Katie Eder was 13 years old when she started her first organization — a nonprofit that held creative-writing workshops for young people. She wanted to help others enjoy writing and find their voice.
She started her second group when she was a senior in high school and a gunman killed 17 people at a high school in Parkland, Fla. Classmates of the fallen students organized nationwide protests demanding effective gun-control measures.
“For a lot of young people, it was a wake-up call, a tipping point for us as a generation,” Eder says. “We can’t just sit around and watch this happen.”
Eder organized a 50-mile march to her state capital in Madison, Wisc., through a new group she founded called 50 Miles More. Six months later, after discovering that other young anti-gun- violence organizers were having trouble coordinating their efforts, she launched her third group, Future Coalition, which provides resources to help youth-led groups better collaborate.
Since the group’s founding, many young organizers have become concerned about climate change, so Future Coalition now also helps young climate organizers.
“The climate movement would not exist as it is today without the March for Our Lives and the gun-violence movement,” she says.
Eder is part of a new generation of youth activists, perhaps best known because of the youth-led climate strikes in September that drew 4 million protesters. The demonstrations were inspired by another young activist, Greta Thunberg, who, at age 15, began skipping school to protest inaction on climate change in front of the Swedish Parliament. Her lone action turned into a global movement in a single year, inspiring millions to protest.
Young people, who tend to be politically progressive, are being confronted with the ascendancy of conservative movements in many countries, which is pushing them toward activism. And they are using social-media tools to mobilize large numbers of youths to protest quickly. Those factors set them apart from previous generations of youth activists, says Leslie Crutchfield, executive director of Business for Impact at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business and author of How Change Happens: Why Some Social Movements Succeed While Others Don’t.
They also take a more inclusive view of issues. They see climate change as not just about the environment but also about racial equity, social justice, and indigenous rights, for example. That helps them build coalitions that include large numbers of young people from diverse backgrounds. They are comfortable trying new tactics such as school strikes, while making more strident demands than many more established groups have.
Bold New Tactics
Young people have long breathed life into social movements, providing energy, determination, and uncompromising stances, says Nancy Whittier, a sociology professor at Smith College. “They are really important for innovations in tactics and strategies but also new ways of thinking about the problem.”
The strike was a new approach young people brought to the climate-change movement long led by established groups such as the Sierra Club and 350.org, she says. Those groups have struggled to persuade the public of the need for immediate action, but youth-led groups including Zero Hour, the Sunrise Movement, FridaysForFuture, and Extinction Rebellion have framed climate change as an emergency — one that will devastate the lives of young people all over the world.
“They have had no experience with the tactics that longtime activists had relied on,” Whittier says. “It is easier for them to think about what’s brand new.”
Donald Trump’s presidency is part of the reason young people have become so active, says Dana Fisher, a sociology professor at the University of Maryland who has surveyed protesters for many years.
Forty-six percent of the protesters she surveyed at the climate strike in Washington, D.C., in September and 42 percent of the protest organizers across the country participated in the Women’s March, a nationwide protest against Trump in 2017. Trump was one of the top reasons motivating 40 percent of climate-strike organizers.
The March for Our Lives, which many young activists cite as a turning point for them, was also a big influence — 58 percent of those at the D.C. climate protest took part in March for Our Lives protests, as did 39 percent of the organizers. The median age of the organizers of the climate strikes in September was just 18.
Historically, it’s young activists who have pushed for more radical change and confrontational tactics, Fisher says.
“The youth of today are not mealy-mouthed, by any stretch,” says Nadya Dutchin, interim executive director of Power Shift Network, an organization that provides support and services for youth-led climate groups. The $950,000 group is funded by the Hewlett Foundation, the Mertz Gilmore Foundation, Patagonia’s foundation, and others. “They have very clear moral convictions, and they’re willing to get arrested and stand and fight for that. It is extremely inspiring.” (The Hewlett Foundation is a financial supporter of the Chronicle of Philanthropy. You can read our gift-acceptance policy at philanthropy.com/gift-acceptance.)
Donor Attention
Young people are beginning to win support — financial and otherwise — for their efforts. Established environmental groups have made some grants, provided assistance, and collaborated on organizing. The Power Shift Network is a fiscal sponsor for Zero Hour and several other groups. It manages funds for them, provides professional training, and helps with contract negotiations.
Donors are interested in helping the most visible groups, like Zero Hour, that organize high- profile protests, Dutchin says. But groups that do grassroots organizing and train activists struggle, and many young people work for free, she says. “The rest of us are essentially begging for money from funders.”
The Climate Emergency Fund was created in July to fund youth-led climate groups. Aileen Getty, a longtime philanthropist and an heir to the Getty Oil fortune, put in $600,000. It has since grown to $2 million and made grants to Extinction Rebellion, Eder’s Future Coalition, and other groups.
