10 Chapter 10: Youth Civic Engagement

Conceptions like justice, rights, and punishments have been influenced by larger frameworks composed of the moral views and ethical perspectives of any community or culture.  The early philosophers of morality in Europe like Kant and Hobbes argued passionately for the importance of following universal moral principles regardless of the context in which they are enacted but they differed in their reasons for proposing these laws.  Hobbes for instance believed that moral rules should help in the fulfillment of human desires.  For philosophers Locke and Aquinas, it was all about using one’s reasoning capacity to discover universal moral frameworks that do not depend on the social context.  While Immanuel Kant agreed with the others in the existence of moral rules that are above specific contexts, he proposed what he termed Categorical Imperative which are unconditional rules we must all follow regardless of our desires or the context.  The basis of the rules is that we are all self-governing beings and we are in a community of other people who are self-governing.  For society to function optimally and for respect to be retained among people, everyone must follow these moral precepts.  In some sense, Kant was an absolutist in his understanding of morality where ethical precepts were not to be disobeyed under any circumstances.  In one of his most famous hypothetical stories he argues that if an assassin knocked on your door and asked you if his victim is in the house, you would have to answer truthfully since that is a pact you have made with your fellow humans.  Exercising a choice to lie in any circumstance would destroy people’s trust in each other and lead to a larger crisis in human society which supersedes the needs of the context (Copleston, 1953).

Hannah Arendt (1973) was a philosopher who conducted a deep analysis of what morality means in the larger context of the history of communities.  She wrote her philosophical treatises right after the end of WW2 and therefore was consumed by the immorality of evil and hatred against whole groups of people.  In connection with this phenomenon, she examined the tools of violence and war and their role in moral behavior.  Arendt believed that violence is so normalized in contemporary societies and the tools of violence so invisible that it has become banal (ordinary) and people do not recognize violence when it does happen; she calls the phenomenon the banality of evil.  She believed that anyone could engage in unspeakable horrors and immoral action when the context was right for the encouragement of such behavior.  She especially wrote about the ordinary German citizen during the rule of the Nazis and their complicity in the deaths of millions.  She believed that engagement with evil actions is marked not by its exception but by the normality and prevalence of the participants where they do not recognize that they are committing unethical actions.  When an administration makes mere cogs of its citizens, they demurely go along with the atrocities committed by the government according to Arendt and in fact, they may think they are behaving honorably (Arendt, 2013).  Arendt is one of the most important philosophers of the last century, just as the holocaust perpetrated by the Third Reich is one of most significant events of the 1900s.  She has argued for non-conformity as a response to evil (Anita Roars, 2017).

Martha Nussbaum is a contemporary philosopher who examined ethical actions but iterated that one’s moral stance did not ensure moral action and there were many contextual factors that might intervene in the acting out of moral beliefs.  For her, acceptance of vulnerability as an ethical person was necessary to lead to a healthy moral self.  In order to become a citizen of the world, she champions a morality that is rooted in the context but that underlies an ethical universalism.  Nussbaum considers a study of emotions as central to a study of moral philosophy because emotions mediate how we experience and enact moral thought and behavior (Nussbaum, 2003).  For her, moral and ethical considerations should include the notion of facilitating human capabilities and functionalities (Nussbaum & Sen, 1993).  When societies are pondering ethical choices and related public policies, lawmakers will have to ask whether their actions would enhance citizens’ capacities, freedoms and contribute to their individual development.  Moral laws are those that help individuals enhance their lives and develop their full potential.

