Cultivating a Culture of Transformative Youth Organizing

• In Event: Lessons in Liberation: Growing Movements Through Abolitionist Praxis

Abstract

My experiences as a former youth organizer and as a current grassroots organizer and critical high school educator of color has informed my work, which critically examines how age lies along an axis of oppression (Gordon, 2010) that is so normalized in our adultist, heteropatriarchal society that it often goes unnoticed (Kelley, 2014). The culture of the school and prison nexus (Meiners, 2007) and the carceral control of children’s bodies in schools can be traced back to Puritans who wanted to strengthen paternal authority over children while expanding schools (Mintz, 2004). The Puritan legacy of controlling childrens’ bodies persists in contemporary United States public schools, with disproportionate impacts on youth who have become minoritized in their communities. Educators and community members seeking to organize with youth must contend with how the values laden in the school and prison nexus and adultism in policies, practices, and cultures prove to be formidable when working to build abolitionist youth power in schools and their communities.

Drawing from my lived experiences in organizing and high school settings that center young people of color in urban communities and the ethnic studies, critical pedagogy, healing-centered and abolitionist praxis frameworks that inform my work, this essay considers how transformative youth organizing (Bautista, 2018) can provide a framework and pedagogical approach for cultivating a culture and practice for transformative youth organizing in abolitionist efforts in schools and communities.

In this essay, I explore how the carceral culture of school and community institutions create conditions that perpetuate adultism and the repression of youth agency and advocacy for their needs and often fail to keep children safe. I examine how each principle of the transformative youth organizing framework can counter these harmful impacts by providing a guide for young people and adult allies to co-create spaces where they can be physically, socially, culturally, politically, emotionally, and spiritually safe as they engage in the critical abolitionist work of healing, resisting, and reimagining together and both collectively and in affinity spaces. With analysis of each principle, I offer key questions and considerations for practitioners to consider in their work.

It is my core belief that when young people, communities, and adult allies/co-conspirators build safe spaces and community grounded in solidarity, and loving relationships, they reaffirm the sacredness of their humanity and connections with another. As transformative youth organizing collectives engage in healing justice and collective agency to demand and reimagine what accountability for our collective well-being could look like, they courageously challenge the narrative that justifies putting people into cages by bringing light to the violent impact of colonial and oppressive institutions and initiate the cathartic process of being collectively responsible for healing ourselves, one another, and our communities. It is my sincere hope that as we build transformative youth organizing havens, communities, love, healing, agency and creation, we not only work to dismantle the prison industrial complex, but also experience the joy of co-creating abolitionist freedom dreams and possibilities.

Author

• Emily Bautista, Independent Scholar