youth autonomous organizing

Jaiden: What is the role of young people in movement work?

Kourtney: Hmm, I think that young people bring a lot of instantaneous energy into movement work, I think especially if you had been organizing anytime before this summer, and then when George Floyd was murdered, like how quickly the youth had so much energy. It was like - I feel like there’s a word for it - it was just very quick and it was like burstful and vibrant and fresh I feel like, uhm especially for the Black lives Matter movement, especially, which was at-at that point already almost a decade hold but hadn’t really seen that type of energy. For me it’s always definitely very physically like the spirited energy that they bring to the movement. But also a lot of pretty emergent ideas and also I would say a different set of skills too, so like, as a millennial, something that I noticed this summer is that this younger generation, they knew how to use social media in a way that I’d never really seen before. And I guess like that’s also mixed with, you know, the fact that we’re in a pandemic and we don’t really have much of a choice, but also I just think that the youth just have like a lot more like technical skills than a lot of the elders do, and it’s not to say that one is better than the other, but it’s definitely a great tool to add to the work being done.

I also - like the youth are like the whole reason we do this work. Right? Like if it wasn’t for the youth, there would be literally no point. Right? ’Cause we’re not going to see liberation. Uhm, so, which is like a sad thing. But I feel like doing this work for youth and with youth, uhm, it kind of helps ground you and center your work in more long term, sustainable, just like slow conscious, thoughtful work that takes time. It’s not exactly reactive work. So if you’re thinking about work, I feel like you’re doing intentional work because you know that this is probably going to be for several generations beyond yourself. So I feel like youth are just like - they’re like the frame of which we should be looking at our future through. I think that’s - that’s the best for me.

Jaiden: Ok-so the next question is what advice would you give to young organizers in college or to young organizers thinking about going to college?

Kourtney: Definitely. Yeah, that’s where I really started, and I think a lot of people who haven’t organized at the university, the first thing they’ll tell you is that like you can’t do radical organizing there because you’re like within the Ivory towers, but that’s literally not true because we’re like - we’re in the ivory towers like just by being on this fucking planet. So it’s just like, that type of logic really doesn’t make sense, and it also it totally erases like all the Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous people who go to college who are like first gen and like totally navigating this shit by themselves who have-honestly, sometimes more radical politics than people in the community. That’s how it felt for a long time for me here. So I think that my best advice would be to one: don’t listen to people who are like, you can’t organize in university, that’s like privileged organizing. It’s like no, ‘cause we all deserve education, and it’s like, at this point, that’s what we have, like that’s the access - we don’t see education happening in a lot of other ways, uh, except more traditional things you know who are growing up with their families back on the Rez - that’s important education. But I would say definitely do it if you can, but also it’s definitely important to keep in mind that it will be really draining, and you will definitely be very very centered-uhm, it was-honestly like some of the scariest organizing I did was at the university.

I guess another piece of advice would be to not, like let go of your politics. Uh, so I would say, stick with whatever avenues you feel like make your soul feel best in your work. ‘Cause it’s really easy to be the one person in a group of 20 who is like, you know, your ideas are too intense or too dramatic, or radical. You know, it’s really easy to get just shut down. But I feel like ultimately, just like staying true to your politics and being very weary of co-optation, uhm things get super co-opted at the university, and it-and it’s not just by other student organizations, it’s also by the university itself - uhm, so for example, in like 2012 and 2013, we had been pressing for like gender neutral bathrooms and of course the administration made us feel like crazy, people made us feel crazy. Like we were always being threatened with suspension you know, two years later, the university is the first one in the state to have gender neutral bathrooms, and how big of a win this is for the leadership, and it’s like, bruh, this is like 6 students like putting themselves on the line and failing their classes to press for this. So you will never get credit for anything- it’s so sad. I think co-optation is probably the worst thing that happens at a university.

I feel like there's just so many lessons for college students. It’s just like, take care of yourself first. Your mental health matters more than anything. Also take care of each other. I feel like, you know, just taking care of yourself and being weary of co-optation, and being true to your politics. I don’t know - I, now that I’m so much older I feel like the most important thing is really just figuring out how to continue to heal and be able to learn how to emotionally regulate and things like that. Like learning more of that like skillset. ‘Cause all of us were really good at protesting, but none of us knew how- we didn’t have the skills to take care of our mental health. Like, we didn’t even know - self care wasn’t even a word at that point [laughs] uhm, we didn’t know how to do anything like that and it’s honestly the most important thing, for like long-term, sustainable change. It’s just, prioritize yourself, and your loved ones, and your community.

Lyrica: What is in your opinion the role of young people with-in the climate justice movement?