One of the important political philosophers of the latter half of the 20th century is John Rawls.  Many of the contemporary psychologists who we will explore in the chapter, used Rawls’ framework in their own studies of moral development (Cortese, 1997).  Rawls introduced a theory of justice that still resonates with academics from various disciplines who tussle with ideas around morality and justice.  Rawls conceived of three principles of justice: 1) The liberty principles which includes civil and political rights; 2) The fair opportunity principle that everyone deserves fairness and equal opportunity; 3) The difference principle which suggests that inequality is alright if the needs of the worst off are still taken care of by society.  His radical new argument was based on his conception of the original position.  According to him, it is natural for people to be guided by self-interest.  However, in order to organize a just society, policy makers need to move beyond what would personally benefit them.  They would have to begin from a position that Rawls called ‘veil of ignorance.’  They would have to assume that they do not know what their own social location is going to be when making laws, especially those that have to do with distribution of resources (Rawls, 2013).  For example, a rich person might want to argue for lower taxes because it would benefit their own financial standing, while a poor person might argue for higher taxes since the meeting of their own needs might have to come from such revenue.  For a society to have laws that are not skewed, lawmakers would have to approach law making from the framework of the veil of ignorance where they themselves do not know if they are going to be wealthy or poor.  Similarly, with racial and sexual discrimination – lawmakers would have to put themselves in the position of the most disadvantaged in order to enact laws based on social justice.  Rawls’ moral philosophy does not apply to daily behavior as much as it is about laws and policies (Philosophy Overdose, 2016).  In fact, for many of the moral philosophers described, morality did not exist so much in individual citizens but in the social

context and social functioning of the collective.  They believed that when societies are organized along justice-based principles, individual ethical behavior will also be enhanced.

Piaget was one of the first psychologists to delve deeply into the issue of moral development among children and adolescents.  For him, moral reasoning was a continuation of children’s cognitive development and therefore linked to the stages of their understandings of the world.  In the pre-moral phase, which is during early childhood, children disregard rules related to social behavior and are purely concerned with fulfilling their desires.  During middle childhood, children absorb the rules laid down by authority figures and the rules are considered inflexible and irrelevant to the context in which the behavior occurs.  This stage he termed heteronomous morality.  However, as they get older children realize the social context of any behavior must be factored into judging behavior and that the rules of ethical behavior can change with the situation.  During this stage of autonomous morality, the intentions of the actor are considered important when distinguishing right from wrong (Duska & Whelan, 1975).

Lawrence Kohlberg adopted some of Piaget’s basic tenets of developmental change in morality and expanded it into a 3 stage (with 6 substages) model that he used to explain the growth in moral reasoning among children and youth.  Like Piaget, he conducted clinical interviews with the participants in his study using 12 vignettes in which the protagonists made moral choices under different circumstances.  He asked the participants how they viewed the decisions made and why they held such a view (for their logic).  One of his most famous stories was about a man named Heinz.  The vignette is referred to as the Heinz Dilemma.  The following is the basic details of the story:

“A woman was on her deathbed.  There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her.  It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered.  The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to produce.  He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug.  The sick woman’s husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $1,000 which is half of what it cost.  He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later.  But the druggist said: “No, I discovered the drug and I’m going to make money from it.”  So, Heinz got desperate and broke into the man’s laboratory to steal the drug for his wife.  Should Heinz have broken into the laboratory to steal the drug for his wife?  Why or why not?” (Kohlberg, 1981).

Kohlberg followed his story with a series of questions meant to elicit the participants understanding of the ethical aspects of the story, such as, “Did Heinz do the right thing or the wrong thing?” or “Would it have mattered if the dying woman was not his wife?” etc.  Based on the participants’ reasoning around moral issues, he classified their moral stage into one of 6 levels.  During the two preconventional stages, children’s reasonings are mainly aimed at fulfilling self-centered needs and morality is mostly a matter of whether the actor gets punished or gets away without negative consequences.  During the two conventional stages, people are motivated by the need for approval of others as well as to maintain law and order in society.  Any violation of the law is perceived to lead to chaos and is therefore to be avoided.  People in the conventional stages would view laws as written in stone and therefore would not challenge them.  Kohlberg posits that most people across cultures could be categorized in the conventional stages based on their responses to his moral dilemmas.  The few people who do reason at the postconventional stages would look at rules and laws as mostly created by humans for human welfare and therefore if they do not serve to benefit the weakest in society, should be broken.  They would argue that any country’s laws are merely social constructions and ought to be challenged if they are unfair.  Table 1 outlines Kohlberg’s stages and the basic moral arguments that people in each stage employ to deliberate on moral dilemmas.

