The past two years have seen possibly the largest mobilization of young people since the anti-war protests on college campuses in the 1960s and 70s. Students have organized around, campaigned for, and voted on a wide variety of issues, the most notable being gun reform and the climate crisis. Plenty of critics on both sides of the aisle have been dismissive of these movements, arguing that young people are naive and too inexperienced to organize effectively. However, the student-led March For Our Lives on Washington, D.C. drew over 200,000 supporters. Additionally, according to the Fridays For Future movement, which organizes school strikes in protest of inaction regarding the climate crisis, “During the week of March 15, there were at least 1.6 million strikers on all 7 continents, in more than 125 countries, and in well over 2000 places.”
With the combination of media literacy and some existential dread about both our current situation and our future, young people are able to make real change and to make it quickly. Rapid response activism networks are often led by younger people, and can involve anything from organizing rallies within two days of a college campus shooting, as the North Carolina March For Our Lives chapters did, to showing up for women’s rights. They can even involve rallying against police brutality, as students did just last week in New York City.
Apart from the significant impact that these youth movements have on the daily news cycle, they are also indicative of a general trend towards more participatory democracy in the United States. According to NPR, “More than 47 percent of the voting-eligible population cast a ballot in the midterm elections” in 2018, with 31 percent of eligible voters aged 18-29 voting. While there is room for improvement, the midterms saw the highest voter turnout in 50 years, and that was thanks in no small part to the efforts of youth organizers. More importantly, many people voted for the first time in the midterms, which suggests that they are much more likely to vote in future elections.
Working on the ground through March For Our Lives Ithaca, I have seen the way youth activist networks are able to create real connections in the community, effectively use social media, and create spaces to empower and engage other young people. Obviously, older activists may have more experience, but this generation has the most to lose to climate change and is on the business end of America’s gun violence epidemic. Not everyone involved in various movements can vote yet, but we can make sure that other people vote, and we can stay fired up and organized, and that’s where the real change happens.