Chapter 9: Youth Uprisings in North America

Occupation of Central Plaza, Chico, California, October 2011

Resist fiercely when you are under attack, but otherwise take pleasure in what you are doing, let it be easy, fun even. We are all watching one another now, and from Cairo we want to say that we are in solidarity with you, and we love you all for what you are doing. Comrades from Cairo to Occupy Wall St. organizers

We’re here to celebrate the birth of a new world. The answer is love. We are the 99%. We are too big to fail. The spark of a global spring is awakening, creating a new paradigm.

Occupy Wall St. demonstrators in the documentary Occupy Love.[1]

I am demonstrating for non-participation in the way the world is going. One way to take power back from the plutocracy is ride your bike. I’m more hopeful than I’ve been in years. Anthony, 27, m, Occupier in California

Understand that we’re young and we’re in a different time than the past civil rights movements. It’s not a white and black thing. It’s not a male and female thing. We have old, young, white, black, gay, straight. We can be cool. We’re not just these stern individuals. Daniel Agnew, Dream Defender, Florida

Young people aren’t just the future—we are the present in Millennial Movements. CommonDreams.org

Contents: US Occupy Movements 2011, US 2012-2015, Young Black Activists 2013-2014, Latino Immigrants, Canadian Student Uprisings and Idle No More

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Inequality is the Main Issue

Millennials, born between 1980 and around 2000, are the largest, best educated, and most diverse generation in US history—about 42% are people of color.[2] About 61% of adult Millennials attended college and more of their generation are completing their degrees, burdened by over $1 trillion in student loan debt. However, college graduates earn more than workers with only high school diplomas. Many of them believe what makes their generation unique is their connection to technology and at least three-quarters of them have a social media account. They value creativity and work altruism: This ties in to the desire of many of them to become entrepreneurs. They’re more likely than older generations to say they want to make a contribution to society and they feel a strong connection to family, partly because their parents spent more time with them than older generations.

Most of the contentious actions titled “Occupy” occurred in North America and Europe, as you can see on a map created in October 2011.[3] Some indigenous people object to the use of the word Occupy, as colonial settlers occupy their land and they want decolonization rather than more occupation. The Occupy Wall Street movement was the largest protest movement in the US since demonstrations against the Vietnam War organized in over 100 cities by organizations like Student Peace Union and Young Americans for Freedom.

President Obama said that ending inequality is the “defining project of our generation,” but wasn’t able to do much to correct the problem partly because of Tea Party/Freedom Caucus obstructionists in Congress. Economist Joseph Stiglitz reported the US has the highest level of income inequality of advanced nations and is one of those with the least equality of opportunity.[4] Other reports put the US second to Chile.[5] Half of all Americans are falling behind in their share of the economy due to stagnant wages as the 1% doubled their income, according to economist Thomas Piketty.[6] In Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis (2015) Robert Putnam highlights growing class inequality between those with a college education and without, youth unemployment, and erosion of community life and opportunity for upward mobility. It takes a support system to know how to apply for college and financial aid, and afford to take SAT preparation workshops and application fees, which many working-class high school students don’t have. Conservative columnist David Brooks thinks there’s a growing divide in the working class in both the US and UK between elders and the “younger cohort that are more disordered, less industrious, more celebrity-obsessed, but also more tolerant and open to the world.”[7]

The top 1% in the US owns more assets than combined asset of the bottom 90%; the poorest half’s income hasn’t increased in 40 years while the rich gained $4 trillion in 2016.[8] Money that was supposed to trickle down from the rich according to “Reaganomics” went to offshore banks at a time when almost a quarter of children younger than five live in poverty. The wealthy can use their money to control politics with their donations and lobbyists, while a statistical study by Princeton and Northwestern professors found that, “Average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.”[9] Despite growing inequality, corporate tax breaks increase as welfare is cut, subsidies for rich farmers continue while funding for food for the poor is cut back, drug and insurance companies make money on government health programs at the same time as Medicaid benefits are reduced.

French economist Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century got a lot of attention in 2014, with his warning that inequality will get worse without remedies such as progressive taxation and Scandinavian-type “nanny state” programs with free university education and cradle to the grave security.[10] Observing the popularity of Bernie Sanders’s populist movement, he saw it as ending the neoliberal dominance that began with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Piketty concluded optimistically, “New forms of political mobilization and crowdfunding can prevail and push America into a new political cycle. We are far from gloomy prophecies about the end of history.”[11] Noam Chomsky predicted that if Sanders’ young supporters organized they could “change the country in the longer term.”[12]

Sanders vowed to continue his movement for a political revolution after the election, warning “If we do not get our act together, this country is going to slide into oligarchy, where a handful of billionaires will control the economic and political life of this nation.” A coalition met at the June People’s Summit in Chicago in June 2016 to organize for the long haul, organized by National Nurses United union. Their top concerns were voter suppression, mass incarceration, racial and gender inequality, health care for all, the Fight for $15 minimum wage, climate justice and fair taxation. To keep the progressive movement alive, the “Our Revolution” (OR) movement launched on August 24, 2016, with thousands of house parties. However, a schism occurred as some staffers resigned to protest the appointment of Sanders’ campaign manager Jeff Weaver as president who they view as an old style “top-down” politician. OR advocates Sander’s goals of universal health care, campaign finance reform, a transfer tax on security exchanges, a $15 hour minimum wage, a pathway to citizenship for immigrants, protecting the environment, and an end to endless wars.[13]

A Harvard pollster of Millennials reported that Sanders is “moving a generation to the left.”[14] Over half the young adults surveyed didn’t support capitalism partly because they earn less than their parents did at the same age although they’re the most educated cohort in US history. With growing inequality, the bottom half of the population owed only 1%, while 10% of families owned 76% of family wealth in 2013. The Young Democratic Socialists of America reported an increase in membership—including high school students, to oppose income inequality, drone killings, incarceration of men of color, etc.[15] Polls showed that young people’s views became more progressive during Sander’s campaign about issues like basic health insurance for all and government action to reduce poverty. Only 15% of Millennials thought the country was moving in the right direction and six in ten said politicians are motivated by selfishness. The Harvard Institute of Politics reported a declining level of trust in government among people 18 to 29 between 2010 and 2015.[16]

Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich explained that a major decline in equal opportunity occurred starting in 1980 when grassroots groups’ membership shrunk, along with decreases in union members, and local and regional banks and businesses were outnumbered by chains like Wal-Mart.[17] Reich reminded viewers of his Inequality for All (2013) video that the wealth of the Walton family that owns Wal-Mart is greater than the combined wealth of the bottom 42% of the US population. He pointed out that nearly one in five working Americans has a part-time job, employment benefits are disappearing, only about a third of jobs include a pension and less than 7% of private sector workers are unionized. Yet in 2016, 42% of US workers earned less than $15 an hour. Reich thinks the way to return to democracy is for more people to get politically active to establish a “new countervailing power” to the 1%. Reich’s remedies for growing inequality in the US are to use tax incentives to encourage companies to pay employees more, raise the minimum wage, expand the Earned Income Tax Credit, and increase public investment in education including early childhood schools.[18] He would pay for these reforms by increasing the top marginal tax rate.

UNICEF reported the US child poverty rate is about twice the European average, a low 18^th out of 41 of the world’s wealthiest countries with one in five children living in poverty.[19] It costs almost a quarter of a million dollars to raise a child to age 18, according to the US Department of Agriculture. The income inequality rate is a low 30, behind Turkey and Slovakia. More children are living in high-poverty areas and the number of children living in low-income working families is increasing, according to the 2015 Kids’ Count report.[20] One out of every five children in the US lives in poverty and nearly half of black children are in low-income families, like the fictional character Hushpuppy (age 6). She’s featured in the film Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012) about poor black families in Louisiana. Despite stereotypes about black families being poor, two-thirds of the people who live below the poverty line identified themselves as white in the latest census. However, the white median wealth is $142,000 compared to blacks’ income at $13,700.[21]

Over half the children in US schools are eligible for free or reduced lunch, which means they come from low-income families.[22] Teachers lobby for community services with wrap-around services. However, health and nutrition service for children have steadily declined during the recession along with children’s economic well-being. Many children depend on food served at school because about half of US children will live in a household that relies on food stamps at some time during their childhoods. Families often run out of the food stamps before the end of the month. The achievement gap between richer and poorer children is increasing as measured in standard tests on math and reading.[23] The US is one of the few advanced countries that spend less on educating poor children than those in rich families. The wealthiest school districts spend about twice as much per student than poorer districts, a spending pattern typical of only three of 34 advanced nations (Turkey and Israel join the US as the most unequal nations). The other nations spend equally on all students or spend more for disadvantaged students. Despite high poverty rates, 59% of the discretionary budget of $1.5 trillion in 2016 was spent on the war machine (only 28% of the budget was discretionary).[24] Although half of Americans are poor or low-income,[25] the US spent over $4 trillion on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and $55.7 billion on pets in 2013.[26] The U.S. military budget is $773.5 billion for FY 2017 and President Trump proposed a $54 billion increase.[27]

By 2015 more than a third of US workers were Millennials; at more than 53 million they are the largest group of workers and 40% of the unemployed (down to 14% of young people aged 18 to 29 in 2015).[28] They’ll be almost half of the workforce by 2020. Millennials are worse off economically than previous generations when they were young adults, leading The Atlantic magazine to call Millennials the “unluckiest generation.”[29] The number of young people making less than $25,000 climbed since the 1990s and 44% of college graduates work in low-wage jobs resulting in more frugal living for “The Cheapest Generation.”[30] More than half of “Kidults” (a term coined by the London Times) ages 19 to 22 are partially dependent on their parents[31] due to recession, staying longer in college, increased tuition costs, and being the first generation raised by very involved “Velcro parents” in frequent contact even when students leave for colleges. In the US, nearly one-third (32%) of Millennials live with their parents and about the same percentage live with a spouse or partner, according to Pew Research Center.

Although Millennials are more likely to go to college than older generations, the unemployment rate of college graduates ages 21 to 24 is 8.5% and underemployment is 17%. A discouraging 44% of recent college graduates work in jobs that don’t require a college degree. In the US and Europe, the term Precariat is used to describe people in part-time and short-term work motivating some of them join protest movements.[32] The number of college graduates working for minimum wage doubled in five years although more than 70% of the graduates in 2014 carried an average loan burden of $33,000 each.[33] Congress hasn’t passed bills to lower interest on student loans.[34] Canadian university students are the most indebted generation in Canadian history and earn less after graduation than previous generations.

Nearly 45% of college graduates ages 22 to 27 were in jobs that didn’t require a college degree although many acquired large student debts to attend college, compared to 38% of graduates in 2000. The unemployment rate for high school graduates ages 17 to 20 was almost 18% and one-third were underemployed. The rates are worse for young people of color and young women college graduates still earn 79 cents for every dollar earned by young men.

Unemployed youth cope by living with their parents (15% of adults ages 25 to 34 in both the US and Britain, called “Hotel Mama” in eastern Europe[35]), enrolling in higher education, or joining service programs like AmeriCorps or the Peace Corps. In 2013, 36% of Millennials ages 18 to 31 were living with their parents, according to the Pew Research Center, the highest percentage in four decades. Pew reported that 75% of Millennials are unmarried, many because they can’t afford it. The Census Bureau reported that nearly 16% of people ages 25 to 35 lived in poverty and nearly 14% of that age group lived with their parents in 2013, a higher percentage than previous generations. (More on US inequality on the book website.[36]) They’re also frugal; the Ben Franklin Generation avoids credit card and other debt besides student loans.           

By 2020 more than one-third of voting age people will be Millennials. They tend to be liberal but 26% weren’t registered to vote and 32% didn’t vote in 2012, according to 2014 national online interviews with 2,004 Millennials, ages 18 to 31 (56% white).[37] Only 8% were conservatives and 13% were cynics–the least likely to vote, while 44% felt closer to the Democrats (63% said they voted for Obama in 2012), 26% felt closer to the Republicans, and 19% said they had no party affiliation. The issues most important to them were making college more affordable, economic opportunity and background checks for gun sales. They believed government should be involved in solving these kinds of problems. Despite the legacy of the Recession of 2008, 70% were optimistic about their economic prospects for the next few years although what they worry about most is finding a good job. Only 39% thought they would be better off than their parents and 60% talk to their parents at least once a day. Most (87%) agreed, “It’s up to me if I succeed or fail.” The values they considered most important for the US were equality, opportunity, and personal responsibility. At the bottom of their values list were competition (7%) and patriotism (8%). Most of them (79%) thought young people have the power to change things although they agreed, “The system is rigged in favor of the rich” (71%). The survey researchers concluded that digital native Millennials (born 1981 to 2004) are “collaborative, tolerant, with high expectations.”

Occupy Precursors

Other earlier youth protests were organized by civil rights organizations such as Students for a Democratic Society, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and college students who taught in the Freedom Summer of 1964 while registering African Americans to vote. Young activists took to the streets to protest against the World Trade Organization’s neoliberal model of free trade in 1999. “The Battle for Seattle” drew 50,000 to 100,000 protestors from many countries. Canadian activist and writer Naomi Klein was there and reported it was the “last time a global, youth-led, decentralized movement took direct aim at corporate power,” because of the political repression after 9-11-01.[38] Comparing the two movements, she said Occupy is wise to select a “fixed target” such as a public square, while the global justice activists demonstrated at short-term summits that didn’t last more than a week.

