this moment of transformative possibility, amid activists’ growing calls to defund and abolish the police, young people across the country are leading a movement to remove police officers from schools. They are demanding that city and school district leaders reallocate funding for police into services and resources for students, including counseling, social workers and restorative justice programming. The movement for police-free schools has a long history of Black youth leading this fight as a key strategy to dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline, a process of funneling predominately Black and Latinx students out of schools and into the juvenile legal system.

Kumeyaay Nation Protest Stops Construction On Border Wall

July 19, 2020 Max Rivlin-Nadler, KPBS. Resist! Blockade, Border Wall, Indigenous Rights, Youth Activism

Just before dawn on Friday, members of the Kumeyaay Nation set out to protest the construction of a border wall atop their ancestral lands in the Laguna Mountains. The youth-led group said the government has refused to consult with them to identify possible heritage sites they say the massive construction project is now destroying. “We found midden soil, which is signs of cremation, which is our remains. We found tools and flakes and stuff that symbolizes there are villages in this area and that our people stayed here,” said Cynthia Parada, a councilwoman with the La Posta band of Mission Indians. “Usually when they stay here, they’re buried here as well.

60,000-Strong Fridays For Future Protest In Hamburg, Germany: Where Are You USA?

February 23, 2020 Andrea Germanos, Commondreams. Resist! climate crisis, Fridays for Future, Youth Activism

"What is it going to take for the U.S. to rise up like this?" wondered the Durham, N.C. branch of Extinction Rebellion. "We are in a climate catastrophe and people around the world, particularly in the global south are facing the brunt NOW! January 2020 was the warmest since we've recorded temperatures." Thunberg, who's in her 79th week of Fridays for Future actions, noted in her remarks to the Hamburg crowd that the weekly actions have spread globally. "For almost one and half years young people have been striking from school all over the world," she said. "The world is failing on ensuring us a future. And I honestly don't understand how the people in power can continue like now. How they can look their children in the eyes while they are stealing their future?" she asked.

Chicago High School Students Hold Sit-In In Defense Of Students Who Refused To Stand For National Anthem

February 17, 2020 Andy Thompson, Wsws.org Resist! Chicago, Class Struggle, Schools, Sit-In, Youth Activism

Students at Chicago’s Nicholas Senn High School carried out a sit-in on Wednesday in response to a teacher telling a Hispanic student, Yésica Salazar, 17, to “go back to your country” after Salazar refused to stand for the American national anthem during an assembly on January 30. Another student who also refused to stand, Tionda Cobb, 18, was questioned about her status in the school’s free lunch program and was told she should stand because, “people had died for the country.”

Ninth Circuit Dismisses Youth Climate Suit, While Agreeing Government Policy Is Destroying The Planet

January 21, 2020 Staff, Static1.squarespace.com Educate! Climate Change, Lawsuit, Youth Activism

Eugene, Oregon - Today, a divided panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals “reluctantly” concluded that the youth plaintiffs’ case in Juliana v. United States must be made to the Congress, the President, or to the electorate at large. The decision finds federal courts cannot provide the youth with a remedy for their climate change injuries. In her dissent, District Judge Josephine L. Staton wrote that the youth plaintiffs brought suit to enforce the most basic structural principal embedded in our system of liberty...

«1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 »

Daily movement news and resources