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ohlberg’s theory was foundational in framing moral development research for decades after, but there were criticisms of his theory from several quarters.  One of the most significant counter frameworks was proposed by Carol Gilligan, a student of Kohlberg who wrote about the unique ways in which women develop their ethical reasoning because of their experiences being raised as female (Gilligan, 1996).  She asserts that women have an ethic of care as opposed to an ethic of justice that men develop.  A sense of responsibility dominates this ethic as opposed to an entitlement of rights that males are encouraged to hold dear.  This leads women to care for others who suffer deeply and value emotional connectedness as a moral value.  While Kohlberg emphasized principles and universal codes of conduct as moral values shared by everyone at the higher levels of moral development, Gilligan asserts that women value their responsibility to individuals as their expression of morality.  Subsequent research however has only offered mixed support for Gilligan’s theory.  There does not seem to be a clear-cut gender difference in moral reasoning (Friedman, Robinson & Friedman, 1987; Walker, 1984).

Research studies have demonstrated that the educational level of the participants is correlated with the stage the moral scale scores according to Kohlberg’s scheme.  Higher levels of education correlate with reasoning at higher stages of Kohlberg’s framework.  Some studies demonstrate that going through a progressive educational system is a necessary condition for individuals to argue at the higher levels of moral reasoning (Bar-Yam, Kohlberg & Naame, 1980; Gibbs, 1977).  Experts have pointed out that there are cultural differences in the moral reasoning strategies used by individuals.  Traditional cultural contexts emphasize obedience and family loyalty as important to ethical living (Edwards, 1986).  Abstract principles around social justice is thereby less important in the ethical frameworks of many cultures (Edwards, 1986; Snarey, 1985).

William Perry who also used Piaget’s framework on cognitive development expanded his exploration of moral and ethical development (Michael Green, 2013) into late adolescence and early adulthood (Perry, 1999).  For Perry, one’s ethical and intellectual development is intimately associated with how we view all experiences in life.  The early educational experience of most students teaches them that there are right and wrong answers in the first stage of dualism.  They bring these certainties to college and refuse to accept that there are some problems that do not lend themselves to easy answers.  As they move through their college education, students begin to differentiate between problems that have right and wrong answers and those that have a multiplicity of resolutions.  In the third stage, students realize that the appropriateness of solutions to most problems is relative to the context.  They move into a stage of ethical understanding that Perry terms relativism.  Finally, in the stage of commitment, students become comfortable with uncertainty and use a combination of personal experiences as well as evidence and logic from other experts to arrive at a comprehension of any situation.  This four-stage growth from certainties handed down by authority figures early in life to a commitment to pursuing the path of nuanced justice, is mostly available for those privileged students who continue into higher education (Perry, 1981).

Along the same theme of the development of a sense of justice, William Damon explored the development of notions of fairness when distributing resources (distributive justice) among children and youth.  In early childhood, children do not dwell on the issue of fairness and believe that resources should belong to them just because they want it.   Later in childhood, children think that an equal distribution of all resources would be the ethical of all possible solutions to inequity.  Around adolescence, youth begin to see the complexity of resource distribution problems and begin to take many factors into consideration such as being in need, merit, equity etc. (Damon, 1977).  These changes are associated with the development of social understanding in the child (Damon & Hart, 1982).  In infancy, babies do not have the capacity to distinguish self from others and therefore are not capable of experiencing the world that another person experiences.  In early childhood, children can understand when another is in distress though this does not translate into effective action.  In middle childhood, children understand that other people have different needs and personalities and therefore they can respond to others as individuals.  By adolescence they, are able to empathize with the plight of individuals they have never met and realize that situations of distress are endemic and require larger changes in order to alleviate.  One’s moral reasoning is tied to our capacity to understand other people’s perceptions of the world and their experience of it.