Young people have the energy required to inspire change, Getty says. While policy groups have been working on climate change for decades, public pressure has been missing. Large protests are the only way to force change on the issue, she says. “I see the youth as an embodiment of real, bold power,” Getty says. “They’re unstoppable, and it’s in all of our interests to assist and to be as supportive as we can.”
While developing relationships with existing groups can be valuable for youth-led organizations, young activists should also be careful, says Georgetown’s Crutchfield.
“One of the worst things that could happen in any field is to have these youth-led organizations somehow merge into, or be co-opted by, the larger, more institutionalized groups,” she says. “Their strength comes from their ability to be independent and in your face.”
Links Between Issues
Today’s young activists act on their issues in an inclusive way, collaborating across race and class and putting the experience of people of color at the forefront. It’s not uncommon to see indigenous activists in prominent speaking roles at their demonstrations.
“When we talk about climate, we’re talking about climate justice, always,” Eder says. “And I think that is a really big shift. For a long time, it’s been just about the environment and climate.”
That perspective may come from personal experience. More young activists are female and from different racial backgrounds than some of their older counterparts. Fisher, the University of Maryland sociologist, found that two-thirds of the September climate-strike organizers were female. Their ranks also included more activists of color than other protests. Participants in the 2017 Women’s March, for example, were 77 percent white. At the D.C. climate protest, only 63 percent were white.
A 31-year-old activist named Jordan Marie Brings Three White Horses Daniel, who combines competitive running with raising awareness about missing and murdered women on reservations, often works with young indigenous activists. Many of them began protesting over pipeline projects that affect native land and water. Some protesters are children as young as 10.
“This generation is very aware,” Daniel says. “They are just more resilient and not afraid to use their voice and take a stand against something.”
Youth-led groups are more likely than some established environmental groups to seek out and work with indigenous activists, Daniel says. “They’re just more curious, they’re more respectful, and they’re more inclusive.”
Young activists have set their sights on a wide variety of issues, sometimes those that are closest to home. The Youth Leadership Institute was founded 28 years ago to help young people become leaders in their communities. Since then, it has helped young people shape 122 government policies on many issues in California.
“We see young people across the state sitting with elected officials, sitting with the politically powerful,” says Patricia Barahona, the group’s interim CEO. “Young people are on the move to take back some of that power.”
In 2012, Nupol Kiazolu was just in seventh grade when Trayvon Martin was killed by a neighborhood-watch volunteer. The man who shot Martin said the young African American man looked suspicious because he was wearing a hoodie. In protest, Kiazolu wore a hoodie to school with the phrase “Do I look suspicious?” taped to her back. She had been bullied at the predominantly white school in the past. So she was astonished when, a week into her protest, she emerged from a meeting with the principal, who had threatened to suspend her, to find the lunchroom filled with students wearing hoodies bearing the same phrase.
“At that moment, I knew that being an activist was my calling, and I haven’t stopped,” Kiazolu says. It was not an easy path. She tried joining other groups and found herself marginalized because she was young and female. “All of my ideas were shot down. I was just looked at as the help.”
When she joined Black Lives Matter — which was founded after the man who shot Martin was acquitted — she was treated differently. Older activists were having trouble connecting with young people. She was so valued that she is now the president of the group’s greater New York chapter even as she attends Hampton University in Virginia.
Kiazolu also founded a group that registered 100,000 young people to vote. She was recently crowned Miss Liberia USA and is planning a gala to raise money for schools and medical supplies for Liberia.
“Our generation, we’re not sitting back and waiting anymore,” she says. “That sense of urgency and that fire that young people possess, it’s something that has really catapulted this movement.”
Growing Force
Hajra Yacoobali, a 17-year-old student in Marin County, Calif., isn’t waiting, either. When she attended a predominantly white middle school, students made fun of her clothes and food. They asked the young Indian American Muslim if she was going to bomb the school.
In high school, she met students who had attended a mostly black middle school in the same county. She became painfully aware of the school system’s racial segregation. With help from a Youth Leadership Institute program, she is trying to change that by joining a local advisory committee. She wants to make sure that leaders incorporate the views of young people.
Yacoobali wants her school to work for everyone. “Students shouldn’t feel buried because they don’t have the same resources, because they don’t have the same equity as other students do,” she says.
Young activists like Yacoobali are just getting started. Their tactics, perspective, and energy are likely to drive activism on climate, racial justice, and myriad other issues for a generation.
“People who become civically engaged when they’re young stay engaged,” says Fisher, the sociologist at the University of Maryland. “They are on a trajectory to be active citizens for the rest of their lives.”
