Engaged Youth » Youth organizing

Youth organizing

September 19th, 2008 at 11:01am Toby Campbell Permalink

We are excited to have a few new advisors on board. Kate Boyd and Cristien Storm from If You Don’t They Will have joined our Civic Learning Team. I’d like to invite Kate and Cristien, along with any other interested bloggers to weigh in on the following:

Kate and Cristien have a lot of great experience fostering youth organizing through their work. What are the ways that organizations like PSO can support youth organizing? How does this compare with the activity of organizing youth?

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1. If You Don't They Will | September 22nd, 2008 at 10:01 pm

What are the ways that organizations like PSO can support youth organizing? How does this compare with the activity of organizing youth?

Sometimes, even organizations with the best intentions mistake organizing youth for youth organizing. It’s trendy for organizations to do youth work and increasingly foundations represent themselves as supporting youth organizing. If You Don’t They Will believes that youth organizing means changing infrastructure, leadership, program work, development, power analysis, strategic planning, organizational structure, and a commitment to social movement building. What we see getting funded is organizing youth. This appears as a program shift or simply adding a new (token) “youth” program or staff member. This approach undermines rather than furthers youth leadership. It is demeaning and tokenizing when youth work does not have a complex understanding of power and allyship, and it’s a set up for the young people who are brought into an organization that doesn’t actually create room and space for their full participation.

If You Don’t They Will cannot emphasize enough that this narrow, two-dimensional approach lacks a self reflective and critical analysis of power within the organization, between the organization and funders, constituents, and potential allies. Furthermore, this programmatic quick fix approach (which often brings immediate funding) diverts money and resources that might otherwise support youth organizing. It also generates the dangerous illusion that youth are being supported and youth leadership is being developed when this can’t actually occur without institutional, cultural, and structural shifts within the organization and their constituents.

Youth organizing also recognizes the importance of the age bridge. Simply put, an age bridge facilitates the links between different generations of activists. Healthy vibrant social movements must build multiple age bridges. Age bridges challenge the analyses that have been normalized in their particular historical moments. A healthy age bridge pushes against the norms we take for granted simultaneously bringing new creativity, new vision(s) of liberation, new voices, and new radical strategies in our work.

Examples

Scenario I
Organizing Youth
You have one high school youth on your board.

Vs. Youth Organizing
You have a youth advisory committee that guides and leads your strategy and priorities for your entire organization (not just a youth program).

Scenario II
Organizing Youth
Once a year your organization puts on an event that is geared towards bringing youth into the organization as volunteers.

Vs. Youth Organizing
Your organization has multiple youth driven events geared towards bringing youth into all areas of your organization (board, staff, volunteer….).

Scenario III
Organizing Youth
This year foundations are funding youth organizing so you start a campaign. You loose funding the following year so you stop the campaign.

Vs. Youth Organizing
You recognize that despite what’s trendy in funding circles, you need to support youth organizing regardless.

Scenario IV
Organizing Youth
Your organization hires two youth, which you proudly announce in your press materials. The two new staff, however have little say in how the organization is run, they are not invited to participate in board meetings, and instead are relegated to administrative tasks or “youth” program work that will disappear as soon as they do.

Vs Youth Organizing
Your organization provides the support and training the youth on staff decide they need and want in order to fully implement their vision and critical thinking. They fully participate in moving the organization.

Tips and Tricks
For transitioning from organizing youth to youth organizing

• Have a power analysis that includes age
• Commit to prioritizing building multiple age bridges
• Listen
• Have your adult staff and board attend a youth organizing 101 training
• Incorporate the information from youth organizing trainings into strategic planning
• Learn how to be an ally as individuals, as staff, as an organization and as part of a larger social movement
• Support other organizations that are youth run, youth led and have demonstrated a commitment to youth organizing
• Let go of power. Prepare to step down and relinquish control
• Envision youth as leaders
• Be excited about letting youth lead and letting go of control—it benefits all of us!
• Be prepared as an ally to advocate for youth organizing to funders
2. ED | September 22nd, 2008 at 11:39 pm

Kate & Cristien are awe-4-evah-some!
3. Ben | September 24th, 2008 at 9:38 am

Good work Kate and Cristien!
4. Toby Campbell | October 16th, 2008 at 6:17 pm

Thank you both for this rich contribution.

On a topic similar to youth organizing - I know If You Don’t They Will utilizes cultural organizing to work with young people. Can you explain a bit about what cultural organizing is, how it works, and how you think PSO might be able to get involved in cultural organizing?
5. If You Don't They Will | October 31st, 2008 at 10:49 am

Can you explain a bit about what cultural organizing is, how it works, and how you think PSO might be able to get involved in cultural organizing?

In an article on Community Arts Network’s Reading Room webpage, Caron Atlas describes cultural organizing as “a means of placing culture at the center of an organizing strategy. It can be done to unite people through the humanity of culture and the democracy of participation. It can also be used to divide people though fear and polarization.”