Unlike the psychological theories described earlier, some theorists believe that moral action and moral reasoning develop differently in humans and that moral action is underemphasized in most psychological theories.  James Rest (1983) is perhaps the earliest to explore moral decision making and behavior.  He proposed a 4-component model to address the question.  The first component begins with the capacity to recognize that a situation calls for a moral response.  Then, the actor must identify a path that is morally appropriate of all the possible courses of action.  Thirdly, motivation to act on moral grounds versus more personal motives is important.  Finally, the actor must reaffirm a commitment to act in moral ways in order to enhance one’s ethical character.  The last component involves “having the strength of your convictions, having courage, persisting, overcoming distractions and obstacles, implementing skills, and having ego strength” (Nucci and Narvaez, 2008).  Figure 2 outlines on Rest’s four components and their relationship to ethical action.

New research has indicated that unlike Piaget’s contention that young children are egocentric, they are in fact capable of engaging in a variety of empathy related behaviors.  From the earliest ages, babies respond more strongly to other infants crying than almost any other sound including recordings of their own cries (Martin & Clark, 1982).  During toddlerhood, children increase their capacity for empathy and prosocial behaviors like distracting a person in distress and comforting them (Zahn-Waxler et. al., 1992).  By the time children enter preschool, they are capable of cognitive empathy where they can place themselves in the shoes of someone in distress.  Thus, emotional empathy which includes feeling distress at someone else’s misfortune and cognitive empathy which includes understanding the feelings that the other person is experiencing, go towards making ethical judgements about responding in a prosocial way to others around the child.  Several studies show that empathy is a stable trait in individuals and that there is a significant correlation between an individual’s empathy scores in early childhood and their score in adulthood (Eisenberg, 2000; Knafo et al, 2008).

Researchers have proposed the existence of mirror neurons, which are a special class of motor neurons that may contribute to human empathic response.  The mirror neurons light up when a person experiences actions by others that lead to a feeling that the individuals watching the action is also performing the action (i.e., when we cry or feel joy at the movies) (Iacoboni, 2008).  De Waal (2008) proposes that mirror neurons are crucial for matching one’s emotional and physical state to another person’s state.  This state matching is a precursor to feeling empathy for another person.  The mirror neurons connect to the older limbic system of the brain which is responsible for processing emotions like fear and anger (Decety & Jackson, 2006).  When one feels empathy, mirror neurons and the limbic system are activated; at the same time, centers of emotional regulation are also activated and this prevents a person from feeling overwhelmed by the empathic feelings.  The self-other differentiation areas of the brain allow one to stay above the feelings to help another individual.

One important factor that determines the level of empathy shown by an actor is the similarity between the observer and the distressed person.  Studies have demonstrated that individuals are more likely to help another person the more similarity they perceive between themselves and the one who needs their help (Barnett et al., 1986; Batson et. al., 2005).  This could at least partly explain why people are less moved by the plight of others who may be very different from them or who come from backgrounds that are unfamiliar – i.e., undocumented families fleeing crisis in their home countries.

Empathy requires advanced cognitive processing capacity for it to lead to effective action; internalizing moral values regardless of external rewards and punishments should be key goals for parents, teachers and other adults aiming to provide for positive development in this area.  When one has internalized a moral value, there is a level of guilt when one thinks that one’s actions may have harmed others, and this forces individuals to consider other people’s needs even when they conflict with their own.  During times when parents discipline their children, a space is created for shaping children’s moral concerns in a way that leads to children controlling their actions towards prosocial ends.  Most parental disciplining consists of threats of love-withdrawal and assertion of power; these are often counterproductive.  Research has found that focusing on the victim’s distress and the actions by the child that led to the distress is much more effective in getting children to internalize the moral values.  The latter form of disciplining is known as inductive discipline.  Induction with

just enough pressure allows children to develop an empathic distress and guilt and this leads to the enhancement of moral development.  Repeatedly making the connections between the child’s actions and the distress produced in others, creates an internal script for these events.  The script allows the child to display self-control before acting in a way that might harm others.