A warm up for the September 2011 Occupy Wall Street was the February occupation of the Wisconsin State Capital by 100,000 people to protest Governor Scott Walker’s removal of collective bargaining rights for state employees. The “cheeseheads” showed their solidarity with their hats resembling a wedge of cheese, including university students and staff and secondary school students. Using social media to inspire each other, Egyptian youth activists and others from Iraq and Tunisia ordered almost a 1,000 pizzas for protesters they met on social media. A young Egyptian wrote on Facebook, “I want Scott Walker to know that he is not just dealing with the people of Wisconsin, he is dealing with the people of the world.”[39] An Egyptian sent a photograph of himself holding a sign saying, “Egypt stands with Wisconsin: One World, one Pain.” US protesters met Egyptian activists Ahmed Maher and Waleed Rashed in person in New York City in April and activists also Skyped with Barcelona occupiers.

A second precursor occupation, the Bloombergville camp was created in New York City across from City Hall from June 14 to July 4 to protest budget cuts and teacher layoffs proposed by the mayor. General Assemblies were held nightly, learning from the Spanish Indignados, adopted by Occupy Wall Street in the fall. Protests against the Keystone XL pipeline in the summer of 2011 were another warm-up for Occupy Wall Street.

Disgusted with government controlled by the rich, young people united in a group called Millennial Movements (with a Facebook page with that title that explains “We build power to impact public policy, influence societal culture and direct the new generation of civic engagement.”) In November 2015, members included 350.org, Working Families Party, Million Hoodies, and Fossil Fuel Student Divestment Network. They advocated, “Politicians aren’t the only voices with power. We have power, too. And we have more power when we act together. Young people don’t live single-issue lives. We live at the intersection of the most pressing problems today.”[40] Millennial Movements explained,

We are running out of patience. After years of political inaction and failure, young people are taking these crises into their own hands. The Occupy movement, Black Lives Matter, the climate justice movement, the immigrant rights movement, Moral Mondays led by people of faith, and fast food workers on strike [for a $15 minimum wage] have captured the attention of the American people, but not of Congress. Now our movements are starting to come together to begin to speak with one voice…. Young people are at the forefront of movements for social change, and are becoming increasingly engaged in the political process.

Occupy Wall Street

Occupy Wall Street began with an email to readers by the Canadian anti-consumerist magazine, Adbusters, “a global network of culture jammers and creatives.” In July 2011, they publicized a poster of a ballerina dancing on the Wall Street symbol of the bull with police in gas masks in the background, a protest against corporate rule. (The recent addition is the statue of a the “Fearless Girl” facing off the statue of the bull, hands on her hips, in 2017. It was placed there by an ad firm.) They referred to Tahrir Square and the Spanish occupations of the squares. The text sent to their network of 90,000 people read, “What is our one demand? #occupywallstreet September 17. Bring tent.” This could be called a flash mob, organized by Tweeting a location, time, and command. The hashtag had 195,000 followers by February 2014 and “Occupy” became a meme, a symbol that has widespread appeal and is “rhizomatic” and easy to share with others in the “hive mind.” Adbusters used Twitter and emails to proclaim to tis network, “America needs its own Tahrir.” It relied on a spontaneous “anarchic swarm” as the “emerging model of anti-capitalist mutiny,” rather than hierarchical leadership. They made it clear that, “We are not trying to control what happens.” The editors reached out to European activists for advice about occupations.

A popular blog called “We are the 99%” was launched on Tumblr. The slogan was attributed to activist scholar David Graeber, but he said it was a collective process that he thinks originated in Spain. The first rally on September 17 drew 5,000 protesters, according to Adbusters editors, who also reported that 300 spent the night and a general assembly was held a few days later with 150 participants.[41] Nathan Schneider, 27, reported, “It was just this sense, like something is in the air. Even Al Gore was saying, ‘It’s time for an American Spring.’” People were disappointed with Obama’s inability to reform the US financial system.

Organizers met in New York with protest leaders from Spain, Greece and North Africa at the end of July. Spanish activists came to early general assemblies; activist Marisa Holmes reported they learned a lot from them. The Mexican Zapatistas influenced some activists, and some had occupy experience in Bloomsbergville or the global justice movement (like David Graeber). The Occupy Wall Street protesters recognized their connection to Tahrir Square: “This was absolutely inspired by Tahrir Square, by the Arab Spring movement,” said Tyler Combelic, 27, part of the New York occupation.[42] Egyptian leader Asmaa Mahfouz held teach-ins at Liberty Plaza. Youth leaders from Cairo advised the US youth in October:

           Our only real advice to you is to continue, keep going and do not stop. Occupy more, find each other, build larger and larger networks and keep discovering new ways to experiment with social life, consensus, and democracy. Discover new ways to use these [public] spaces, discover new ways to hold on to them and never give them up again. Resist fiercely when you are under attack, but otherwise take pleasure in what you are doing, let it be easy, fun even. We are all watching one another now, and from Cairo we want to say that we are in solidarity with you, and we love you all for what you are doing. Comrades from Cairo[43]

A letter of support for Occupy Wall Street was signed by 50 Chinese intellectuals in a global network of protesters and solidarity demonstrations were held in European cities and Israel.

The initiative was quickly endorsed by the Anonymous hacker group on a video that got 100,000 views. The online free speech activist group is famous for its hacking “raids” on targets like drug cartels, the Church of Scientology, and child pornographers. Some Anonymous protesters wear Guy Fawkes masks in street demonstrations, copied by others in the Occupy protests.[44] They got the mask idea from the film V for Vendetta where the leader of the insurrection wears a mask. Their website explains, “Anonymous is simply ideas without origin … With Anonymous there is no authorship. They are simply a spark but not fire. There is no control, no leadership, only influence.” Previously they hacked Tunisian government documents for activists and broke into Hong Kong’s “moral education” documents that Beijing wanted to implement. They’re not the same as the Black Bloc youth who harmed the Occupy movement by using violence, attacking police and throwing rocks at store windows, while wearing black hoodies, generating criticism from Anonymous and activists like Chris Hedges.[45] The Black Bloc surfaced previously in Egypt and Greece.

A preliminary assembly was held in New York City on August 2. David Graeber was there and described how the Marxist Workers’ of the World Party leaders dominated the meeting to try to impose their rules. Graeber and friends he knew from work in the Global Justice Movement went to the side of the meeting to form their own horizontal group and succeeded in attracting most of the participants. They organized the New York General Assembly (GA) that became prominent in the Occupy Wall Street movement. They decided not to formulate demands that anarchists believe would give legitimacy and respect to corrupt politicians to whom the demands would be made. They did reach out to community groups and unions, forming a labor working-group. Local unions organized a large rally in Foley Square on October 5 and successfully marshaled support against threatened eviction of Zuccotti Park (renamed Liberty Park) on October 14. Greenpeace provided a mobile power center and a nurses’ union provide medical applies, all adding to the occupation’s “cool factor.” Grassroots organizations like the American Dream Movement (founded by Van Jones to unite progressive organizations) and MoveOn.org were supportive of the Occupy Movement.

Protesters decided to take direct non-violent action, have general assemblies to make decisions, and to occupy a public space. They agreed on the main slogan, “We are the 99%.” This approach included almost everyone who can identify with the “hashtag, t-shirt, icon style of organizing, everyone showed up. And we could project onto Occupy whatever our issues were,” said activist Michael Ellick.[46] He explained, “Occupy’s approach was not to organize by policy but to organize by spectacle, and by archetype, and by emotion and idea, and to find a different way of speaking to people. It hit a nerve.” Amin Hussain added, “This movement is post-identity. It’s about freeing up people’s imaginations.” This is the non-violent PR approach advocated by Gene Sharp and taught by CANVAS in Serbia, discussed in Chapter 7. CANVAS trainers came to New York within a week of the beginning of the occupation.

Although the Occupy Movement resisted having a specific platform of demands, saying it’s not up to them to manifest more economic equality, documentary filmmaker Michael Moore and a workgroup he met with made suggestions for reforms. The source in the endnote includes DC Occupy’s goals for tax reform, regulation of finance, campaign finance reform to reduce the influence of corporations, universal health care, less federal spending on the military, and reducing carbon emissions.[47]  Naomi Klein responded to criticism of Occupy’s lack of goals by asking online what activists wanted; the reply was to get money out of politics by overturning Citizens United and restore the Glass-Steagall Act to reform the banking system.

Over 5,000 people marched on Wall Street on September 17, 2011, to “bring justice to the bankers,” who caused the housing bubble to collapse in 2007 but received $611 billion to prop up the “too big to fail” banks and some automotive companies.[48] (Over half of the loans were paid back by July 2014.) Nearly 200 demonstrators spent the night in Zuccotti Park.[49] Some Occupiers dressed like corporate zombies and carried fistfuls of fake money, seen in a photo.[50] Two days later a camp was established in Zuccotti Park whose name was changed to Liberty Square. It lasted for about two months, changing the political conversation and politicizing participants. At its height, over 100 working groups functioned and some continued to meet after the occupation in neighborhood assemblies.

Police violence increased the numbers of demonstrators, similar to other police incidents around the world.[51] Police insured widespread publicity on September 24 when a police officer was caught on video spraying two women with pepper spray as they stood peacefully, which motivated the formation of camps in other cities. The officer was photoshopped on social media spraying the founding fathers, the Beatles, and Mona Lisa. YouTube videos of the police got over a million views, motivating 15,000 marchers to turn out two days later in the largest march. Police arrested over 700 people in the march on Brooklyn Bridge on October 1 in one of the biggest mass arrests in New York City’s history. Using these kinds of bad public relations actions on the part of the authorities to increase protests is “political jiu-jitsu.”

Police tactics changed from kettling crowds like cattle and mass arrests to random “snatch and grabs,” pulling an individual out a crowd to intimidate the others. New York police were also accused of intentionally grabbing women’s breasts (Cressa Perloff, 24, was paid a settlement of $95,000 by the city for such as assault, while Cecily McMillan, 25, served jail time for elbowing the policeman who groped her breast. )About 8,000 nonviolent Occupy protesters were arrested in 122 cities, although none of the rich bankers who caused the 2008 recession with their Ponzi schemes were brought to justice.[52] Police bussed newly released prisoners to Zuccotti Park to get free food, similar to what Egyptian police did in Tahrir Square. Police in New York City and other protest sites jammed communications networks, used anti-recording strobe lights, surveillance technologies and spies as well as attacking leaders and reporters.[53] They coordinated with federal agencies and private security firms to disrupt occupations around the country leading to calls against militarization of police, including campus guards.

Author Chris Hedges warned that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security united to weaken the Occupy movement that attracted 350,000 demonstrators at its height. The authorities used divide and conquer tactics, electronic surveillance, severe terrorism laws, and harsh penalties for whistle-blowers like Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.[54]  Hedges reported 7,765 arrests of demonstrators. The NYPD had to pay settlements to some demonstrators arrested for disorderly conduct, with the court cases and payments continuing into 2015.

A video about Occupy Wall Street, The 99 Percent follows the young reporter working and sleeping in Zuccotti Park.[55] He discovered that the group received about $500,000 in cash and donations of food and other items, which they stored in a labor union facility, indicating community support. As usual, the encampments included a library table, food section, health care section, and childcare, as well as musicians, signs, face painting and other fun theatrics typical of youthful demonstrations. Fourteen bicycle-powered generators created electricity and filtered rainwater and grey water were available. The Occupy Boston camp included a Faith and Spirituality tent, signs protesting “Class War,” a newspaper, people’s university, library and legal team.[56]

An online survey of about 5,000 respondents, conducted by the Occupy Research Network, reported the majority of demonstrators (64%) got their Occupy information from Facebook, while a quarter used Twitter and another quarter used blogs. Face-to-face communication was also influential, as 43% said they had discussed Occupy the previous 24 hours. They told other people about Occupy on Facebook and in person about equally.

Multiple media coverage included Livestream TV shown on Globalrevolution.tv (it peaked at 80,000 viewers a day), print publications such as the Occupied Wall Street Journal, online notes from General Assemblies, and websites like OccupyTogether.org and Occupy.net. The first year of the New York Occupy Movement is chronicled in a TIME Magazine booklet providing an overview of the global Occupy Movement with an emphasis on the US.[57] Thank You, Anarchy: Notes from the Occupy Apocalypse by Nathan Schneider described his observations of the first year, concluding that Occupiers “shifted the rhetorical landscape.”

Activists didn’t follow established tactics of community organizing and were ignored by the press after five days of sit-ins until demonstrators garnered public attention with “highly disruptive” actions and a willingness to sacrifice their comfort by sleeping in Zuccotti Park or be arrested. Mark Engler and Paul Engler maintain, disruption (as explained in sociologist Frances Fox Piven’s Challenging Authority, 2008) and sacrifice combine forcefully to garner news coverage; “the amount of momentum that a movement generates can consistently be linked to the level of disruption its actions cause.”[58] A global day of rage took place in over 1,000 cities in 82 countries on October 15, initiated by the Spanish indignados. By the time Zuccotti Park was cleared on November 15, the occupy movement had spread to 750 cities worldwide in 82 countries, brought discussion of inequality and the urban commune to the forefront, and framed politics as a struggle between the 1% and the 99%.

