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>> 15 1 Movement Activism and the Post–Civil Rights Generation The other thing that’s quite important is that all of us [sixties activists] are talking from a context that is utterly and radically and permanently different than today’s context. You cannot underestimate how important it was that no black person in the South could vote, and no college student in America could vote. The two active constituencies did not have the option of working in the system open to them. . . . Civil disobedience and speaking out were the options open. Today, I suppose to most people civil disobedience seems strange if you haven’t first voted and tried to work within the system. So it’s a hopelessly different context. —Tom Hayden, SNCC Conference at Trinity College, April 1988 The Peoples’ Community Feeding Program was created in 1994 by a contingent of black students from Hunter College in New York City. Similar to the feeding programs created by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Black Panther Party in the 1960s and 1970s, the initiative tackled malnutrition and hunger, feeding close to two hundred people each month in its Central Brooklyn neighborhood . Supported through in-kind contributions from churches and activists, the program was eventually taken over by activists affiliated with the Black Student Leadership Network (BSLN), a national organization allied with the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF), a prominent child advocacy group. The BSLN affiliate, officially called the New York Metro chapter, also was cultivated by the Central Brooklyn Partnership, an economic justice organization that served as an informal gathering place for young activists from the Bedford-Stuyvesant, Crown Heights, and Fort Greene sections of Brooklyn. 16 > 17 By documenting social movement activism among the post–civil rights generation, this book examines the limitations and opportunities for youth and young adult participation in movement-building initiatives. I am also concerned with explaining the status and participation of black youth and young adults in popular mobilization campaigns and social movement infrastructures, or the diverse organizational processes and networks of activists, advocates, and allies that reinforce movements and social activism.4 I focus on mobilization campaigns that targeted regressive measures and public health dilemmas that had particularly damaging consequences on poor and working-poor black communities in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Social movements offer an entry point for engaging students and youth in what Holloway Sparks refers to as a “dissident citizenship,” or a type of civic engagement that encourages marginal groups to challenge the social and political order.5 They serve as socializing agents that link disaffected communities with public policy agendas, especially when elected officials and authoritative decision makers neglect their grievances . In a general sense, progressive social movements entail a mix of contentious social justice activism, popular mobilization campaigns, popular education and consciousness-raising activities, grassroots organizing, and legal and institutional pressures. As demonstrated in the youth initiatives discussed at the beginning of the chapter, movement campaigns use a broad array of strategies and tactics, and are led by an assortment of activists, networks, and organizations. I rely on a loose interpretation of social movements and interchange this concept with popular mobilization campaigns, extra-systemic pressures , resistance movements, movement-building initiatives, and contentious politics.6 However, I distinguish between transformational forms of movement-building exercises and contained protest movements . Transformational movements (or mobilization campaigns that have a transformational character) are diffuse and involve high-risk strategies and tactics that have a sustained impact on political culture; their goals are adopted by a diverse group of movement networks; occasionally , they influence the emergence of new mobilizing structures; and at times they disrupt or effect the implementation of public policies. Contained movements or mobilization campaigns, on the other hand, are episodic and discontinuous; they are short-lived, are restricted, and 18 > 19 impacted or depended upon the participation of black youth or students . These campaigns were coordinated by movement infrastructures composed of youth-led organizations, multigenerational organizations, and network-affiliated groups that supported youth organizing. Most of the campaigns took place in community struggles outside the university environs including urban-based organizing initiatives, labor/union and economic justice activities, antihunger campaigns, popular education activities, criminal and juvenile justice reform campaigns, and racial justice initiatives. With the exception of the historical overview of black youth activism in the 1930s and 1940s examined in the second chapter, I focus specifically on the period spanning from the mid-1960s to the mid-2000s. This period saw the...

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