Cultural organizing works because it situates organizing and social change in the environment of the moment. I want to share some examples from when I was working at Home Alive, a Seattle based anti-violence non-profit organization that offers affordable self-defense classes and provides public education and awareness. Because we were artists, musicians, performers as well as activists, art and music was an integral part of how we did our work. We organized benefit shows that created community dialogue about “How are you getting home tonight?” Which led to discussion around “Are you safe once you get home?” Out of these discussions (which took place in club bathrooms, the backs of taxi’s, on a barstool), rose organic responses that reflected the diversity of people and communities that were talking about things they may have never talked about before. Bartenders began organizing patrons by collecting cab fare for women who didn’t have a ride home; club bouncers called Home Alive to ask us to do a training on what to do with situations of domestic violence in front of clubs; artists approached Home Alive and clubs to post community resources in clubs and do art installations about issues of sexual assault and date rape in bathrooms after a woman was raped in a bathroom stall during a music show. Musicians asked us to table at their shows and during their sets asked fans to make sure to help each other get home alive.

In other words, Home Alive didn’t organize our community, we supported our community organizing. People made zines, organized speak outs with Home Alive’s support. Because community members were responding in ways that reflected them rather that a specific organizational agenda, there were conflicts of interest, conflicts of opinion, differing views, and even arguments and disputes over how to respond to violence. Our response was that there wasn’t one right way to respond and it wasn’t Home Alive’s job to tell people how to respond, but to support people responding to violence in order to create community dialogues that might help create communities and environments where we could not only respond to violence when it did occur, but where violence was less likely to happen. Because people were creating dialogues in their own language all kinds of conversations were happening and they were happening in places and in ways that activist don’t often think of as “organizing.” Beer drinking working class guys hanging out at Happy Hour were talking about domestic violence and how they heard (through music events) that on super bowl Sunday domestic violence increases. They started talking about how messed up that was and how they might respond if anyone they know says or does anything abusive. They didn’t talk about violence against women in feminist lingo. They would have scoffed if you called them activists and trying to get them to attend a rally or community meeting would be an exercise in futility. But they were talking about domestic violence. They were creating ways of responding to violence against women. They were taking it seriously and addressing it in their environments, in this case during happy hour and at super bowl parties. They were changing the culture of that landscape. This small and simple example of a community of men responding to domestic violence in their own language is a direct result of the cultural organizing done by Home Alive as well as a great example of culture organizing, although that particular group of men would never call it that.

Cultural organizing does not try to create one particular response, it’s about creating movement within a cultural context that impacts people and community in ways that shift the landscape in irreversible ways. PSO can engage in cultural organizing by supporting communities who are having dialogues about participation in democracies in all kinds of ways, whether it’s through a music show, arts campaign, spoken word show, button making parties, chalking art, dance-a-thons’s, whatever. The thing about cultural organizing is that it resists organizational control. Home Alive wasn’t successful at cultural organizing because we set out to do it; we were successful because it was how our communities expressed themselves. Home Alive supported people who wanted to respond to violence in their lives, envision liberation, raise money, heal from an incident or be engaged in community dialogues with money, time, resources, backing, belief and commitment. When a 13 year old girl walked into the office and said her friend was assaulted and she wanted to do a zine project, we supported her by helping her get the resources to do the project without micromanaging, even if Home Alive staff disagreed with some of the content or messages of the zine. We valued her project as much as when a famous band member called to say he believes in our cause and wants to throw a benefit show, again, even if some Home alive staff thought some of the band’s songs were sexist. It’s not about creating a consistent controlled message, it’s about supporting community.

What are the ways that organizations like PSO can support youth organizing?

It’s great when organizations ask about supporting youth organizing. A place to start is at our tips and tricks:

Tips and Tricks
For transitioning from organizing youth to youth organizing

• Have a power analysis that includes age
• Commit to prioritizing building multiple age bridges
• Listen
• Have your adult staff and board attend a youth organizing 101 training
• Incorporate the information from youth organizing trainings into strategic planning
• Learn how to be an ally as individuals, as staff, as an organization and as part of a larger social movement
• Support other organizations that are youth run, youth led and have demonstrated a commitment to youth organizing
• Let go of power. Prepare to step down and relinquish control
• Envision youth as leaders
• Be excited about letting youth lead and letting go of control—it benefits all of us!
• Be prepared as an ally to advocate for youth organizing to funders

How does this compare with the activity of organizing youth?

Supporting youth organizing versus organizing youth takes a paradigm shift. The scenarios in our first post can help organizations think about how they might be colluding in organizing youth rather than supporting youth organizing. It’s important to first understand the difference and then make the commitment to support youth organizing. It’s not something you can do part way. If you aren’t sure you or your organization can do it, don’t say you are going to. Don’t represent your organization or project as youth led if it isn’t led by youth. A huge part of it is letting go of control, power and resources. If you are trying to support youth organizing but hold all the purse strings, it undermines youth power. Challenge yourself as individuals and as groups or organizations to examine what fears, feelings, or frustrations come up when you think about letting youth control their own project. Be honest and transparent. If you don’t think your organization is ready but you believe in supporting youth organizing, then give time, money, and/or resources to groups that are doing it. Ally ship is a huge part of this work and there are many different ways to be an ally.