While the theories above deal with the development of ethical reasoning in young children and youth, there were other psychologists who wanted to look at factors that lead youth and adults to stand against tyranny and authoritarianism even when the individual’s own safety was under threat (in other words those who act from Kohlberg’s highest stages).  After the second World War, the horrors of the holocaust conducted under Nazi rule was fully exposed to the world.  Many of the individuals who perpetrated atrocities against the Jews, gypsies and homosexuals in Germany were tried for their crimes in a place called Nuremberg.  In the course of their trials, lower level defendants cited that they were simply obeying authority and were not personally culpable.  A year after Adolf Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem, psychological researcher Stanley Milgram (1961) proceeded to explore the notion that blind obedience to authority and an incapacity to reason ethically were correlated.  In his experiment, he had his participants shock another person in order to teach them new information.  The learners were collaborators of the experimenter and experienced no shock.  The participants who were the “teachers” were frequently assured by the experimenter (a person in a white coat) that the shock while painful was not going to harm the learner.  Milgram found that most men and women were willing to shock another person severely based simply on the assurance of the experimenter that nothing bad was going to happen.  For Milgram, this demonstrated the dark side of obedience to authority (Milgram, 1963; Milgram & Gudehus, 1978).  Milgram’s experiment became a foundational one in psychology; (Korlan Syzdykova, 2014).

A contemporary of Milgram, Philip Zimbardo, designed his experiment to identify the importance of the context of actions in the expression of morality (Zimbardo, 1973). Zimbardo’s famous prison experiment at Stanford reflected some of the same findings that Milgram’s had (Another Boring Week, 2013).  He was motivated to find out if people behaved in morally reprehensible ways because they had a personality that lent itself to such behavior or whether the contexts in which people live or work lead them to behave in different ways.  He set up a prison-like environment in his lab in Stanford and his volunteer participants were randomly assigned to be either a prisoner or guard in the prison. They had to stay in their roles and live in the prison set up for a few days.  The participants were previously evaluated and classified as mentally healthy.  The mock prison simulated a real-life prison as much as was possible.  Both prisoners and guards were given little opportunity to communicate with each other as people.  Both were treated like prisoners and guards are regularly treated in society- punitive punishment for prisoners and immense respect that is demanded by(for?) law enforcement.  The guards were instructed to maintain law and order in the prison and gain the respect of the prisoners.

Zimbardo had to suspend his experiment after six days even though it was scheduled for two weeks because of safety issues and the mental health concerns for the prisoners.  The guards began to routinely humiliate the prisoners and divide them by offering special favors to some.  The prisoners who were treated especially harshly banded together and became non-compliant.  The guards in turn attempted to break their spirit by engaging in cruel punishments.  Several prisoners exhibited signs of emotional stress and broke down; they were so caught up in the situation that they did not ask to leave even when they were in pain.  They simply attempted to obey and curry the favors of the guards even more.  Zimbardo’s prison experiments reinforced once again the notion that situational contexts determined moral reasoning and behavior.

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eaching moral reasoning, ethical behavior and empathy is complex and must be reinforced at various levels and institutions from the family to schools to larger institutions in society.  At the family level, it is important to talk about feelings, treat a child with respect and use inductive reasoning when emphasizing moral values.  Researchers have found that using physical discipline, threatening a child with withdrawal of love or with other dire consequences, is counterproductive.  Emphasizing the victim’s feelings and using positive consequences facilitate moral development.  At the societal level, valuing social justice and organizing the physical space to facilitate safety and community are likely to further enhance agency among people.  In schools, it is important to talk about equity and use restorative justice to address issues related to discipline.