Occupy Wall Street organizing was influenced by anarchism, which had also inspired the Global Justice Movement and other global uprisings. Graeber called Occupy an anarchist project. He credits a small group of anarchists including himself for the strategy used in Occupy Wall Street.[59] He defined anarchist principles as direct action, direct democracy, and creation of alternative institutions. These tactics were used previously by the radicals in the US Civil Rights movement, the anti-nuclear movement, and the global justice movement. The difference, he believes, is Occupy grew more quickly. Quakers and anarchists pioneered general assemblies and the disability justice movement developed hand signals. The People’s Mic was used during anti-nuclear demonstrations in the 1980s and the Global Justice Movement in the 1990s, shown in the documentary This Is What Democracy Looks Like (1999) about the Battle for Seattle. Two Canadian scholars, James Rowe and Myles Carroll observed that the dynamic between radicals and reformers is productive for leftist social movements.[60] Although academic research is biased towards reform efforts, radicals in the form of anarchists played central roles in the Battle of Seattle and Occupy Wall Street.[61]  

Globally, youth movements influenced by anarchism pride themselves on being leaderless and practicing direct democracy. The media has a hard time dealing with such an amorphous movement, but horizontal organizing protects the demonstrators from being dependent on a few leaders and positions. Media played with the issue, such as an October 25, 2011, Doonesbury cartoon shows an Occupy demonstrator being interviewed on a radio show. The host asks, “No goals, right? Except the one. To have no leaders?” The guest answers, “Right, and we’ve already achieved it.” An HBO TV series The Newsroom showed fictional news coverage of the issue; the news anchor played by Jeff Daniels criticized the Occupy Wall St. movement for not being able to achieve anything without specific goals and leaders. “None of us are leaders, all of us are leaders,” said a demonstrator. (The Viable Systems Model deconstructs the direct democracy processes for those who like diagrams.[62])

Who were the occupiers in NYC? Graeber reported in The Democracy Project (2013) that most of the young activists were of working class background who had followed the path to achieving the American dream by going to college, only to be humiliated with large debts and poor job prospects. He viewed the Occupiers as a “defiant self-assertion of a new generation of Americans.” Graeber described the participants as, “Young people bursting with energy, with plenty of time on their hands, every reason to be angry, and access to the entire history of radical thought.” However, Canadian Samantha Bee reported that Zuccotti Park was a stratified occupation with the older professionals in an area with library and exercise equipment and elitist college students from Brooklyn were separate from the downtown “ghetto” people. Bee thinks the pretense of direct democracy prevented the development of effective leadership.[63]

A Harvard Institute of Politics report released in December 2011 found that only 32% of Millennials said they followed the Occupy Wall Street movement either very (6%) or somewhat closely (26%).[64] Only 21% said they supported the movement. Data collected on hits on the http://www.occupywallstreet.org website showed that users tended to be young (64% under 35), white (81%), male (62%), college-educated (64%) people who earned less than $50,000 a year.[65] At first, the typical participant was a well-educated, tech-savvy, young white male.[66] More than half of the Occupiers had previous experience in a social movement such as the Global Justice Movement and members of Food Not Bombs organized many of the food tents. In 2012 interviews with a convenience sample of 25 Occupy Wall street activists, most were in their 20s and 30s, most were college educated and most had previous activist experience such as in the Wisconsin protests against Governor Walker or Bloombergsville protest against budget cuts. Some followed the news of the Arab Spring and European demonstrations.

Based on the 25 interviews and a larger survey of 729 respondents conducted during a large march to Wall Street on May 1, common characteristics: Many activists were under-employed and in debt, they were likely to be young well-educated white men, disappointed with the Obama presidency and mainstream politics, supportive of horizontal democracy, feeling part of a global movement and politically active. Many of them were political Independents (42%) and few were Republicans. (A poll of representative Millennials reported 44% were independents and more said they were moderate than liberal or conservative.[67] Younger respondents were more actively involved but were mentored by older veterans of social movements like David Graeber. The participants kept informed about occupy events on the Internet and by friends rather than mainstream media. They were surprised that the occupation lasted two months and that it spread around the world.

Some participants criticized Occupy for being controlled by white males. An ongoing concern throughout the US occupy sites was the lack of people of color and criticism of male domination of discussions. Women’s groups were formed to confront sexism such as WOW, (Women Occupying Wall Street), Occupy Patriarchy, and Women Occupy, working with other feminist groups like CODEPINK and NOW. A WOW sign at a demonstration read, “Women do 66% of the world’s work/earn 10% of the world’s income/own less than 1% of the world’s property. End the patriarchy.”

Women of Color formed the core of the People of Color working group. Occupy the Hood aimed to connect Occupy to people of color and similar groups in other cities. Some general assemblies used a “progressive stack” to encourage women, people of color, and LGBTQ speakers to move more quickly to the front of the line of speakers. The Applied Research Center conducted nine focus groups with 60 young progressives (ages 18 to 30) in five cities around the US in 2012.[68] Over half (53%) were people of color. Many were involved in the Occupy Movement, including a large majority of the white activists. A Latina, 27, explained, “I’ve seen lots of lots of pictures of white folks as part of Occupy. And it’s just been hard to imagine myself as part of it.” The main influence on their work for social justice was their personal and family experiences with injustice, as Derrick, 27, an African-American in New York, said:

I realized that what was happening to me and my family was not an aberration but was part of a plan. My passion came from my personal experience and my rage about it came from understanding that it was broader. Poverty is a political issue, so is immigration enforcement, etc. It’s all part of a plan to keep people down.

            The Applied Research Center focus groups found young progressives’ key issues were racial justice, economic justice, sexism, prisons and crime, and the environment–in that order. They were frustrated about the general public’s ignorance about inequality and capitalistic promulgation of individualism. The Occupy veterans were more critical of capitalism and more skeptical about getting involved in electoral politics than those who hadn’t participated. The respondents identified the main barriers to change as the public’s ignorance of history, lack of political analysis and capitalism’s prioritization of individualism. They felt racism and sexism were problematic in the Occupy movements: “The reason why [many Occupy movements] are not addressing various issues–mainly gender, sexual orientation and race–is that the movement is so fluid. We are constantly occupying these spaces and people are flowing in and out,” said, Adrian, 28, an Occupy Atlanta participant. The respondents valued cooperation and creating democratic communities where “meaningful relationships are built,” as Sherise said. Gigi, 25, grew up in rural Pennsylvania where she said, “everybody is ignorant.” They generally felt politics and political parties are “bullsh*t,” as a 19-year-old girl from Atlanta said, and they lost hope in President Obama. Only one party rules, the Party of Wall Street, stated geographer David Harvey.

News then shifted from New York City to Oakland. The press focused on confrontation with Oakland police in October, a large general strike and shutting down the port on November 2 by around 10,000 demonstrators who wanted to “do something big.” Signs said “March like an Egyptian” (repeated in Tel Aviv demonstration) and “Capitalism is over.” The demonstrators banned politicians and police from the squares, but in clearing the plaza in front of city hall, police wounded Iraq veteran Scott Olsen, aroused masked Black Bloc violence and radicalized other protesters.

Nationally, occupy demonstrators were driven out of city plazas by police, often with violent tactics as in Oakland, under the pretext of health issues and maintaining “public order.” About 400 people were arrested in Oakland in January. Naomi Klein reported police raids were coordinated nationally by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the FBI in what she called a civil war, confirmed by the mayor of Oakland who participated in an 18-city conference call from the Department of homeland Security on “how to suppress” Occupy protests. This accusation was verified by documents obtained by Truthout from DHS documents using the Freedom of Information Act.[69] It’s not just protesters or young black men who are arrested; in his book Youth in Revolt (2013) Henry Giroux reported that in the increasingly militarized police state, almost a third of young people are arrested for a crime by age 23 in what he calls an addiction to violence.[70]

Women and LGBT participants felt unsafe at the large demonstrations in Oakland. Graduate student Jill Richards told me that women and queers were followed, cat-called, groped, and rapes attempted, so they formed their own group, which had difficult finding common ground. After the protests dissipated, the Oakland activists turned their attention to stopping housing foreclosures in the housing justice movement and halting city efforts to close some schools. The film Autumn Sun: The Story of Occupy Oakland (2013) documents their struggle.

 Occupations spread to nearby universities (UC Berkeley and UC Davis) and other US cities, supported by progressive Internet groups like MoveOn.org. It emailed its members, “A new generation has gone to the scene of the crimes committed against our future.” Police use of pepper spray against peaceful protesters again was captured on videos that went viral in November when a UC Davis policeman walked along the line of peaceful seated students systematically spraying each one in the face.[71] Successful lawsuits against policemen included Anthony Bologana who pepper-sprayed two women in Occupy Wall Street, John Pike who sprayed student and faculty demonstrators at UC Davis, and Los Angeles police who violently evicted the Occupy camp.

My video interview with Occupy Chico’s Anthony Delgardo, age 27, is available online.[72] He’s an unemployed mechanic who is motivated to support the movement by the fundamental injustice of American business. He explained that young people are at the forefront of the Occupy protests because they grew up behind computer screens and know how to broadcast the revolution around the world. Delgardo’s personal emphasis is on becoming self-sufficient with solar power and by growing organic food so as not to be dependent on big business or government, “non-participation in the way the world is going.” I asked him to name one way to take power back from the plutocracy: “Ride your bike,” he replied.  He concluded by saying, “I’m more hopeful than I’ve been in years.”

Attending an Occupy Chico meeting in the downtown park (see photos[73]), as expected, there were no acknowledged leaders. A young woman who was new to the group suggested going around the group of 14 to find out why people were there. The participants ranged from two college freshmen, a former Marine, to several homeless men who wandered in and out from the nearby city plaza (a common problem in Occupy camps where homeless people were attracted by food and shelter). Few participants were an ongoing presence since the beginning.

Theo, a college student, said he is working on setting up a time-bank to share skills without exchanging money and that there was a core of around 25 supporters. Clint, a man who had attended many of the meetings, said he was discouraged that no action had been taken, but others pointed out they had organized local marches, including an upcoming march on banks. Clint was afraid the movement was dwindling from its height when about 60 people participated. He held up a chart he’d made of an octopus-like structure with many arms focusing on various groups and causes, but no action was taken on his organizational suggestions.

With colder weather, meetings moved from the public square to the nearby Peace and Justice Center office. A core group of 20 to 30 people remained active with two general assemblies a month, working to overturn the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, prevent use of plastic bags, protest drone strikes, and form a Food Not Bombs chapter. They protested Monsanto’s products with a Halloween celebration where people were asked to dress as hideous GMO mutations.

Leadership and Organizing

         David Graeber reported that Occupy Wall St. succeeded because students and other young people set up camp and refused to leave. What surprised him was how rapidly the occupations spread to about 800 sites and “how quickly our liberal allies abandoned us,” including the media.[74] He said members of the Democratic Party tried to infiltrate the media teams and assume leadership, so he thinks in the future activists will need to think more carefully about their alliances. He credits the occupation for introducing discussion of social class for the first time since the Great Depression of the 1930s and encouraging Millennials’ dissatisfaction with the capitalist empire. He would like to see “fully automated luxury communism.”

         Following the global model of organizing in occupation, small working groups meet and discuss issues and present their conclusions to the larger assembly (GA) that sometimes includes thousands of participants. A facilitation committee teaches communication techniques to newcomers because “everyone was equal in the assembly,” according to New York organizer Marisa Holmes. Consensus is arrived at through hand signals, as you can see in a video of the NYC Occupy assembly in action.[75] Hand signals include a “twinkle” or “spirit wave” where fingers are wiggled overhead to express approval, wrists or elbows chop down to indicate disapproval, and a block with arms crossed over chest means you’ll quit over a certain issue. Proposals can pass with a 90% vote, quite a feat when the crowd included anarchists, Marxists, feminists, queers, capitalists, immigrants’ rights activists, and anti-racist organizers.[76]

            The GA crowd repeats a speaker’s sentences in waves to the back of the crowd until everyone hears the message through repetition of a phrase using the “Human Mic.”[77] This was not a new technique; for example, Brazilian activists used it in the 1980s. Mic Checks are used to disrupt public gatherings such as fundraisers for Republican candidates or a speech by President Obama—who handled the interruption graciously. Black Lives Matter activists continued the interruptions of speeches by presidential candidates like Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump in 2016. President Obama suggested they should be more willing to work with political leaders to find solutions rather than yell at them.

Organizers practiced direct democracy in their assemblies, but an activist in Occupy Oakland, Jasper Bernes, reported to the Global Uprisings conference that the GA is too cumbersome to make decisions. Like other critics, he said large gatherings should be for debate and idea sharing. Reporter Chris Hedges, a supporter of the Occupy movement, warned that consensus decision-making works well in small groups but leads to paralysis in large groups and “numbing exhaustion” that crushes some activists.[78] Since decision-making in large crowds is difficult, spokescouncils were added in late October. Working groups sent representatives to a council to make decisions until they were evicted two weeks later.

