15 Points of Youth Liberation (Part 4)
Students of the Oakland Community School, a Black Panther Party survival program, eat free breakfasts
Welcome back to part four of Solve for Why’s series on Youth Liberation! If you aren’t caught up, go read about the background of this framework in part one. There you can also read the stories of queer found family, 15 year olds running for office, and some brilliant grassroots organizing for Palestine in a New Jersey high school. Part two and three included stories of SNCC freedom schools, girls in leadership in Rojava, and the queer youth that created STAR. The kids are brave and interdependent and full of heart and chutzpah. Then come back here for even more tales of radical kids that change the world.
Students at Black Panther schools practiced a wide variety of skills
“Students must eliminate racism and stop fighting each other. We must unite to fight the real enemy until we have education that meets the needs of all races. We support the liberation struggles of colonized people of all colors everywhere.”
10. THE END OF RACISM AND COLONIALISM IN THE UNITED STATES AND THE WORLD
Finally we’re talking about the Black Panther Party! BPP membership included youth from the beginning, with a median member age of 19 years old. Lil’ Bobby Hutton was the first Black Panther recruit, joining up at 17 after reading and resonating with the 10-point program. Panther houses were welcoming to both kids and parents, with a commitment to offering childcare, education, and family support, creating a culture where youth were in collaboration, not competition, with political organizing.
BPP kids protest to “Free Bobby, Free Huey”
Panther chapters across the United States incorporated youth into many aspects of their work. The longstanding survival program of free breakfast for kids was the center of many BPP chapters, and the last running panther activity as other forms of protest died down. The Panthers prioritized education in both their ten point program and their regular activities. In this already abundant atmosphere, the Oakland Community School still stands out. Preceded by the Children’s Houses and the Intercommunal Youth Institute, OCS was an elementary school that put Panther Point #5 into action.
We Want Education for Our People That Exposes The True Nature Of This Decadent American Society. We Want Education That Teaches Us Our True History And Our Role in the Present-Day Society.
OCS, though it did not foreground BPP ideology to the same degree as its predecessors, was a sanctuary for young, predominantly black and low-income kids. They received three meals a day, consistent care, and emotional support as well as chances to learn stretch their curiosity. Students were “encouraged to constantly ask questions and never accept what they hear as the full truth,” and maintained a group of student leaders that participated in curriculum planning, decision making, and running a radio station. The OCS instructional methodologies of experiential learning, care for the whole child, and respecting kids as equal humans are still on the cutting edge of pedagogy. Ericka Huggins and other BPP educators and youthworkers have been practicing these methods for decades.
In 2021, 17 year old Cedric Lofton died in police custody
“All young people in juvenile homes, training schools, detention centers, mental institutions and other penal institutions for minors must be set free. They did not receive a trial before a jury of their peers and the society they offended is itself criminal.”
11. FREEDOM FOR ALL UNJUSTLY IMPRISONED PEOPLE
On the average day in 2022 in the USA, 29,109 kids were incarcerated in juvenile detention facilities (awaiting a court date or pending permanent placement), youth prisons, residential treatment centers, group homes, or other placement facilities, and adult jails and prisons. In 2021, one of the kids in a Kansas juvenile detention facility, 17 year old Cedric Lofton died after being pinned to the floor for 30 minutes by multiple officers after his father called 911 to report a mental health crisis. His is one name on a long list of killed incarcerated kids. That should be a list of zero.
Cedric Lofton’s community fought to hold his murderers responsible
Cedric Lofton’s name was not left in silence though. Youth survivors of carceral violence got to work organizing. Youth leaders from the intergenerational partnership Progeny and the local community hosted rallies, spoke to press, and shared Cedric’s story widely. Although the officers who killed Cedric Lofton were never held accountable, Progeny’s campaigns to close the last youth prison in Kansas, eliminate anti-poor fines and fees for young people, and destroy prison pipelines are ongoing. Youth leaders hold visioning sessions with peers, support restorative justice processes, and create alternatives to incarceration. And, importantly, they are paid for this work, which will bring us to the next point.
First- youth incarceration should not exist. Kids should not be locked into ICE facilities. Kids should not be locked into psychiatric wards. 29,000 kids daily should not be locked into prisons. The youth who work to change this reality deserve the support and solidarity of every adult. If you take nothing else from this series, take this- there is no such thing as youth liberation, for anybody, as long as kids can be incarcerated.
Young laborers in the Pennsylvania coal mines organized for their rights as workers Photo originally published in McClure’s
“We believe we are entitled to work or to unemployment benefits.”
12. THE RIGHT TO BE ECONOMICALLY INDEPENDENT OF ADULTS
The original youth liberation point for this platform pushed back against child labor laws. That’s not my take, but it is important to acknowledge that these laws are and have long been insufficient, ill-enforced, and incomplete. Take, for instance, the Pennsylvania coal mines. In the United States, mining communities were both a lab of new ways to exploit and abuse workers, and a major site for the development of the labor movement. Mines were situated in company towns where the mining company owned the land, the grocery stores, and everything else in sight. By paying workers too little to afford rent and food, bosses kept them in debt to the company and unable to leave.
A breaker boy plays the bugle
Because whole families lived in the company town, children were also under the boss’s thumb. Children frequently worked as breaker boys, mule drivers, and factory girls, among other jobs. There were laws to prevent the company from employing kids under 14 in the mine and under 12 outside the mine, but in practice parents got “age blanks” from mine inspectors which they could fill in with whatever date was needed to send kids to work. Relying, as now, on their parents for housing and food, kids had little say in the matter.
However, they did freely choose to organize. In a 1903 report from McClure’s Magazine, Francis Nichols describes youth organizing: “Almost as soon as the breaker boy’s [age] certificate is accepted… he makes application to become a member of the ‘Junior Local,’ the members of which are all boys under sixteen.” The Junior Local unions had full cadres of officers from the membership, elected semi-annually. Kids also joined their district Miners’ Unions, which sent adult silent representatives to the Junior Local meetings. Factory girls would join the Textile Workers’ Union of America or the United Powder and High Explosive Workers of America. In all of these spaces, youth debated, striked, marched, canvassed. They even won- wage advances, shortened hours, pay raises, and safer conditions for all or one member. They talked to each other, they uplifted each other, and, every once in a while, they saved each other.
Discussion Questions
What roles do youth play in political and social movements? What can young people contribute that adults cannot?
What obstacles do kids face to full political participation? How can kids overcome these obstacles? How can adults support the kids challenging these obstacles?
Who in your local community is working toward youth liberation? Who in your daily life? How can you participate?
Why do the kids in these examples persist in organizing, despite backlash?
What other historic or contemporary examples of youth liberation can you think of?
Further Learning
Read about the Oakland Community School and its legacy
Join your local bail fund, copwatch, jail support, or anti-carceral organization
Check out this primary source about young people in the coal mines
Read about your local student movements and then show up to a scheduled event and support them!