People of color, and Black people specifically, have always established movements of resistance against racial discrimination. An influential racial justice movement today is Black Lives Matter which is a widespread global network for black liberation across America. Black Lives Matter started in 2013 as a response to long standing and continuous, state-sanctioned violence and anti-Black racism in America. The movement was founded by Patrisse Khan-Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi as a grass roots organization to intervene in the violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and other racist elements.  The founding women hoped that the movement would connect Black people globally in their desire to act collectively for the welfare of their communities. Black Lives Matter has given young people a platform to express their opposition to incidents of violence on Black people in their communities as well as to the long-standing racism and hate that perpetuates this violence.

Youth have always been at the frontlines of the struggle for racial justice.  The increased attention to state violence on Black people has galvanized youth of color for whom the daily aggressions against their dignity is not a new phenomenon.  After two white Baton Rouge Police Department officers shot Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old black man in Louisiana in the summer of 2016, students from the Baton Rouge High School took to the streets. In response to the unjust and horrific killing, students Myra Richardson, Raheejah Flowers and Jeanette Jackson led what they called the Wave March for Justice, which brought thousands to the Louisiana capitol five days after the unjust killing (Simonton 2016). These three young women were trained for community organizing as members of the Baton Rouge Youth Coalition (BRYC), a youth development organization that promotes civic engagement. The skills and experience these young women were gaining by being members of BRYC were used to organize students around fighting racial injustice in their community. Lucas Spielfogel, the executive director of BRYC, shared that activism around social issues is a natural extension of the organization’s work with youth (Simonton 2016).   The fact that these young women could organize thousands of people to protest an injustice, speaks to their leadership and influence as well as to the collective outrage around the unjust killing.

In the summer of 2019, 18-year-old Nupol Kiazolu, president of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York, led demonstrators in a passionate chant: “We will not stop until justice is served” as they stood by the New York Police Department’s Times Square substation (Baum 2019). The protest aimed to bring attention to the final hearing of NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo who, along with other police officers, tackled and restrained to death an unarmed Black man by the name of Eric Garner. Garner’s last words were “I can’t breathe,” which became, “a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement” (Baum 2019). Kiazolu, who is a sophomore at Hampton University,  was featured on Teen Vogue’s list of 21 Under 21 in 2018 and calls for the rebuilding of the US criminal justice system saying, “‘until we can radically deconstruct the system of policing and not just reform but rebuild it, these gruesome injustices will continue’” (Baum 2019). The Black Lives Matter movement continues to inspire youth of color to take matters into their own hands by protesting and educating.

Another example of youth activism in the movement for Black Lives comes from Ottumwa High School in Ottumwa, Iowa. As part of the 2020 National Black Lives Matter in School Week of Action, a group of Ottumwa high school students committed to reading and educating their peers on issues around equality, difference, and diversity. One of the students, Nardos Gebremedhin, who read books to preschoolers in her efforts, shared that she wants to teach others about her culture and, “show that we may be different, but we can come together” (Reece 2020). There is great power in the influence that youth can have on others to impact social change, especially when they are working with their own peers.  However, schools and other institutions in young peoples’ lives must provide the appropriate scaffolds so youth can be trained in the field of collective community organization to effect the positive changes that they need for their development as change agents.

Perhaps one of the most significant protest movements that was overwhelmingly spearheaded by youth in the last two decades was the Occupy Wall Street movement.  When the housing bubble burst in 2007- 2008, many young people across the country felt betrayed by the system.  The country plunged into a recession and pushed families and communities into poverty and bankruptcy.  Since the recession, the wealth inequality between the wealthy 20% and the rest of the population has grown enormously.  The top 1% owns about 40% of the wealth of the country.  There has been a growing disenchantment among young people and a lack of trust that the current economic system will facilitate a transition into self-sufficiency and economic independence (The Guardian, 2011).

