174 - Regional Spotlight Session. Social Justice Youth-Style: Bay Area Youth Activists' Perspectives on Race, Education, and Coalition Politics

Session Submission Type: Paper Session

Abstract

The Bay Area is a national epicenter for youth organizing, and youth are playing a key role in educational, racial, gender, and labor justice movements, among many other struggles. This proposed session will explore Bay Area youth organizing as it operates in distinct youth-led organizations and as partners in broader coalitions. Centered on the perspectives of youth activists and organizers themselves, this session will explore how youth activists understand issues of racial, education, and gender injustice (among many other issues) in their communities, and how they organize to tackle these issues. Youth will speak about how their organizing strategies converge with and diverge from adult-led strategies, the constraints and possibilities of operating in specific non-profit contexts, and the role that youth play in larger social movement coalitions.

Sub Unit

• Regional Spotlight

Session Organizer

• Hava Rachel Gordon, University of Denver

Presider

• Jessica Karen Taft, University of California-Santa Cruz

Presenters

• Saaun Bell, Youth Together

• Akua Jackson, Californians for Justice

Discussant

• Andreana L. Clay, San Francisco State University