Eva: Ohh hahah I feel like that - I feel like I’ve answered this question a lot of times. UIhm ok. The role of young people in the climate justice movement -The role of young people in every social movement, like historically, as a pattern is that young people are always the visionaries and the ones pushing movements to be most radically like devoted to our values. And young people bring a lot of energy to movements- yeah - in many intergenerational organizing spaces, young people are the one-the ones bringing new energy and excitement, new ideas and yeah, I think are the ones most down to I guess envision organizing differently, envision what our movements look like differently and keep like pushing and thinking creatively about how to push our movements to be stronger and more effective

Lyrica: Yeah I feel like that makes sense and it kind of feels like it's almost young people’s responsibility to be more radical and sort of push the like boundaries of what we think is possible. A follow-up question that might be really similar and if you don’t have anything else to say that’s totally fine…

...Why is it necessary for movements to be led by young people?

Eva: Mmm. Uhm similarly to how we like look to leadership of like BIPOC, queer folks, disabled folks and other identities that are oppressed, like young people, because of ageism which is a system of oppresion, like young people don’t - are disempowered by societal structures yet are so impacted by -like in the context of climate justice movement but by other issues and so like, not only to young people bring a lot of like skills, visions, energy, and like other benefits to movements, but also like their input and leadership is like-like there’s no option but to follow that if we’re really committed to counteracting ageism in our movements.

Lyrica: Yeah, thank you. I think this question is a good like kind of-you kind of flowed into it really well ...How are young people treated within the larger environmental movement?

Eva: Ah a juicy one, in the environmental movement, young people literally like are either tokenized or exploited. Right like they’re exploited by being forced to do like unpaid internships to like do work their really passionate about within the movement, or like really low uhm paid internships, or even if they are decently paid it’s still like young folks in environmental movement-and I’m thinking non profits because like, let’s be honest the environmental movement like 100% nonprofits pretty much or maybe like 95% nonprofit led which is a problem uhm. But uh like even in paid positions, young people’s opinions and visions are very much undervalued and like experience is more valued. Uhm, so there’s a lot of exploitation that happens in like environmental movement spaces. And then like when environmental nonprofits or organizations try to follow youth leadership it's almost always in a very tokenizing way. Uhm, like I feel like youth climate strike is the biggest example where It’s just like all these adults behind the scenes with little puppet strings you know like, just like hovering and trying to take credit for like youth to like speak up about climate change and there’s so many other examples - pretty much like every youth program within an environmental nonprofit, and maybe I’m dissing some people who are doing good work, but in most cases it’s just like actually about tokenizing youth and being able to get the nonprofit more funding, more grant foundation funding uhm to like- by saying oh, “we’re doing- we’re supporting youth, you know we’re working with youth uh so i think within the environmental movement like although there’s like so much attention on youth because there’s-especially with climate change there’s so much emphasis on doing this work for the sake of future generations and for youth and uhm, there’s still like so much ageism that gets in the way of like following youth leadership.

Lyrica: Yeah of course. As a former Uplift coordinator, what is your opinion of the role of the autonomous youth-led organizations in the movement? And in your opinion what makes youth led groups feel the need to be autonomous or separate from the mainstream environmental movement?

Eva: So I guess where I was going with that is like that the role of these autonomous youth-led organizations is uhm simultaneously to push the rest of the movement or bring the rest of the movement along with us and also do the actual work that the rest of the movement isn’t doing which like can specifically look like taking greater risks in direct actions, or having actual authentic relationships with frontline communities that aren’t extractive or exploitative, uhm being in solidarity with other movements...all these things like - it’s almost always the youth taking the lead on that. Uhm, and sometimes non-youth organizations will follow, but a lot of the times the youth-led organizations have to drag them along.

I think that uhm my experience working in nonprofits was really eye opening to me in terms of what organizing work can actually be -in a nonprofit and what the many limitations are,

But like it was just really eye opening that like anything-any direction that I wanted to take that would actually have an impact and be most useful to the climate justice movement in the Southwest was like always shut down by some- by like bureaucratic policies, or straight up power tripping, or like a lot of alarmism over radical ideas which ultimately just like yeah led us to be pretty ineffective or like have our effectiveness limited a lot and I was simultaneously educating like the nonprofit.

Yeah, which is really eye opening for me in terms of this pattern of nonprofits like holding power uhm and like through resource distribution in our movements, and being able to like actually be obstacles to collective liberation. And so that kind of- that experience really turned me away from nonprofits in general like at least non profit organizing, like I don’t know if I’ll ever want to be a paid organizer again - I, ever since the have been doing all volunteer organizing.