On September 17, 2011, the group Adbusters, a youth advocacy and anti-corporate group, called for the Occupation of Wall Street to send a signal to the financial elites that young people had lost faith in all major institutions in the country – the government, the media and the banks.  Law enforcement in NYC, which had been forewarned, prevented activists from entering the area and so the protest moved to Zuccotti Park.  By nightfall over a 100 people had gathered in Zuccotti park voicing their protest over a system that fueled economic injustice in the country.  It was the largest movement since the Vietnam War and was unique in the way in which it organized itself.  The organizers proposed direct democracy, no hierarchical organization structures and emphasized self-empowerment.  There was an attempt to challenge race and gender hierarchies within the movement and be more inclusive of the concerns of marginalized groups.

Almost immediately, the movement was criticized by mainstream media for disrupting public peace and not having clearly defined goals.  However, the use of digital media allowed the group organizers to exchange information and the movement spread across the country where it took on regional characteristics with issues specific to their community being raised within the movement.  Technology allowed communication and individual groups learned from each other.  In order to counter the negative media coverage, it encouraged recordings of movement actions and soon the Occupy Movement created its own coverage which it broadcast over the internet.  The group also began publicizing the casual use of violence by law enforcement to suppress its gatherings.  In October 2011, 700 people were arrested in NYC alone.  This coalesced other organizations to rally around the group.  By December, thousands of young people in NYC managed to shut down Wall Street.  Since the civil rights era, this was the first time that there was a national youth movement that drew a wide range of people.  Youth had learned a valuable lesson about mobilizing for change.  While the movement itself did not achieve institutional change, it inspired young adults to get engaged in a civic manner for political change.  Many of the youth who were active in the movement gravitated towards the Democratic Socialist of America (DSA).

When Eli Ehrlich came out as female even though she was classified as male (cis male) at birth, she did not find much support from people around her.  However, with access to digital information, she found out that there were many thousands of people who identified as trans. She also understood that for trans youth it was important to establish connections with others in the community and acquire accurate information that is pertinent to their identity and community.  The Trans Student Educational Resources (TSER) network was set up by Ehrlich for exactly such a purpose.  Digital advocacy has also allowed groups such as the TSER to educate others about the specific issues that youth with non-normative gender identities face in the country and around the world.  Most mainstream ways of dealing with transphobia has been to increase visibility of the group; however, this has also led to increased violence on group members.  The virtual space creates a haven for many in the ‘gender defiant’ community especially in rural areas.  Similarly, crowd funding has been successfully employed by trans communities to recover transition related costs within the group, especially for people of color who have less access to health resources.  Transgender youth have had a much more radical liberatory focus in their actions both on and offline as compared to older generations of trans activists who focus more on assimilation and less on disrupting basic neoliberal frameworks. Young trans organizers have been the most insistent that the focus in terms of social justice remain on trans youth of color since they are the most likely to suffer violence, discrimination and a lack of access to health resources.

In recent years, the digital resources provided by youth groups dedicated to trans advocacy has proved invaluable because of the rapid changes that has come about in the frameworks used to comprehend the transsexual experience.  There has been a move for instance to use trans* to include all gender non-conforming experiences and using the term trans to refer to only people who want to transition to one of the binary genders (male/female).  Having consistent language to represent non-conforming or marginalized experiences is crucial to building community and the internet aids in the discourse that facilitates this.

In 2016, North Carolina passed the restrictive HB2 law which prevented trans individuals from using the bathrooms of the chosen gender.  There was an outcry at the national level, but it was really the organizing and protests that students in North Carolina engaged in that eventually led to the law’s repeal.  For one young trans student in North Carolina, Vinnie Holt, life became very difficult since his school, which only had one gender inclusive bathroom, did not want to flout the law.  He decided to collect letters from other students and organize collectively to change school policy.  With the support of the community, the school eventually did transform itself into a gender inclusive institution.  In high schools and colleges around the country trans youth have protested the lack of options and safety when it comes to toilets.  Cases where they have been harassed have prompted young people to organize and demand safe bathroom spaces for gender defiant and gender non-binary individuals. Communities have responded in a variety of ways such as providing for gender neutral bathrooms in accessible locations.

