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>> 253 Conclusion Instead of spending time worrying about what established leaders are thinking and aren’t doing, we had better start getting over the fear of change, and do something ourselves before those young behind us start calling our generation out for being trifling, no good, out of touch, and ineffective. —Lisa Y. Sullivan, October 14, 1996 Five years after the collapse of the Black Student Leadership Network (BSLN), Lisa Y. Sullivan, the organization’s cofounder and most visible member, passed away from an unexpected illness. Her death was a shocking blow to many young activists who viewed her as both a mentor and a rising young leader who symbolized the hopes and dreams of the post–civil rights generation. As a student of African American politics and social movements, Sullivan believed, perhaps too optimistically, that she could bridge the interests of young and older activists in black America and in social justice circles around a common agenda that addressed the unique conditions facing low-income communities of color. Yet after nearly two decades working with grassroots youth organizations , Sullivan began to develop a sharp critique of the internal operations of youth-oriented activist circles in the black community. In October 1996, she authored a letter to young black activists titled “On Leadership: An Open Letter to the Next Generation of Black Leaders.” 254 > 255 their approaches with antiviolence and community intervention initiatives after several of their constituents were killed in street-level violence. The experiences of these organizations, networks, activists, and advocates underscore a significant concern of post–civil rights generation activists and adult activists working in youth-oriented networks and movement infrastructures. Notwithstanding the generational tensions that plague both transformational and contained movement campaigns, young activists should not invest their energy in resolving a complex and seemingly never-ending debate about tensions between younger and older activists. Rather, it is imperative for them to consider whether generational tensions are reflective of deeper grievances about the trajectory of social movements and black politics. These grievances may be intraracial class divisions, disputes over access to resources, philosophical differences over strategies and tactics, concerns about political co-optation and institutional leveraging, and power struggles inside of movement infrastructures. More important, young activists should invest in organizing strategies that can ameliorate the despair in marginalized and underresourced communities. The young people who are the central focus of this book were anchored in black-led movement infrastructures as well as multiracial network-affiliated groups working on issues that were particularly relevant to low-income and working-class blacks. The initiatives discussed in this book—the Free South Africa Movement, the New Haven youth movement, BSLN, the labor movement and Union Summer, and the juvenile justice reform movement (JJRM)—were coordinated by movement infrastructures and bridge-builders who connected indigenous activists with policymakers and advocates. They were further shaped by the models of organizing and movement frames advanced by earlier student and youth formations such as the Southern Negro Youth Congress (SNYC), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the Student Organization for Black Unity (SOBU). A major theme of this book is that youth-oriented transformational movements—high-risk initiatives that are diffuse and have a longterm impact on political culture—have been episodic in the post–civil rights era. Most contemporary initiatives have been contained or relatively low-risk, have been short-lived, and have had difficulty spreading beyond their initial locale or infrastructure. Notwithstanding these 256 > 257 leveraging practices over high-risk strategies; (3) the dexterity of movement bridge-builders and indigenous activists and their ability to take advantage of favorable political contexts; and (4) the advancement of creative organizing strategies and tactics that can mobilize marginalized , noncollege black youth and young adults living in poor communities . As described below, these dilemmas are clouded by the fact that youth groups operate in diverse movement infrastructures that force them to negotiate with adult allies, advocates, funding agencies, and indigenous activists. Student/Youth Activism and the Resource/Support Dilemma As young activists mobilize members of an aggrieved population, they must figure out how to marshal the resources necessary to facilitate such social movement-building activities. Members of an aggrieved population, particularly the cohorts within the group who have little social visibility and the least access to institutional power, tend to have few resources to fund and facilitate social movement activities. As a result, youth groups with few resources often seek out patrons who can help support their activities. For intergenerational or cross-sector...

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