We Fight To Win: Inequality and the Politics of Youth Activism

2: Reading, Writing, and Radicalism: The Politics of Youth Activism on School Grounds

What happens when youth try to tackle social justice issues and organize other students on school territory? Before SRU and YP youth activists eventually coalesced with larger social movements in their communities, they first attempted to politicize the social and academic elements of their schools. Just as labor activists start organizing in their workplaces, youth begin their political projects where they are: in their schools. Student activists recounted to me their frustrating experiences with school clubs, student government, curriculums, and all the other activities that constitute the social and educational life of high schools. As I listened to their stories, I began to grasp the difficulty that youth activists face when organizing student movements on school grounds. The deeper question became clear: why do youth movements so often run into roadblocks inside the educational system, and what might this say about the role that schooling plays in constructing youth as citizens-in-the-making rather than as actualized political forces in their own right? Youth activists in Oakland and Portland recounted story after story of the frustrations they had experienced trying to organize youth movements on school grounds. Their stories are instructive, for they reveal the role that schooling often plays in thwarting youth from claiming political power. Schools do foster a kind of social citizenship, but one that is most often dependent on a model of citizenship-in-the-making, which presumes an eventual social inclusion and engagement. In this model, the future adult self is the real political subject, the end product. Young people’s school 60 2 Reading, Writing, and Radicalism The Politics of Youth Activism on School Grounds experiences as model UN members, student senators, or student body presidents are the means to this end: the training ground for the eventual adult political subjectivity. When youth insist on taking political action in their schools, as youth and not as adults-in-training, they often run into roadblocks and resistance from administrations, teachers, and even other students. This resistance is not uniform or total: there are the extraordinary teachers who are invaluable advocates to student movements on campus . There are the principals who support student organizing around particular educational justice goals. As indispensable to the successes of student movements as these key players are, however, their efforts do not add up to a larger and more sustained institutional support of student activism and youth political engagement. It is this institutional resistance to student political power, embedded in school practices, that is the subject of this chapter. Sunnie’s story is revealing. Sunnie was an eighteen-year-old suburban Portland student affiliated with SRU. She had just graduated from high school and couldn’t be more relieved. Sunnie’s high school was far removed from the urban center of Portland, located in a peaceful, wooded area. In the far reaches of the Portland suburbs, this area had also been a stronghold of the conservative Oregon Citizens Alliance over the last decade. In high school, Sunnie’s gay best friend was constantly harassed by students in the hallways, classrooms, and lunchrooms of their school. Sunnie also suffered this harassment from peers because of her association with him. Between her friend’s parents’ fierce rejection of their son (his parents burned his clothes and kicked him out of the house when he came out to them) and his peers’ harassment and threats of violence, Sunnie’s friend soon began to contemplate suicide. That’s when Sunnie, along with her circle of friends, initiated the formation of a Gay/Straight Alliance at her school. The proposal to establish a Gay/Straight Alliance as a sanctioned school club met with resistance from the administration at her school. Sunnie explained this resistance as stemming from the administration’s wishes to keep the school “safe” from political conflict or confrontation: The school doesn’t want . . . like if it is going to create conflict, they don’t want it. So that was definitely the message that I got. They READING, WRITING, AND RADICALISM 61 wanted to keep things civil; they didn’t want anyone to try to protest or do anything of that sort, because they wanted a very quiet school. Which is understandable. But at the same time kids are being harassed. Like we had to sit through science class one time with a kid waiting outside to beat my friend up; he just stood there waiting...