Commenting on youth leadership, in my interview with Kim, active in Occupy Sacramento, she said that youth are able to organize quickly. At first older activists in their group only delegated electronic media outreach to the youth while dominating other areas, but gradually youth took more initiative, such as organizing a May Day event. Inspired by Tahrir Square demonstrations, Kalle Lasn, the 69-year-old publisher of Adbusters that started Occupy Wall Street, commented:

         The messy, leaderless, demandless movement has launched a national conversation of the likes that we haven’t had in 20 years. That’s as good as it gets! Not everyone needs to have a leader with clear demands. That’s the old way of launching revolutions. This revolution is run by the Internet generation, with egalitarian ways of looking at things, and an inclusive process of getting everyone involved. That’s the magic of it.[79]

 Environmental leader Bill McKibben, the Baby Boomer founder of 350.org, finds it “a little disconcerting to look around and realize that most of the movements don’t really have easily discernible leaders.”[80] His organization trains young people from over 135 countries to be climate-change organizers because, “Instead of a leaderless movement, we need a leader-full one.”[81] Young activists fought against the Keystone XL Pipeline with blockades, tree sits, and chaining themselves to equipment, discussed below. Some organizers use a “snowflake model” where tasks are delegated and teams report back to a central organizing group, as taught by The New Organizing Institute in Washington, DC.[82] McKibben pointed out this new way of organizing reflects the environmental goal to replace a top-heavy system with many local power sources and is the only way to deal with giants like the oil companies. “Rooftop by rooftop [with solar panels], we’re aiming for a different world, one that runs on the renewable power that people produce themselves in their communities in small but significant batches. The movement that will get us to such a new world must run on that kind of power too.”

         At a university forum on the first anniversary of September 17 Occupy Wall St., I asked C.T. Lawrence Butler, who has taught Formal Consensus to many Occupy groups, about leaderless organizing. He writes about On Conflict and Consensus and teaches Formal Consensus to various groups, including Occupy groups.[83] Butler advocates a horizontal structure without leaders who monopolize power, but with leadership on the part of many members. He said an effective group makes collective decisions and delegates power to individuals for the duration of a task. Leadership is rotated to prevent burnout and isolation. He defined the Occupy Movement as a protest movement motivated by anger at corporate domination, but it’s not yet a political movement because it lacks an articulate vision of a new society based on values rather than power. Many of the Occupy General Assemblies that he visited in the fall of 2011 degenerated into shoutouts with whoever is loudest dominating the discussion. Despite the intent to be inclusive, around the world, men in Occupy Movements often dominate the discussions.

          Butler says groups need to define themselves and their values rather than accepting who ever shows up for fear of being exclusive. Activists need to adopt common principles and establish their identity with precise boundaries. He reported that 90% of the intentional communities like co-ops and commune that he has worked with fall apart during their first year because they haven’t defined their “social technologies” of how to communicate, solve conflicts, make fair decisions, and integrate new members. As Second Wave feminists pointed out in the 1960s and ‘70s, the process is as important as the goal and personal relationships are political. The feminist injunction to “check your privilege” if you didn’t have direct experience with something exacerbated identity politics; for example the belief that only a person of color person could address racism.

Generational Differences

In their eBook on the Millennial Majority (2013), Morley Winograd and Michael Hais predicted that a new political consensus comprised of youth, women and minorities will reshape US policy for the next 40 years. A poll of 1,000 members of the  “Snapchat Generation” in 2016 found most young people ages 18 to 26 valued personal freedom.[84] Likely to be liberal, Bernie Sanders was their favorite politician. In this order, they worried about corruption, inequality, education costs, and national security in an era of terrorism. Despite their awareness of inequality, most were optimistic about their economic future (88%), 75% believed they’ll do better than their parents, and 61% believed the best days of the US are ahead. Republican pollster Frank Luntz concluded, “This is a very radically different generation than what came before it.”

         I asked Baby Boomers if they see generational differences in activists. Lawrence Butler said that while the ‘60s hippy protesters emphasized peace, love, and happiness, young activists today express more anger and angst with a sharper edge to their rebellion, because the world is more messed up. Many International “Days of Rage” were organized. He believes that charges that youth are apathetic are wrong, as they’re much more active, passionate and caring than his generation, but they’re more isolated. Antonio, 20, a student at the CSUC forum in California where Butler spoke, reported he sees changes from his friends talking about sports, switching to discussion of how the system isn’t working, similar to what a young Turkish protester told The Guardian in 2013: “It’s about an order, a system, our global system. The fact is we don’t feel represented. We don’t have a voice.” Anti- capitalist Spanish demonstrators carried signs blaming “Error de Sistema” and “La Crisis Es El Capitalismo,” motivated by the fact that almost half of Spanish youth are unemployed

Boomer Bill Zimmerman, the author of Troublemaker: A Memoir from the Front Lines of the Sixties (2012), said the differences are his generation were idealists who built a strong civil rights movement, did away with the draft by 1973 with their antiwar movement, and built feminist organizations, while young activists today are cynical and weighed down by debt.[85] He pointed out that the US graduates about 800,000 students a year, but only about half can find full-time jobs. Whereas his generation changed the US culturally, socially, sexually and spiritually, he predicts today’s activists will change it economically with new tactics. A young participant in a Forward Together demonstration at the North Carolina state capitol, Manju Rajendran said, “It echoes a lot of the movements from the sixties. I think we’re borrowing from a strong tradition of nonviolent direct action.”[86] She emphasized the recent theme of intersectionality; struggles around race, gender, sexuality, and immigration status are interconnected, so social movements need diversified leadership.

Stephen Tchudi, the director of volunteers at the Chico Peace and Justice Center observed:

            I see great generational differences in the peace and justice movement. I’ve been especially impressed by the high school and college volunteers, who are smart, organized, well informed, and committed to action. I think they have a much greater sense of direction than my generation. I don’t know of many people of my age who had their wealth of experience at age 17 or 18.

However, he didn’t see the same focus in non-student young people in the local Occupy Chico movement: “I sensed that they had little sense of the history of activism and were not much interested in learning about what has gone before.” The Peace and Justice Center director Tammy Wichman, 26, observed that young activists are more impatient to see immediate change. They’re not willing to just talk about it, and they’re more inclusive about wanting to listen to various points of view. Her concern is many of her generation are apathetic, but the Occupy Movement got their attention, so she started a youth leadership program to teach organizing skills.

Results

Occupier Lucas Vazquez, age 18, said, “Occupy started as a symbolic action, but there’s a point where symbolism has to give way to the real. We need to start building alternative institutions and saying, ‘We’re going to replace you, capital. And we have our own structure in place.”[87] The Black Lives Matter movement, the Fight for $15, the People’s Climate March of 2014 and the success of democratic socialist Bernie Sander’s presidential campaign are seen as heirs to radical activism of Occupy Wall Street. It changed the way the public thinks about capitalism and the 1%, preparing the way in 2016 for the surprising successes of socialist politicians like Bernie Sanders who polled close to Hillary Clinton and moved her to the left. Clinton relied on Sanders (and Michelle Obama) to court the 75 million Millennials—the most unaffiliated generation ever and the most interested in third parties.

CNN commentator Van Jones noted the influence of the sophisticated political genius of young activists on the contents of Clinton’s speech, including their activism in the Sanders campaign, Black Lives Matter, the Million Hoodies Movement, the Organization for Black Struggle, the campaign for $15 minimum wage, Occupy Wall Street and the GLBT movement. The popularity of Sanders’ call for a political revolution matched a move to the left elsewhere when Jeremy Corbyn was selected as the head of the Labor Party in the UK and Liberal party candidate Justin Trudeau (age 43) was elected Canadian prime minister. He ran on equality of opportunity and is a proud feminist whose cabinet is half female.[88]

 Economist Gar Alperovitz observed that although people say Occupy disappeared, people who met at Occupy events went on to form projects all over the country, such as the New Economy Coalition that he represents.[89] Occupy activists organized worker-owned cooperatives such as a printing shop and Occupy Farms. Occupy Homes worked to prevent foreclosures. Strike Debt and the Rolling Jubilee (discussed below) were the most popular causes, along with Occupy Sandy to assist storm victims in New York. InterOccupy coordinates groups globally.[90] He joins the chorus of voices in advocating the need for a coordinated vision for the future, not just correcting local problems.

On the Occupy.com website Robert Gibson listed other outcomes of the movement: the spread of the campaign for $15, the election of Seattle Occupy activist and socialist city council member Kshama Sawant, New York State ban on shale oil fracking, tiny houses built for the homeless in Madison, free community college in Oregon, reduction of $3.8 million in student debt by Strike Debt, and divestment campaigns that sold off more than $50 billion in investments in fossil fuel companies. The Million Student March organized marches on more than a hundred colleges in 2015 to demand the end of student debt, a national minimum wage of $15 for campus workers, and free public higher education.[91]In 2017, New York State made tuition free for full-time state college students whose families have an income below a cap of $125,000 by 2019. Gibson judged Occupy failures were allowing white men to dominate, the frustrating length of the GAs, and not ending the occupations after two weeks as advised by the Spanish indignados.

Michael Moore’s documentary Capitalism: A Love Story (2010) left him discouraged about the power of the 1%, but it helped lay the foundation for the protests, making him a popular speaker at Occupy rallies. He gained hope that change can occur because of youth activism. In a speech to an Occupy gathering, he praised 22-year-old Molly Kathchpole’s campaign for Bank of America to rescind a $5 fee on using debit cards after 300,000 people signed an online petition against it. A campaign to transfer funds from big banks like Chase and Bank of America to local credit unions and community banks also got results.

         Although police shut down the final Occupy Wall Street camp on November 15, demonstrations changed the national discussion from a focus on national debt reduction to the unfairness of increasingly severe income inequality. Michael Moore pointed out the successes when he addressed Occupy Oakland.

Those in charge in this country and the media arm of Wall Street and corporate America were not prepared for this to be happening in hundreds, hundreds of cities across this country right now! It has happened with no leaders, no organization, no dues to pay. It’s happened organically from the grassroots, the true grassroots. And in my lifetime, I have never seen a movement like this take hold this fast with this many people all across the country. You have altered the national discussion. This is what people are talking about in every town, village, and city across America.[92] 

         The slogans of the Occupy movement were repeated in news coverage. Media use of “income inequality” increased five times by the end of October and the 1% became a popular meme.[93] Slogans included “99%: We are too big to fail!” “Break up the Banks,” and “Mundo sin Fronteras” (world without borders).” President Obama repeated Occupy themes of inequality in his pivotal speech outlined his re-election themes in Osawatomie, Kansas, in December 2011. He mentioned inequality six times and specifically contrasted the wealth of the 1% with the declining incomes of the rest. His State of the Union speech in 2012 included populist Occupy themes of economic fairness, demanding that the wealthy pay more taxes and he repeated the need to grow the middle class through the rest of his presidency. He named inequality the focus of his second term and the “defining challenge of our time.” Republican Presidential candidates criticized this theme as class warfare. Most of the Republican candidates criticized the Occupy Movement as “dangerous” (Mitt Romney), and consisting of hippies who should “Go get a job, right after you take a bath” (Newt Gingrich).

         Some argue that OWS didn’t create real social change, but “It’s not what Occupy Wall Street has made, but the network that has been created,” said Joan Donovan at a Barcelona meeting of “Three Years of Interconnected Revolutions” in October 2013.[94] Other point to the prefigurative politics of direct democracy and self-help cooperatives they hope will gradually replace some or all of the capitalist system, bypassing the need for a revolution to overturn the national government.

         The new political divide is not Republican vs. Democrat but populist versus establishment, according to Robert Reich.[95] About half of Millennials polled by the Pew Research Center in 2014 didn’t affiliate with either party. Even Ivanka Trump, daughter of the presidential candidate, said in her speech to the Republican convention, “Like many of my fellow Millennials, I do not consider myself categorically Republican or Democrat. More than party affiliation, I vote based on what I believe is right for my family and my country.” Elizabeth Warren, elected to the Senate to represent Massachusetts, pressed for Wall Street accountability and for preservation of Social Security and Medicare. Other populists in the Democratic Party advocated that she run for president against Hillary Clinton 2016. The New Populism is the subject of conferences and urging populists like Warren or Sanders to challenge Clinton for president. Sanders labels himself a democratic socialist and refers to Scandinavian social democracy as his model. He offered 12 suggestions to restore the middle class and stop growing inequality.[96] Other solutions for assisting the middle class were given by the Bookings Institution’s essay “Election 2016 and America’s Future” and Harvard economist Lawrence Summers who advocates investment in infrastructure to replace austerity approaches.[97]

The 1% concept permeated popular culture, as when the director and co-writer of the popular 2012 film, The Hunger Games, said of his film, “It’s not hard to see the 1 percent and the 99 percent in there. It’s not hard to see the excesses of wealth and the subjugation of the districts; while people are starving, wealthy capital dwellers induce vomiting so they can eat more delicious food.” Hunger Games fans relaunched the “Odds in Our Favor” campaign against inequality launched by the Harry Potter Alliance in 2013. They asked fans to share their experiences on #MyHungerGames and post a photo making Katniss’ three-fingered salute that young rebels used to signal dissent. Community activists are featured on #WeAreTheDistricts tumblr.[98] In Bangkok, Thai protesters against the military coup in 2014 used the three-fingered salute. The military banned its use in political gatherings and pressured a cinema chain to cancel showing the film after anti-coup students planned to attend the opening of the third film in Hunger Games series in 2014.

