Over the past year, Chicago has gained national attention linked to high profile public and social policy debates about the Chicago Public School’s teacher’s strike, the murder rate among African American youth. Some may also remember the discussion that followed Chicago rapper Lupe Fiasco’s opposition to voting in the presidential election. The outcomes of these debates from a policy perspective disproportionately impact youth of color. Given the heightened awareness around race and inequality, decreasing sources for funding, and the use of traditional and social media, the current period is a very important time to consider strategies for mobilizing youth in places like Chicago and nationally.
At the core of youth organizing lie issues related to an organization’s ability to: address the root causes of lack of opportunity and access, provide youth the leadership acumen, power and agency to play the primary logistical and organizing roles in movement building, focus on more holistic issues related to youth development such as wellness, confidence building, positive self-image, and identity formation. In addition, in Chicago especially, the roles of racial and spatial segregation are defining characteristics of the city that organizers have to take into account.
An effective strategy used by some youth organizers involves actively engaging a structural approach to identifying how public policies, institutional practices, and media representations converge to create and maintain racially disparate outcomes for youth of color. For example, youth organizers utilize structural analyses to explain in tangible terms how discipline and testing policies in schools track many students of color into the criminal justice system. The ability to demonstrate how numerous factors intersect to produce disparate outcomes for youth of color helps youth organizers not only explain the issues but also build coalitions across racial, neighborhood, and other boundaries.
Youth organizers are involved in important work that focuses on racial and social justice through a local neighborhood and city wide focus. For example, Voices of Youth in Chicago Education (VOYCE) is a youth led collaborative of seven groups organizing around education reform, foreclosures, youth violence, and the dropout rate in different parts of the city. VOYCE has demonstrated success in addressing policies related to the dropout rate by providing recommendations and developing a pilot program in partnership with Chicago Public Schools. In addition, Southside Together Organizing for Power (STOP) provides multi-platform racial and social justice agendas that actively work with several affiliated organizations around issues such as alternatives to juvenile detention and the creation of local medical care facilities. Modeled on the freedom schools of the civil rights era The Chicago Freedom School is focused on building city wide youth led efforts to address leadership, training, organizing, and education reform. All these groups attempt to also build multigenerational links between generations of youth and elders.
A wider view of organizing in Chicago illustrates the strategic importance of engaging expressive culture. By focusing on community organizing, education, and the arts the Southwest Youth Collaborative’s (SWYC) Hip-Hop University has effectively used hip-hop to engage its multiracial constituency around community service and leadership through their University of Hip Hop program. In addition, Kuumba Lynx (KL) is an arts and education organization that works with the Chicago Parks Department to use elements of hip-hop such as dance, deejaying and visual art as a means of expression and dialogue.
As is the case with other cities, there are emerging areas in youth organizing. Organizations such as the Immigrant Youth Justice League (IYJL) directly include undocumented youth in advocacy around access to education and rights to citizenship. The environment is a growing concern of organizers across the country. Young Activists Organizing as Today’s Leaders (YAOTL), which is a project under the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO), focuses youth around social and environmental justice issues. An additional area of organizing that deserves mentioning are efforts related to former youth sex workers and those involved in the informal economy which is addressed by the Young Women’s Empowerment project (YWEP).
Like any field, youth organizing is diverse and has not remained static. As one organizer Joel Rodriguez of The Southwest Organizing Project (SWOP) reminds us, “youth organizing is evolving so quickly because the issues are changing so quickly. This reality is forcing young people to become mature and organized really fast.” As new political and economic realities arise, innovative forms of civic participation and engagement will no doubt continue to develop through the work of youth organizers and the institutions that they help to build in Chicago and across the country. Hopefully the annual meeting in Chicago will provide an opportunity for anthropology and anthropologists to directly engage some of the communities and social justice issues that youth organizing addresses.
Special thanks to Angela Ortez, Joel Rodriguez, and Eliza Solowiej for their insights and organizing work in Chicago.
Dana-Ain Davis and Alaka Wali are the chairs of the 2013 AAA Annual Meeting. They may be contacted at 2013aaaprogramchairs@gmail.com .
via Anthropology-News http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2013/01/09/youth-organizing-in-chicago/
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