One of the most important issues facing youth in high schools today is the issue of gun violence.  After the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida in 2018, students organized to advocate for gun free schools and strict gun control in society.  During the shooting, 17 students and staff were killed and another 17 were injured.  Many of the survivors showed signs of trauma.  A group of about twenty students from the school came together to form a group that they titled Never again MSD with a hashtag #NeverAgain.  Their goals were mainly to influence legislative action that would lead to strict gun laws.  The governor of Florida was pushed to raise the minimum age for gun ownership, increase the waiting period and perform a more thorough background check before guns were sold to individuals.  The National Rifle Association filed a lawsuit against these measures.  The activist student group publicly called out legislators who had taken money from the NRA.  The founding students of the group utilized the attention of the national media on the violent shooting in their school to gain a presence on social platforms and other digital media, while at the same time giving interviews to TV and radio stations to make their point about the need for effective gun legislation.  They also used their reach to organize a national protest march a little over a month after the shooting incident.  The group and their supporters applied pressure on major corporations to sever their ties with the NRA.  One year later, they held an anniversary march in Washington DC reiterating their goals for a gun-violence free country.  (Guardian News, 2018).

All the above examples demonstrate the power of collective organizing and the impact of youth voice in society.  Students who feel politically empowered in high schools continue to be socially engaged in their communities and in the larger world.  With their prospects being uncertain, it is important for adults to teach young people the strength that they do obtain when they are organized around important goals that are beneficial for themselves and for society.  A culturally sensitive, anti-racist, equity oriented, historically accurate pedagogy facilitates an understanding of how social hierarchy works and the history of past efforts to undo the consequence of unearned privilege.  It fosters individual youths’ sense of agency and efficacy over their contexts and helps foster positive social change.

The climate change movement’s most influential leaders today are youth, not scientists or political figures. Isra Hirsi, daughter of U.S. congresswoman Ilhan Omar, is one of the many teen activists behind the climate movement. Hirsi is co-founder and executive director of U.S. Youth Climate Strike, a youth-led climate movement (Cassel 2019). She is particularly interested in educating about environmental racism as an important aspect of climate change in terms of who is most affected by climate change. Hirsi suggests that the climate issues tend to appeal more to white people and has therefore become a movement centered on whiteness and the exploration of the impact of climate disruption on just communities of privilege.   The consequence of this unequal emphasis, according to Hirsi, is that Black, brown, indigenous and low-income communities are ignored (Cassel 2019; Ettachfini, 2019).   Mainstream conversations about climate change therefore constructs the problem as if it was not taking place within the context of injustice and marginalization of some communities, and the solutions discussed or implemented leave out the concerns of those who it affects the most (Cassel 2019).

Youth of color have been part of the major protest movements centered on protecting natural resources in the USA. Quannah Chasinghorse of Alaska fought successfully to keep the Arctic Wildlife Refuge safe from mining and logging.  Feliquan Charlemagne is the creative director of the national organization Youth Climate Strike, highlighting the major risks that climate change poses for nations around the world and trying to influence legislative change. They are both 17 years old.

Greta Thunberg is perhaps the most well-known young climate activist. She became popular when she protested in front of the Swedish parliament building with a sign reading “School Strike for Climate” in 2018. This sparked other protests and strikes around the world and soon Thunberg was traveling to other places around Europe where there were climate protests. This built great momentum and by September 2019 she was presenting at the Climate Action Summit (BBC 2020). In her opening remarks she stated that she should not have been there, and instead should have been in school on the other side of the ocean. She goes on to say, “Yet, you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you? You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words and yet, I’m one of the lucky ones” (Thunberg 2019). Her speech was powerful and a real testament to how deeply young people feel about the climate crisis and the lack of action being taken around it by policy makers and citizens.