As Indian author Arundhati Roy observed after visiting Occupy Wall Street in 2011, it is “introducing a new political language into the United States, a language that would be considered blasphemous only a while ago…reigniting a new political imagination…an imagination outside of capitalism, as well as communism.”[99] She urged that protesters be aware of a global pattern “that they’re being excluded from the obscene amassing of wealth of US corporations is part of the same system of the exclusion and war that is being waged by these corporations in places like India, Africa and the Middle East.” To develop theory and strategies, Tidal magazine grew out of the Occupy Wall St. movement, with its first issue in December 2011.[100] Its anti-capitalist mission statement is. “There is no radical action without radical thought. Action means the search for, and creation of, ruptures in the existing order.” On the first anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, a small crowd demonstrated, some dressed in Robin Hood costumes, calling for a tax on Wall Street to pay for health care. Some Code Pink activists wearing pink bras demonstrated in front of Bank of America near Zuccotti Park until arrested by NYPD.

Second Phase, Creating Alternatives

The second phase of the Occupy movement created alternative institutions to replace what they consider a dying system. Housing and community organizing are popular goals for activists. A widely used guide for local actions to counter climate change, reliance on oil, and recession with “degrowth” is provided by Rob Hopkins’ books The Transition Handbook and The Transition Companion.[101] Over 400 official Transition Towns have been created In English-speaking countries, Italy and Chile.  In New York, Buffalo’s West Side is being transformed by a grassroots group called People United for Sustainable Housing (PUSH) that developed green affordable housing and new jobs. The Wildfire Project is a coalition of activists to work on projects such as housing rights and students’ rights. In 2015 the Right to the City Alliance network of housing and racial justice organizations worked with PAH, the Spanish housing activist group that works to prevent foreclosures.

Occupy Madison’s “Tiny House Project” build micro-homes for homeless people beginning in 2013, with propane heat and solar power for electricity. The houses are mounted on trailers that can be legally parked on the street but the goal is to buy land and create a small village. Tiny houses also flourish In Oakland, California (where shelters are also made from shipping containers); Olympia, Washington; and Madison, Wisconsin. Tenant rights are also part of the housing justice movement, enforced with direct actions.[102]

 “Occupy Our Homes” occupied homes of families who were threatened with mortgage foreclosures in 25 cities on December 6, 2011. They also form community land trusts to provide affordable housing. Solidarity Networks organized in various cities to publicize mistreatment of tenants with public posters, pickets, and confrontations. Occupy San Francisco organized about 3,000 demonstrators to honor the Foreclosure Fighters who stopped 300 homes from being auctioned by banks and they burned debt papers. On the fourth anniversary of Occupy Wall Street on September 17, 2015, hundreds of protesters demonstrated on the streets against gentrification of neighborhoods that results in rent increases.

Reporter Nathan Schneider observed that the question is, “Can we rebuild local economies so that they’re no longer dependent on Wal-Marts, military bases or prisons? What will it take to ensure that government is more responsive to popular will than to big money? Activists around the world should be learning from each other’s attempts.”[103] The New Economy Movement works to expand ownership for the 99% by fostering “social capitalist” projects such as solar-powered businesses, community land trusts, or worker-owned cooperatives in local communities like the Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland, Ohio.[104] Occupy activists promote worker-owned cooperatives, such as Boston’s New Economy Coalition and Seattle’s Black Coffee cafe, and free health clinics. Occupy activists organized teenagers to pick up compost on their bicycles, researched community land trusts, and providing free software. Other community projects include a free university in Philadelphia that offers courses like “Revolutionary Narrative: Poetics of Power,”[105] community gardens, and time banks to swap labor.

         Barry Herman, who participated in Occupy Wall Street, observed that it was “the greatest mock challenge to authority since Abbie Hoffmann called on anti-war demonstrators to levitate the Pentagon in 1967.[106] Herman was involved in creating alternatives to occupations like Strike Debt. A call for a May Day strike in 2012 didn’t generate support, but the debt problem did. By the end of September 2012, US household debt totaled over $11 trillion dollars. Beginning in the summer of 2012, Strike Debt organized weekly “debtors assemblies” in New York City parks and affiliates formed in cities around the country and in London. They produced a “Debt Resistors’ Operations Manual.[107] An Occupy Student Debt Campaign in November urged one million people to sign up to refuse to make payments on their student loans.

         Debt is a popular issue so Occupy activists formed The Rolling Jubilee in November 2012 to crowdsource fundraising to buy private debts and forgive them. The Jubilee raised money to buy distressed debt, paying only about $5 per $100 debt, mainly due to medical bills. They raised $500,000 in a few weeks, then paid off millions of people’s medical debts. They formed connections with European anti-debt groups. Since students owe $1.2 trillion in loans, debt strikers moved on to advocate for free education and universal health care. A group of debtors formed a group called Corinthian 15; they announced a debt strike in 2015 to refuse to make payments on their federal student loans for poor quality for-profit universities like Everest College owned by Corinthian company.

         After Occupy Wall Street, activists organized against drones, US military spending on 900 bases in 130 nations, fracking, the Keystone XL pipeline, and coal plant pollution. Some protesters targeted a company In Pennsylvania that makes tear gas used in Tahrir Square. Other activists organized flash mobs, rallies, and teach-ins; published online commentary; marched in large parades and visited members of Congress in “Occupy Congress.” They advocate a financial transaction tax and public banking.

In Washington DC, Occupiers are using churches to store local food.  University students are increasingly involved in healthy food production, with centers like the World Food Center at the University of California at Davis, and other food study centers at Stanford, Tufts, and Johns Hopkins. Food System groups, such as Food Democracy Now, protested outside the Federal Courts in Manhattan in 2012, to support organic family farmers in their unsuccessful landmark lawsuit against Monsanto. It’s the manufacturer of Agent Orange, dioxin, Roundup, GMO foods, and bovine growth hormones (“crack for cows”), all with toxic health hazards.[108] Peru passed a 10-year ban on all GMOs. India, Brazil, Poland, Peru and France successful in sued Monsanto and required labeling of GMOs. For example, a Brazilian court required Nestle to label all their products than have over 1% GMO content. A similar bill on the California ballot in 2012 was defeated by the $46 million spent on disinformation by agro-chemical companies including Monsanto and DuPont.[109]

Movement researchers analyzed data collected on sites like Occupy Research and #OccupyData NYC. They reported that since the beginning of Occupy US, over 7,200 protesters were arrested, economic inequality was highlighted, and many were involved for the first time in speaking out against injustice. What counts, says Ben Vitelli from Occupy Baton Rouge, is “There’s a wide community of opposition being formed across many social barriers, and those who hold power are very afraid.”[110] Accra Shepp photographed 400 activists at Occupy Wall Street, then noticed them at other social movements, so he created a collection of photos from 2011 and 2016.[111] He found they all felt transformed by the occupation and received a “crash course in activism.”

US, 2012-2017

After a winter hiatus, Occupy Movements were reborn in Spring 2012. Occupy organizers mobilized to assist New York victims of Superstorm Sandy in the fall of 2012. They set up dozens of relief centers and transporting thousands of volunteers to the most devastated areas, considered more effective than the Red Cross. Also in 2012, the Occupy Mental Health Project wrote a booklet about how to avoid burnout while organizing.[112] The same year, a Movement Resource Group was formed by Ben Cohen (Ben and Jerry’s ice cream co-founder) and assisted by other rich allies such as Norman Lear. Their goal was to raise at least a million dollars for the Occupy Movement. Funds for projects were given to grant applicants. Cohen explained, “The Movement is in the process of transitioning from being based on spontaneous occupations of parks, to being more strategic.” However, OWS activists and Cohen disagreed over his attempt to impose more leadership structure: “He’s a 1 percenter telling the 99% I’m your boss,” said the organizer of an “Illuminator” project to beam progressive messages on buildings in New York City from a van.[113]

An April 2012 week-long training called “99% Spring” was organized by a coalition of progressive groups including MoveOn.org and various unions and grassroots groups, but not endorsed by the Occupy Movement. The intention was to train 100,000 people in nonviolent direct action: “We will take non-violent action in the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi to forge a new destiny one block, one neighborhood, one city, and on state at a time.”[114] Organizer Joy Cushman explained, “We realized that nonviolent direct action is the way we have to go because the democratic system isn’t responsive anymore.”

I hosted a 99% training with around 100 participants of various ages (more old than young) in a church, following the script and downloaded videos to show the group. The emphasis was on the importance of sharing personal stories to identify core values on which to build a movement. Self-portraits were posted online with grievances such as student debt.[115] The training video emphasized the importance of planning and role-playing possible direct action scenarios in order to be well prepared with a vision, a goal for specific change, and strategy and tactics such as a boycott for how to achieve the goal.[116] For example, many think of Rosa Parks as a tired woman who spontaneously decided not to go to the back of the bus and thereby started the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955. However, she was trained at the Highland Center in Tennessee and a professional photographer was on hand to document the scripted action. The week after the 99% trainings over 1000 actions occurred, targeting corporations including the Bank of America, Wal-Mart and GE.

A video updated the movement in 2013, advocating awakening “the soul of this sleeping dragon, the people in struggle for liberation.”[117] Kevin Zeese, co-founder of PopularResistance.org and active in the Washington, DC Occupy, advocates a national network united in “one mass movement,” often referred to as a movement of movements. He believes that nonviolent mass movements succeed while “fringe movements fail.” By mass, he means about 5% of the population, including radical student and environmental groups. Kevin Zeese relies on Gene Sharp’s strategies for nonviolent revolution.

Nonviolent movements shift power by attacking the columns that hold the power structure in place. Those columns are the military, police, media, business, workers, youth, faith groups, NGOs and civil servants. … The goal is to pull people from those columns to our side. We want the police to know that we understand they’re not the 1 percent. The goal is not to get every police officer, but to get enough police so that you have a division.[118]

Building alternative structures with participatory democracy is required in order to become independent of the corporate economy. He advocates a public banking initiative as part of this process and other solutions to “core crisis issues” outlined by the Washington, D.C. Occupy.[119] Author Chris Wright calls for “a massive international movement of movements for economic and social justice.[120]

Zeese reported activists get publicity for every action because the “security state” warns people about an upcoming action and individuals can generate media coverage with their phones and social networking groups. Youth are especially connected: Teens spend nine hours a day in front of electronic devices, and tweens (ages 8 to 12) spend six hours a day, more time than with human beings, according to a 2015 study by Common Sense Media.[121] Boys spend more time playing video games and girls spend more time on social media.

Social justice leaders N’Tanya Lee and Steve Williams wondered, “Where is the outrage?” about austerity measures led by “neoliberalism’s elites,” high unemployment, ecological disasters, and racism. To update activism after the 2011 Occupy mobilizations and look into the future, Lee and Williams started the Ear to the Ground project. They interviewed 158 social justice and anticapitalist organizers, publishing their report in 2013.[122] Two-thirds of the Ear to the Ground interviewees were people of color, with slightly more men than women. One-third of the interviewees were from the San Francisco Bay Area. Despite their efforts, the interviewers didn’t include young people under age 20.

Surprised to find a high degree of consensus, not one activist said the movement’s overall culture sustained them. Most (65%) said they were anti-capitalist, but many lacked a descriptive political label and a systematic strategy for a better world. (A CNN poll of a representative sample of adults found that 42% thought that capitalism is not working for the US.) The interviewers found fragmentation and a lack of a unified front, and in response they advocated a “movement of the movements.” The authors bemoaned the absence of a strong Left and advocated building “a new kind of Left for our times, rooted in feminist social relations and “on-the-ground social movements.”

They believe the time is now for a united movement because multiple crises generate a “tipping point” for change. The authors propose a clearinghouse media center and a new Left political party, “united for socialism.” They suggest reexamining the culture of the social justice movement to eliminate competition for funding, judgmentalness, ego, crankiness, obsession with process and ideological purity, racism and sexism, overwork, lack of leadership training for youth, and expressing more anger than hope.

The interviewees were united in believing that the uprisings of 2011—the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall St., were the most exciting political events they’d ever experienced. They believed that the Occupy movement helped elect President Obama. As signs of continuing grassroots action, the organizers pointed to Florida demonstrations against the vigilante who killed black teen Trayvon Martin in February 2012 and Latino student immigrant “Dreamer” protests.

A young artist, Beka participated in Occupy Wall Street as a member of a Brooklyn media collective called “Not an Alternative” that creates videos and visuals used in street protests. Speaking at the Global Uprisings conference in Amsterdam, she explained that unlike the 60s when activists believed they could drop out and drop into a counter-culture to create another world, today there is no other world. The 99% are all affected by the capitalist system. The economic and environmental crisis connects us all. Neoliberalism is based on a lie that wealth has unlimited growth, but like a cancer, it’s terminal. Politicians can’t say her generation will do better than their parents. She worries that, “We don’t have a solid counter power, we’re fragmented.” Like many activists, she advocated building actual alternatives to the infrastructure. Like other activists, she doesn’t aim for one unified strategy, as “Our strength is in our disagreements, with connection despite of differences of opinion.”

