15 Points of Youth Liberation (Part 5)
Pamphlet and newsletter covers from the Youth Liberation Organization, which developed the fifteen points used in this series
Welcome to the fifth and final part 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 stories of queer found family, 15 year olds running for office, and some brilliant grassroots organizing for Palestine in a New Jersey high school. Parts two, three, and four included stories of SNCC freedom schools, the queer youth that created STAR, and coal mine kids that started unions. 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.
Alaskans protest the proposed LNG pipeline (Maka Monture, Native Movement)
“Each person must learn to live a sound ecological life and all people together must change the economic structure of the world until the needs of the earth and its people are met.”
13. THE RIGHT TO LIVE IN HARMONY WITH NATURE
Climate activism is a particularly youth-heavy part of movement work. Because each generation exists in worse environmental conditions than the one prior, youth are disproportionately affected by ecological abuse and exploitation. For well over a century, youth have been involved in many different aspects of climate activism, including direct action, public education, mutual aid, and policy changes. Over the past several years, kids have been leveraging their legal rights to sue state governments and corporations for damages to their health and wellbeing. Currently, eight young people are suing the Alaska state government to prevent construction of the proposed Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) pipeline.
Defenders of the Arctic Refuge- Defend the Sacred AK
Plaintiffs range from 11-22 years old and argue that the law mandating pipeline development violates their rights to health and life. Two similar suits were dismissed in 2022 because the court could not order policy changes, but this case focuses specifically on an individual project. Alaskans are already experiencing negative consequences to fishing and hunting. Kids also say they experience more breathing issues due to increased wildfires.
The legal route is only one strategy to halt pipeline construction- earlier this month a coalition including Native Movement and Stand Up Alaska organized a rally to coincide with Trump’s fundraising tour for visiting ambassadors. Alaska continues to experience severe consequences of the climate crisis, and indigenous and youth activists remain on the front-lines of both environmental injustice and environmental defense.
Frank Collins confronts NAG protester Marvis Saunders (Glen Echo Park Photo Archives)
“We are the crown of creation and we announce that it is not our destiny to become robot parts of the Great Machine.”
14. TO RE-HUMANIZE EXISTENCE
Play is a humanizing force- when people of all ages play, we exercise imagination, creativity, compassion, and relationship skills. Everybody can and should play, but kids happen to be really good at it when adults aren’t getting in the way. The history of play in the US is tied to the history of segregation. Public pools and amusement parks were racially segregated from when they were first built in 1868 through the 1960’s. Black kids who wanted to play or swim instead met with exclusion, incarceration, and violence.
NAG organizers protest segregation at Glen Echo (Walter Oates, DC Public Library)
A Maryland amusement park, Glen Echo included The Crystal Pool, a merry-go-round, and a wooden roller coaster; all segregated. When local students, including Gwendolyn Greene and Laurence Henry, tried to ride the Merry-Go-Round, Glen Echo’s security guards arrested them. They were members of the newly formed Nonviolent Action Group, a student organization that also organized pickets of the white house, sit-ins at a Virginia drug store, and other desegregation actions.
They showed up every day through the hot DC summer in 1960, picketing, protesting, and recruiting neighbors. The American Nazi Party came and counter-protested. The leaders were arrested and held on fabricated charges without bail. The protestors kept showing up. Some days there were thirty picketers- some days there were hundreds. At the end of the summer, Glen Echo announced that it was closing early for the season. The NAG was ready to start back up the following summer, but they didn’t need to. When Glen Echo reopened in 1961, kids of all races were admitted.
Logan Rozos delivers the NYU graduation speech
“We believe national boundaries are artificial and must inevitably be abolished. In the new world, all resources and technology must be used for the benefit of all people.”
15. COMMUNICATION AND SOLIDARITY WITH THE YOUNG PEOPLE OF THE WORLD IN OUR COMMON STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM AND PEACE
Graduations lean heavily on ceremony, and this year’s traditions have been seized and disrupted by young activists who use their platforms as speakers and student leaders to demand solidarity with Palestinians surviving or being martyred by the Zionist genocide. Logan Rozos, a black trans actor and activist delivered NYU’s graduation speech. His diploma is being withheld indefinitely.
Megha Vemuri gave a commencement speech at MIT
“I do not wish to speak only to my own politics today, but to speak for all people of conscience, and all people who feel the moral injury of this atrocity. And I want to say that I condemn this genocide, and complicity in this genocide.”
-Logan Rozos
MIT’s class president, Megha Vemuri gave a speech at a commencement event and was banned from both graduation and campus.
“Right now, while we prepare to graduate and move forward with our lives, there are no universities left in Gaza. We are watching Israel try to wipe out Palestine off the face of the earth, and it is a shame that MIT is a part of it."
-Megha Vemuri
Cecilia Culver gave a speech at the George Washington University that got her banned from campus. Faith Wood urged students and alumni at Middlebury College to reconsider their donations, following the lead of last years commencement speaker, Adayliah Ley. Harvard professor Andrew Manuel Crespo used his graduation speech to acknowledge his university’s failings in response to student movements for Palestine. At the Harvard Divinity School commencement, Zehra Imam called youth to action.
“Class of 2025- Palestine is waiting for us to arrive and you must be courageous enough to rise to the call because Palestine will keep showing up in our living rooms until we are ready to meet its gaze.”
- Zehra Imam
Youth know that none of us are free until all of us are free. They show up for each other. They stand up for each other. By doing so, they send a clear message that kids will not stop shouting, fighting, unionizing, organizing, teaching, protesting until youth liberation is reality.
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 recent rally against the Liquified Natural Gas pipeline
Catch a screening of “Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round” about the desegregation of Glen Echo
Watch Logan Rozos’s and Megha Vemuri’s full speeches
Review all fifteen points of youth liberation
Research your local youth movements and show up to an event to support them!