In 2013 Occupy Wall Street activists identified ambitious ongoing actions to implement in 2014: make education a right, environmental protection, advocate a single payer health care system, affordable housing, end poverty, end mass incarceration, immigrant rights, indigenous sovereignty, a fair global trade system, and ending war.[123] Occupy members formed Beautiful Trouble in January 2013 to train groups in organizing and group development, including the Dream Defenders discussed below.[124] They teach tactics such as creative direct action, humor and pranks, arts, and other strategies discussed in their book.[125]

 In a “Natgat” annual National Gathering on July 4, 2014, participants maintained their leaderless “horizontalism” to compile a “visioning” document they posted on their Facebook page “Occupy National Gathering.”[126] The main theme was that “Our process is our message,” consensus-based direct democracy. They were especially concerned about problems of student debt, public education, home foreclosures, and big bank power. When they voted on their priorities, the top five were a clean environment, free education for all, no war, sustainable society, and direct democracy. An online site called “Occupy Café.org” continued the conversation, along with a weekly telephone discussion.

 Activists opposed President Obama’s policy of American exceptionalism to justify involvement in Syria, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) called “NAFTA on steroids,” the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment partnership (TAFTA), and the Keystone XL Pipeline that author Naomi Klein referred to as the final colonial pillage in North America. Critics said TPP would increase corporate power to limit government ability to enforce environmental standards and regulate finance and food safety, and limit Internet freedom. Zeese and Margaret Flowers placed the TPP as the top priority issue of 2015, due to its shift of power to corporations away from local and national governments’ abilities to make environmental regulations.

The largest student activism centered on immigration rights and the environment. About 1,000 demonstrators, mostly students from 80 colleges, marched to the White House in March 2014 to denounce the Keystone XL oil pipeline. Some of the students were part of 350.org and work for divestment from fossil fuels. They sang the old “We Shall Overcome” and told the police “We love you.” Students said our future is on the line with fossil fuel. Some wore yellow T-shirts with the picture of a sun and the words, “As the heat rises, so do we!”

Progressive politicians were elected to office in 2013 along with President Obama, including Senator Elizabeth Warren, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, and socialist Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant. Born in India, she was active in Occupy Seattle. Warren began a campaign in 2014 for “Higher Ed, Not Debt,” to assist students with their loan debt. The campaign includes unions (membership declined from a third of workers to about 12%), the Working Families Party (WFP), youth groups, and other progressives. De Blasio was assisted in his election campaign by the WFP, a coalition founded in 1998, sponsored by labor unions and community groups to change social and political inequality. WFP backed half of the newly elected New York City Council members as well. Active throughout the US, WFP Executive Director Dan Cantor said, “We are living in the world Occupy made. We are the beneficiaries of what they did in terms of making this about inequality, which is from our point of view the core issue of our time.”

Occupy Wall Street organizers launched a new anti-capitalist progressive party in March 2014. Carl Gibson, co-founder of US Uncut, said the party aims to appeal to young people and focus on local politics to build power.[127] It’s website provides articles on activism and current issues. The party opposes capitalism, refuses to take donations from corporations, and gives top priority to education and health care.  

A new PAC was formed to raise money to influence congressional races in 2014. Their goal was to create a Congress committed to reducing the influence of money on politics in 2016.[128] A new coalition formed the New Poor People’s Campaign, aiming to gather allies around the world.[129] Perhaps they influenced the Congressional Progressive Caucus that proposed “The People’s Budget: A Raise for America” in 2015. It included increasing the minimum wage, increasing taxes on the rich, debt-free college education, investing in renewable energy and public financing of political campaigns.

In March 2014, the hacker group Anonymous called for protests in Albuquerque, New Mexico, after it posted a YouTube video of police shooting a mentally ill homeless man. It also hacked the police website. After nine hours of demonstrations, the police responded to the marchers with tear gas. Protester Alexander Siderits, 23, said he was “fed up” with police violence: “It has reached a boiling point, and people just can’t take it anymore.” (See photos in the endnote citation.[130]) A sign said, “APD: Dressed to Kill.” In 2015, police killed over 1,000 people, according to the Killed By Police website.

The Fight for $15 minimum wage movement drew tens of thousands of people to march in 230 cities on April 15, 2015. They demanded fair pay for all in an era when the largest employer, Wal-Mart, pays only $9 an hour, the average wage has stayed the same for the last 30 years when adjusted for inflation, and most of the gains since the Great Recession went to the top 1%.[131] The Fight for $15 campaign is part of a new social justice movement called Millennial Movements, that intersects with Black Lives Matter, workers’ struggles such as Fast Food Forward, graduate student unions that push the labor movement to the left, the student debt relief, and feminist movements. A graduate student union activist named Katy Fox-Hodess reported, “We see a real national trend of younger workers really pushing the labor movement to the left in a number of ways. We have to stand up on issues of racism, zenophobia, women’s issues, LGBT issues, foreign policy issues—we have to have a broader politics.”[132]

In 2013 Millennials started an online magazine called {Young}ist headquartered in New York City to focus on global issues:

Racial justice

Immigration

Gender Incarceration

Capitalism (labor, workers, gentrification, etc.)

Health (mental health, sex, trauma, self-care, etc.)

Queerness

Gender

Organizing (direct action, online campaigns, social movements, etc.)

Culture (arts, pop culture, etc.)

Their website explains their purpose:

{Young}ist was born in response to the scapegoating of our generation in mainstream, corporate media narratives. As we are burdened with the economic crisis, a broken immigration system, and the rampant violence on young Black, Brown, queer, and transgender youth across the globe–we pursue storytelling not only as a vehicle to spread news, but also as a vital organizing tool to combating oppression. We see youth-led publishing and cross-pollination of ideas and strategies as a political necessity in this digital age.

Adbusters, the Canadian magazine that called for Occupy Wall Street, said the revolutionary spirit stirred again at the end of 2015 when they organized the #BillionPeopleMarch for December 19.[133] People who didn’t want to march could create “lone wolf” actions. Described as a “revolutionary carnival” against the system using culture jams and boycotts, their anti-logo is a black spot that could represent nothing or everything. It’s the sign of people power, “the mark of the new world to come.” The organizers predicted, “Once the global mindspace is peppered with trillions of blackspots, the revolution has begun.”

In 2016 Frances Moore Lappé judged that the ingredients for a real democracy movement to take place in the US had coalesced because most people are angry about the fact that the 20 richest people own as much wealth as the bottom half of the population and that they control our government. In addition, 85% of Americans want to rebuild the campaign finance system and oppose secret funding for politicians, which requires overturning the Supreme Court Citizens United decision. Diverse groups agreed on a Unity Statement of Principles to end the influence of wealthy donors and formed coalitions like Democracy Initiative, Democracy.faith, and Democracy Awakening. A coalition of 36 groups planned direct actions for #DemocracySpring, including a march, teach-in, human circle around the Capital, and visits to legislators, described on “Field Guide-to-Getting-Money-Out-of-Politics Movement.[134]

Overall, the Occupy Movements changed the political discussion in North America from how to balance the budget to how to reduce inequality and received international support. The inequality theme of the 1% versus the 99% carried on in Bernie Sander’s presidential campaign that attracted young voters. Sanders’ slogan was #NotMeUs. Activists attempted to create DIY efforts like local co-ops and gardens, but didn’t significantly change the balance between the 1% and the 99%, leaving many angry. Trump and Sanders drew on that anger in their presidential campaigns. Trump blamed the financial elite for favoring globalization over America, and attacked Hillary Clinton for wanting to do away with national borders, saying, “I alone can fix it,” and “I’m your voice.” (Other reasons for his selection as the Republican presidential candidate are listed by Juan Cole.[135]) Trump’s election was viewed by some as an anti-globalization and pro-nationalist statement, but others view it as a desire to change an ineffective national government.

Trump supporters praise his nationalistic America first policy. But, is the administration‘s stated goal to deconstruct all our federal government departments (and appointing a man who doesn’t believe humans are responsible for global warming as the head of the EAP) helpful? What about the administration’s refusal to criticize Putin? Trump himself insisted on removing passages from the Republican platform that Russians didn’t like, creating the impression that he’s putting some kind of deal with Putin over US interests and colluded with Russian hackers to influence the election for Trump. It’s shortsighted not to realize that isolationism hurts our country in an era when democracy is under assault from Putin and other forces who created what he calls “the power vertical” or “governing from the top” centering on himself.[136] Foreign aid and programs like USAID help ensure global peace and security and prevent terrorism, as well as helping famine victims, etc. These programs consume only about one percent of the national budget.

 Ben Brown founded the Association of Young Americans (AYA) to represent young Americans in government, similar to AARP lobbyists for older people.[137] Their weekly newsletter includes pertinent articles and news. Brown was motivated by Senator Alan Simpson’s statement that nothing would change until a young person could walk into his office representing millions of peers. An AYA member named Christopher Whalen, age 26, explained his generation can get hashtag campaigns launched, “But we often have a problem taking that passion and turning it into strategy.”

 A professor and activist in Occupy Boston, Jeffrey Juris summed up the impact of the occupy movement as changing the debate from the national debt to inequality, unemployment, and the influence of corporate money on government.[138] He believes the future struggle will not be with the state but creating alternative practices. This was also the goal of the Global Justice Movement but current activists have broader communication networks to influence more people. Current goals are to raise wages, stop oil extraction, keep the Internet free, end corporate control of government, and immigrant rights. Occupy themes were used in Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the presidency, as her statement that “We have to make the economy fairer” and raise taxes on the rich. Her statements about racism are attributed to influences from Black Lives Matter.

Debt Protests

The financial system wants most of us to be in debt, maintains anarchist anthropologist David Graeber in his book Debt: The First 5000 Years (2011). Collective student debt is over $1 trillion with $33,090 the average for an indebted graduate, while the Education Department will earn an estimated $127 billion in the next decade on interest on loans.[139] The 70% of college graduates with debt owed an average of $29,400 in 2013. Graeber says the working class distrusts intellectuals–“the cultural elite,” and teachers, which undermines potential to unify for change. The loss of middle-class confidence in their economic futures is reflected in lower birth rates and less mobility, less moving from one home to a better one.    

Young protesters are concerned about a combined US student debt of $1.2 trillion (not including what their parents borrowed for college expenses), at the same time that the unemployment rate for young college graduates is the highest on record.[140] Feminist author Gloria Steinem points out the debt burden is harder for female graduates who earn 81 cents for every dollar earned by a man, an average of $2 million less than men over a lifetime. Noam Chomsky warned that young people with large debts aren’t likely to think about social change; “When you trap people in a system of debt, they can’t afford the time to think. Tuition fee increases are a disciplinary technique” leading students to internalize the “disciplinary culture” and become cogs in the consumer economy.”[141]

Thousands of students joined the “Million Student March” on November 12, 2015, to end student debt and tuition at public colleges and for a $15 an hour minimum wage. The, claimed over 10,000 demonstrators on 115 campuses. Strike Debt wrote a free manual on how to deal with student debt, medical debt, and so on.[142] The Debt Collective erased nearly $4 million in student debt by purchasing it for $100,000. Members of the AFL-CIO’s Young Worker Advisory Council issued their Youth Economic Platform in 2015 as part of their national youth movement for raising wages, applied by the Young Worker Groups across the country. The platform began this way:

If you believe what the media reports, you might think young workers are individualistic, selfish narcissists. You might think the only way to connect with young people is on social media. And you might think we don’t know anything about the value of work. Don’t believe a word of it. It’s true we’ve been dealt a raw hand by corporations that view us as replaceable and by politicians who rely on us for votes but rely on Wall Street to finance their campaigns and choose their policies. And yet our generation is one of the most civic-minded, activist generations in history. That’s because we’re not going to wait for the world to change—we’re determined to fix it ourselves.[143]

A bill called the Pay It Forward College Affordability Act proposed that students pay for their tuition after graduation when they’re employed, paying a percent of their earnings into an education trust for about 20 years. Senator Bernie Sanders proposed tuition-free public higher education similar to Denmark’s (it also provides health care and subsidized childcare and rates high in global life satisfaction scales. New York approved free tuition for middle-class students in 2017. Germany ended tuition at public universities in 2014 similar to Scandinavian policies.) Hillary Clinton proposed an income-based tuition plan. Raising taxes on the 1% to 40% of their earnings—the people who have an average income of $9.4 million and own more than 20% of the household wealth, would pay tuition costs.[144] The Undercommoning Collective aims to organize North American university students to radically transform the university system. Their webpage explains, “Undercommoning is building a North American network of radical organizers within, against, and beyond the (neo)liberal, (neo)colonial university.”[145] The page also lists education alternatives.

Organizers of the Million Student March joined with the Black Liberation Collective at the University of Missouri to call for another march on April 13, 2016 against student debt and racism. They aimed to unite students, workers, people of color, women, LGBT people and immigrants in a mass movement.[146]

The largest demonstrations since Occupy Wall Street occurred in the Democracy Spring in 2016, where 1,200 were arrested in Capitol sit-ins. They protested erosion of voting rights and the Citizens United decision giving corporations the rights of persons.

Author Frances Moore Lappé reported, “Democracy Spring’s generational mix is striking too. I’ve never experienced anything like it. As an elder, I remember the attitude of the 60s, when some warned: ‘Don’t trust anybody over 30.’ Here, the feeling is exactly opposite. Everybody is contributing and everybody is valued. Elders bring the perspective and learning of many decades. Youth come in with focus, voice, and vision. The respect across the generations is palpable.”[147] Young activists described their motivations to participate including Dylan, age 27, said, “I’m excited for what I’m embarking on now, which is working on an issue that’s tying all of these movements together and asking, “how do we achieve political equality?’”[148]  

Veterans of Occupy Wall Street supported Bernie Sander’s candidacy and campaigned against lack of media coverage of his presidential campaign, including in New York and CNN headquarters called #OccupyCNN. Sanders appealed to young voters by promising to increase the number of jobs, provide universal health care and tackle climate change. He explained his popularity with Millennials by saying they understand that unless we take on the billionaire class, their generation will have a lower standard of living than their parents. A fact that backs up his central message, by the end of February 2016, 400 rich people contributed over a third of all presidential campaign contributions to perpetuate their power.[149] Robert Reich calls this a takeover of the US.

When people found out Donald Trump was elected despite Clinton winning the popular vote, tens of thousands of people protested on the streets of cities around the US, night after night. They chanted “Not my president,” “Love trumps hate,” and “No hate, no fear, all people welcome here.” “We will not stand for sexism, racism, trans phobia,” and discrimination against immigrants or religious groups, said a Black Lives Matter marcher in front of Trump Tower.

Trump tweeted the first night, “Professional protesters, incited by the media, are protesting. Very unfair,” although they were mostly peaceful and freedom of the press and assembly are important rights. Lacking any public service experience, he didn’t seem to have any understanding of US government, as in telling people, “I alone can solve your problems” and “be your voice.” Other protesters adopted the British symbol after the Brexit of wearing a safety pin to show concern for people who feel unsafe, such as undocumented immigrants and Muslims. Senator Elizabeth Warren urged people to volunteer for progressive organizations and stay connected with her newsletter and other sources. Many looked to her to replace Trump in four years. A huge Million Woman march in Washington, DC was organized for the day after Trump’s inauguration, January 21, 2017, to protest his sexism. With around four million demonstrators, Gloria Steinem said it was the only march she’d seen that had too many people to march.

                        Young Black Activists 2013-2015

Unlike the Occupy Wall Street movement, Black Lives Matter (BLM) won’t subside because it’s better organized, builds networks and coalitions, and doesn’t depend on a single tactic that police can disrupt—occupation of a public place. BLM succeeded in increasing the number of police officers indicted for killing young black men, calling attention to the pipeline of young men of color from school to prison, and the privatization of prisons. It also raised awareness about racism, increasing the numbers of people in the US who think racism is a big problem to almost half. An example of racism among university students, in October 2016 some students walked out of their anthropology class at Texas State University in disbelief and disagreement after Professor R. Jon McGee accurately informed them we all evolved from Africans. Other students chanted, “Black lives matter.”

A precedent for young black leadership was the Black Panther movement founded in 1966, mainly comprised of young adults, documented in the video Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution (2015). The Panthers organized the first large-scale free school breakfast program, as well being famous for shootouts with police and sexist treatment of women members.[150] Claude Fischer pointed out that the Civil Rights movement is one of the few successful street protest movements, because it was organized in black churches and colleges and trained protesters in non-violent tactics.[151] The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), founded in 1909, is the most influential civil rights organization, but not known for its outreach to youth despite having a Youth and College Department.  Reverend William Barber, president of the North Carolina NAACP, said his state organization is the only one that has youth board members elected by youth chapters.[152] Kwame Rose, a 21-year-old activist in Baltimore, said the Congressional Black Caucus isn’t relevant if they aren’t “on the ground doing work.” In contrast, BLM confronts power directly: Background is provided in The Hip-Hop Generation Fights Back (2012).[153]         

A larger generation than the Baby Boomers and a quarter of the US population, 44% of Millennials are people of color. Defined by Nielsen as born from 1977 to 1995, they are 19% Hispanic, 14% African American and 5% Asian, while 14% are first generation immigrants and 12% are second generation.[154] Too many of them aren’t in school or working: 22% of black young people, 20% of Native Americans, 16% of Latinos, compared to 11% of whites and 8% of Asian Americans.[155] Despite increased diversity, 2014 UCLA survey of national freshmen reported that 23% of them grew up in segregated neighborhoods and only 29% of white students felt promoting racial understanding is important.[156] (An Indian SpeakOut student said they replace sexist “freshmen” with “freshers,” the British term.)

A panel of four CSUC students shared their experiences being African American in Chico in a BLM workshop on October 2015. All of them suffered the indignity of walking down the street in our mostly white college town to be assaulted by racist slurs and commands to go back to the jungle. Cans are thrown at them from passing vehicles displaying Confederate flags. Even more offensive is what happens on a campus that says it values diversity. Teachers and students too often look to the black student in class to speak for all people of color.  Many classes require group work; the students said they’re the last to be chosen simply because of their skin color. Once in a group, the others don’t want to meet at the black student’s house. That not only hurts, but also impacts their academic success. The students were frustrated that racism continues unabated just disguised in different language. A political science major who grew up in “the hood” in Los Angeles said, “There’s a negative stigma about being black and it has an effect on me.” A black woman on the panel said she worries about getting a call that something harmful happened to her brother or her partner. A sophomore black student told me that as the only black person in the dormitories, other students would avoid getting on the elevator with her and she quit the dance team because she didn’t feel welcome.

Illai Kenney started working in the Black Youth Vote! campaign when she was nine.[157] She observed that no group is at greater risk than young black people, always under attack, although I would suggest Native Americans as another greatly disadvantaged group. Kenney said the core issue for young black people is environmental sustainability, since without it “you don’t have anything.” She reported, “Being young and black is the coolest thing you can ever be. It sounds so arrogant, but it’s probably the dopest experience you’ll ever have,” but being in the club comes with a price. Even straight-arrow students can get in trouble in the ghetto, as shown in a 2015 film titled Dope. It tells the story of a smart black teen growing up in a Los Angeles hood. A straight A student, Malcolm aims to go to Harvard and plays in a ‘90s hip-hop band. Caught up in a struggle between drug dealers, at the end of the movie he smiles as he opens a large packet from Harvard, seemingly an acceptance.

Young black activist Mychal Denzel Smith observed that his generation protested the war in Iraq, they volunteered to clean up after Hurricane Katrina and supported the Jena Six teenagers charged with beating a white boy in Louisiana, but lacked a sustainable national movement until Trayvon Martin was killed in Florida.[158] A black person is killed by police, guards or vigilantes every 36 hours, according to the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement.[159] Smith pointed out that black women do much of the work involved in organizing, but are not represented in leadership positions or issues. Smith gave the example of the silence around the killing of Renisha McBride, 19, in Michigan in 2013 when she knocked on a door to get help after being injured in a car accident.

In 2014, a Muslim freshman living in Princeton, New Jersey, Ziad Ahmed (14) formed an educational group called redefy. His intent is to change stereotypes “to reduce racial prejudices, micro-aggressions, profiling, and hate in general within our communities and media.” Ahmed wants to make a positive change and help kids who feel excluded at school and inspire youth activism in opposition to stereotypes that teens only care about partying. In a video he explained his group mainly relies on social media, but “redefy” quickly spread to 10 countries and over 12 states.[160] The group conducts middle-school workshops and organizes school clubs and other community campaigns to defeat ignorance. Ahemed said his Bangladeshi-American parents never sheltered him from the news and took him to political events and gave him access to social media since third grade. He saw social problems and wanted to help since he was very young. I predict he will become a successful politician, as you’ll see on the video.

Dream Defenders

Dream Defenders (DD) young people organized an over a month-long occupation of the Florida state building after the July 2013 acquittal of neighborhood watch vigilante George Zimmerman for killing black teen Trayvon Martin. Some of the students had been active in Occupy Tallahassee in March. From her tent in the Tallahassee camp, Melissa Milliron, age 25, said their purpose was to occupy a space in the middle of the richest 1% and “to not be ignored. Because if we keep going in the direction we’re on, we’re doomed.”[161] She also participated in Occupy Wall Street and demonstrations in Washington, DC.  DD leader Daniel Agnew compared their more inclusive struggle with the civil rights struggle of the Martin Luther King era; “Understand that we’re young and we’re in a different time than the past civil rights movements. It’s not a white and black thing. It’s not a male and female thing. We have old, young, white, black, gay, straight. We can be cool. We’re not just these stern individuals.”[162] Their goal is to create a place where diverse people can talk about the war on youth.

The DD website states they believe in nonviolent civil disobedience and combating discrimination with love and peace.[163] Nine DD chapters on Florida universities formed after Trayvon was shot, with about 100 members, mostly youth of color. They maintain active Twitter discussion about issues like gun violence and the prison-industrial complex. Some black churches and civil rights groups supported the young protesters.

DD began when Phillip Agnew and some of his friends organized a group of college students and recent graduates for a three-day march from Daytona Beach to Sanford to protest Martin’s murder. Agnew followed up with a conference call with almost 200 other activists to discuss how to get justice for Trayvon Martin. When Zimmerman was acquitted, they occupied the state capitol building where older civil rights leaders like Jesse Jackson and Julian Bond joined them. The DDs called for a special legislative session to examine racial profiling and to repeal the Stand Your Ground law that permits carrying guns, as George Zimmerman was when he shot Martin. They demanded an end to the school-to-prison pipeline because African American males are six times more likely to be imprisoned than white males. The governor at first refused their requests to meet and to reconsider Stand Your Ground but changed his mind on both requests but the DD bills were not introduced.

Annie Thomas, 19, is a high school senior active in the DD movement. She told me in a Skype session seen on YouTube, “Being a DD is a commitment to acting out your values, you’re not just representing yourself, you’re representing other youth.“ [164] Comparing youth organizers today to civil rights activists, she said the only difference is the use of social media; youth have always led, as when students walked out their schools during the Civil Rights era. When I asked if her parents support her activism, she said yes, her mother is an organizer too. With other DD members, Annie marched and shut down a police department in order to get Zimmerman arrested. When he was acquitted, they occupied the capital building for 31 days. Annie participated in the one meeting the governor attended, where he just advised them to pray. She explained the sit-in ended because they achieved most of their goals.

Not exactly horizontal organizing, DD college chapters have presidents and other officers, but facilitators of meetings are frequently changed and leadership development trainings are provided by more experienced members. They believe organizing is not about the individual; it’s about the whole group. Both sexes are about evenly represented. A “stack” gives members the opportunity to sign up to speak at meetings. In large groups like the capital sit-in, they break into smaller work groups, share proposals and then vote back in the large group, as in other Occupy events globally. Asked about the problem of members not following through on a task, Annie said they have to be organized with back up plans and provide training. If someone flakes, they won’t be given an important task the next time.

The DDs continue to oppose the Stand your Ground law, racial profiling, and prison privatization (over two million people are in prison). In response to charges that youth are apathetic, Annie explained that youth are aware because they see the consequences of discrimination on a daily basis. People who make those kinds of charges don’t hang out with youth and thus ignorantly stereotype them as dumb. In fact, Annie said because DDs are mostly college students, they are the most educated and smarter than most of their political representatives. It’s obvious to students that their schools are falling apart. DD organized Youth Unchained high school chapters. Annie says they must break that chain, the school to prison pipeline. Annie agreed with my observation that high school students tend to segregate themselves by ethnicity, although students who share a common activity like band are more integrated.

 High school administrators are repressive, such as if a student participates in a walkout protest, he or she could be suspended for 10 days. Clothing is strictly monitored for proper school attire. Annie reported, “We’re shut out a lot by school. Young men of color face constant discrimination in the school to prison pipeline, suspended or expelled and arrested for minor infractions. They’re targeted by police.” Some students she knows are helping to support their families, working as well as attending school, so they don’t have the luxury of speaking out and getting expelled. DDs created a curriculum to teach about the history of previous rebellions, listed in the endnote, and they displayed artwork from global revolutionary organizations in 2016.[165]

The Million Hoodies Movement for Justice collected over two million signatures in support of a petition created by Howard University students to arrest George Zimmerman. The organization continued its activism to “build next generation leaders to end mass criminalization and gun violence for Black and Brown communities to live safely and securely.”[166] Million Hoodies helped organize young people to march in Washington, DC in November 2015 under the banner “Our Generation, Our Choice.” They chanted, “The youth are rising, no more compromising” and “I believe we will win.” Dante Barry, director of Million Hoodies said, “A cross-section of youth activism have come together to say that change is something that we demand, and the time to act upon it is now. From environmental to criminal justice, the country we live in today does not reflect the beliefs of the population it comprises.”[167]

The Dream Defenders and allied groups around the country, including the Million Hoodies Movement for Justice and The Black Youth Project, mobilized around the country under the hashtag #indictthesystem to protest the grand jury acquittal of a white policeman who shot Michel Brown, 18, in Ferguson, Missouri in August 2014. Although many black and brown young men have been killed by police before, his death galvanized the youth-led movement against police violence and incarceration of black and brown men (with a Facebook page with 69,000 followers, 23 million Twitter followers, and webpage[168]). Outrage increased when Brown’s body was left on the street for four hours. “Die-in’s” were held to protest Brown’s body being left for four hours on the in New York City, Washington DC, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago, Denver, Seattle, Oakland, and Los Angeles, shown in photos.[169]

Demonstrators in over 90 cities held up their arms and chanted, “Hands up, don’t shoot,” in response to some witnesses reporting that Brown had his hands up as he was shot. Some members of the St. Louis Rams team entered their football field with hands up, a gesture repeated by some members of the Congressional Black Congress. The outrage led to establishing task forces on police violence. Two years later football quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers Colin Kaepernick, age 28, added to discussion of police violence by not standing for the national anthem at football games and wearing pink socks with pig designs. His teammate Eric Reid, a multi-millionaire, promised to give $1 million to charities that help solve racism, stating, “I have to help these people.”[170] Soccer star Megan Rapinoe signaled her support for Kaepernick by kneeling during the national anthem at her game. She linked racism with discrimination against white lesbians like her (the history of queer activists in leftist movements is discussed in Emily Hobon’s Lavender and Red (2016). Next, the whole Seattle Seahawks team joined the protest, followed by high school football teams in states including Colorado, Wisconsin, Washington, California, New Jersey, Nebraska, and Texas. A quarterback from Aurora, Colorado, explained, “We see our teachers give up on us and expect us to fail. We’ve always seen this. Once we saw somebody else stand up against it, we just fell in line.”[171]

Protests against the grand jury decision exonerating the police officer who shot Brown generated protests in 170 cities, blocking major roads, bridges and tunnels under the hashtag #ShutItDown. Citizen journalists who told their personal stories were impactful; for example, Bassem Masri had 90,000 viewers of his video livestreaming of the Ferguson protests. Another Ferguson activist, DeRay Mckesson, 29, noted, “At the heart of any revolution is a well-told story, right?” He’s telling the “damning story” of racism, using the power of social media, with 67,000 Twitter followers. He also co-edits a newsletter with Johnetta Elzie.

Some of the demonstrators carried signs showing their kinship with Gaza civilian victims of Israeli bombings and activists in Gaza tweeted advice for how to cope with tear gas. Hands Up United in St. Louis built alliances with radical organizations in Brazil, Palestine, and other countries in South America and Europe. Black Lives Matter members went to Palestine to protest what they see as US financed genocide. A Pew Research Center Poll found that Millennials are more supportive of Palestinians than older people who blame groups like Hamas. A banner in a Manhattan demonstration read, “Gaza in our Hearts. Boycott. Divest. Sanction.”

The Executive Director of Dream Defenders, Phillip Agnew told Al Jazeera on November 26 that what’s different from the reaction to the murder of Trayvon Martin is the willingness of people to take direct action, shut down roads and occupy buildings. When asked about how real change occurs, he said it happens in the streets, including Wall Street. The movement for racial justice needs to use every arrow in the quiver available, including block highways in civil disobedience and replacing racist police chiefs and officers. Getting out the vote is necessary to replace legislatures like Florida’s that he says is run by Tea Party crazies, the NRA, and corporate interests who don’t want to see anything progressive passed. Agnew explained that no jobs and low educational opportunity, plus militarized police force and jailing and killing young men of color, leads to anger. Groups like Youth Against Mass Incarceration in Boston aim to end the prison industrial complex using protests and education in high schools and other venues.

After yet another young black man was killed by a policeman, this time in Madison, Wisconsin, over 1,500 high school and college students walked out of classes to the state government building to remind legislators that BLM. The Young, Gifted and Black Coalition wrote a letter to the police chief pointing out the high arrest rate for black citizens in Madison.

The “Our Generation, Our Choice” action “signaled the emergence of a powerful new alliance between different youth movements” who planned to influence the 2016 election. Their issues were the environment, justice for immigrants and people of color, and a just economy with jobs. Ferguson protesters joined with Wal-Mart protesters against low wages to stop sales on Black Friday, a useful strategy to combine movements. Organizations in addition to Million Hoodies included United We Dream, Fossil Fuel Divestment Student Network, and 350.org.

Black Youth Vote! registers young people to vote. More young black people voted in the 2008 and 2012 elections than their white peers. In 2016, young voters were 36% of the electorate, including half of Latino voters. The Next Generation Blueprint for 2016 crowdsourced a platform, eliciting more than 1,000 responses from 160 colleges. Their main issues were education, the economy, and human rights.[172] Groups like FairVote and Vote16USA lobbies to extend the vote to 16- and 17-year-olds.[173] In 2013 Takoma Park, Maryland, became the first US city to extend municipal voting rights to 16 year olds, followed by Hyattsville in 2015. The following year San Francisco Supervisors voted to put lowering voting age on the ballot, but voters turned it down.

Black Lives Matter

In Oakland, California, activist Alicia Garza (age 32) created the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter on Facebook after Trayvon Martin’s killer was acquitted in 2013. Two women friends joined her; all three of them were active in Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity. Garza wrote, “Black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter.” She reported that 26 chapters formed by August 2015 plus one in Canada, many led by women. The hashtag spread around the world; Israelis of Ethiopian decent used the slogan to protest police violence against black people in May 2015. The same month a call for a #BlackSpring resulted in demonstrations in 25 cities including Ontario, Canada.

Garza spoke on the Rachel Maddow TV show on the one-year anniversary of Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson.

If it weren’t for young people standing up as they are in Ferguson, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. It’s a growing movement across the world demanding respect and dignity for black people. We’re at a turning point. It’s not true that we live in a post-racial society. We want to stop police targeting of young black men. Presidential candidates need to offer proactive proposals, not just repeat the Black Lives Matter slogan. Power concedes nothing without a demand. We need to disrupt and protest to make change.

Missouri implemented new court reforms to end local fines of traffic offenders and jailing people for minor offenders. The governor set up a Ferguson Commission to study social issues in the city. The commission included 20-year-old activist Rasheen Aldridge Jr. He is a community college student, director of Young Activist United St. Louis and student co-chair of the Missouri Jobs with Justice. The Black Youth Project organized a video documentation of police profiling and harassment and advocated collective work for change. A video features young black men talking about the daily racism they experience as strangers cross the street to avoid them, police stop them but not white peers, and their mothers worry when they go out.[174] TIME magazine published a list of 14 black boys and men killed by police.[175] Police killed 700 people the first half of 2015; most were black: US police kill a black man every 28 hours.[176]

Teens and young adults led protests in Ferguson, organizing on Twitter, speaking at city council meetings, and fundraising, as shown on video.[177] Johnette Elzie, 25, live-tweeted demonstrations and reported, “The youth are the ones who pushed this movement. When they saw Mike Brown die, they saw themselves on the ground. I saw myself, I saw my brothers, everyone who looks like me. That is the fuel that has kept us going.”[178] She added, “This is a leaderless movement. A lot of people play a part, but there’s no one person in charge–other than Mike Brown.” A teacher noted, “This has been a completely youth-led movement. They’re the ones who have the passion, fire and drive.”          Youth rejected the efforts of older civil rights leaders in suits like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to ride on the coat tails of tattooed youth in tank tops. Rika Tayler, an activist with Hands Up United in Ferguson, explained, “They had their own movement. They were co-opted. Their movement got destroyed. Now they want to come to the new leaders and try to come in on our movement and give guidance and stuff, but it’s a totally different generation.”[179] (However, Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Push Coalition started a very contemporary project called FaithTech2020 where churches teach tech skills like coding in disadvantaged communities.) A St. Louis observer, George Richardson said the young protesters ignored the advice of their parents’ generation: “These kids do not understand why the nonviolence movement is the best way to get done what we need to get done. They don’t really know what to do.”[180]

Mostly peaceful BLM demonstrations were held in over 100 US cities including Seattle where hundreds of students walked out of high school classes to join rallies. In Chicago teach-ins were held on social issues and “healing circles” encouraged people to share their experiences with violence. In Philadelphia a protester said, “This country is at its boiling point. How many black people need to die?” Around the world protesters organized as #HandsUpWalkOut marched with their hands held up in the air, as some witnesses said Jackson did before he was shot. Black athletes wore “I Can’t Breathe” T-shirts and hip-hop rappers including Talib Kweli and J. Cole headed to Ferguson to protest while others tweeted their protests. (Youth of color use of hip-hop for social action is described in The Hip-Hop Generation Fights Back: Youth, Activism and Post-Civil Rights Politics–2012, based on research in Oakland by Andreana Clay. A similar study of Asian American youth activism in Oakland is Uncivil Youth—2013, by Soo Ah Kwon.)

A second grand jury failure to indict a white policeman for killing a black man occurred a little more than a week later in New York City when a police chokehold on Eric Garner resulted in his death in July 2014. (Also in November, Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old black boy carrying a toy gun, was killed by a rookie policeman in Cleveland, Ohio.) In response to Garner’s death, marches with tens of thousands of people were held around the country. A banner among the 25,000 marchers in New York City in December 2014 read, “When we breathe, we breathe together.”

A Millions March Day of Anger was organized by young women in New York on December 13. Synead Nichols explained, “We want people to shut down their cities for justice. We are continuing where the freedom fighters of the Civil Rights Movement left off. We are a new generation of young multiracial activists willing to take up the torch and we’re not going to stand for this anymore.” She and Umaara Elliott were women in leadership positions who initiated the Facebook event, their first time as protest leaders. Their Day of Anger repeated a common theme in global protests. Protesters carried banners stating “Black Lives Matter,” “Demilitarize the Police,”  “Stop the War on Black Youth,” and “Another Killer Cop Goes Free.” They chanted, “I can’t breathe,” Garner’s last words as he was left lying on the sidewalk for six minutes, and “The people are rising, no more compromising!” Protesters also blocked highway onramps. “We can’t breathe” and “Black lives matter” were echoed globally, as in protests against police killing of black people in São Paulo, Brazil. They listed the names of black Americans as well as Brazilians killed by police, shown online.[181]

Only 15 years old, Mary Gashaw organized a protest in Cambridge, Massachusetts, angered at the decision not to indict the policeman who choked Garner. In Seattle, a young black woman named Antasia Parker advocated, “We need a more revolutionary program. Nothing is going to change unless we change it fundamentally, because built in the fabric of this nation is a commitment and dedication to use human beings as collateral for capital.”[182] Black athletes and members of Congress and their staffers walked out with arms up.

Some conflicts occurred as black demonstrators told white speakers to yield the stage to black speakers and young people resented older civil rights leaders for monopolizing the podium. At a large march in Washington, DC, young people from St. Louis demanded to speak on the stage: Johnetta Elzie said, “This movement was started by young people.”[183] She said, “I thought there was going to be actions, not a show. This is a show.” A widely circulated Tumblr post asked, “Dear white protesters, this is NOT about you….Hand over the bullhorn to a Black person because your voice doesn’t need a bullhorn to be heard.” At a demonstration in Berkeley, people in the crowd at Old City Hall yelled at a white city councilman, “Let a black person talk! We’ve heard from enough Caucasian men!”

In Chicago, Charlene Carruthers (age 29) is the national coordinator of BYP 100, a group that teaches black youth how to organize in their communities. They led demonstrations against jailing black youth for minor offenses such as marijuana use. BYP 100 grew out of the Black Youth Project and has chapters around the country, galvanized by the killing of Trayvon Martin, Renisha McBride, Mike Brown, and the case of Marissa Alexander who was jailed in Florida for firing a warning shot at her estranged husband when he threatened her. Carruthers reports that few other organizations train young black leaders, although the Black Youth Project website lists numerous national youth organizations.[184] Carruthers uses social media to “insert analysis that is black, queer and feminist.”[185] She noted that “issues of gender justice and LGBT justice have been either secondary or not recognized at all.”

The national protests resulted in discussions of how to change police training, increase their use of body cameras, change the grand jury process and build a new local economy. In St. Louis, for example, activists want to form worker-owned and black-owned businesses. New activist coalitions were formed including Lost Voices and Tribe X. Civil rights leader Reverend Al Sharpton said they learned from the Trayvon Martin case in Florida not to let local protest groups die out and try to provide continuity.[186] BLM is searching for an organizational base, discussed in Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor’s From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation (2016). When a young man from St. Louis was asked about leadership, he said there wasn’t a leader or single organization at the head of the movement.[187] Patrisse Cullors, a co-founder of BLM in Los Angeles, remarked that critics haven’t acknowledged BLM grassroots work negotiating with mayors and heads of police forces.[188] Allen Kwabena Frimpong, an activist with the New York chapter, observed, “There’s nothing wrong with being decentralized and dispersed. The problem is being disconnected. If we are going to build political power, we have to build connections.”[189]

Some see a generational divide with angry young people organizing on social media. Older Civil Rights leaders criticize BLM for being formless, without clear direction, and the younger ones see the older ones as too rigid. Civil Rights activist Barbara Reynolds criticized BLM tactics for being divisive, using hate speech and boorish profanity, including in their popular songs like “Alright” by rapper Kendrick Lamar. Reynolds contrasts guys with sagging pants showing their underwear with the respectable leadership of civil rights pastors like Martin Luther King, Jr.[190] In a generation gap she accused the young activists of ignoring the loving nonviolent lessons of the civil rights movement and not having clear goals.

St. Louis rapper Tef Poe (Kareem Jackson) wrote a song titled “War Cry” about fighting back. He thinks of himself as a political artist. He noted, “This ain’t your grandparents’ civil rights movement.”[191] He explained in an interview there is a lot of misunderstanding about his generation by older civil rights leaders: “They view us to be a bit more unpredictable, a lot of people are saying that our anger I misplaced…we are a lot different, we use profanity, we don’t wear suits, we’ve got tattoos, there’s women, gay, trans leadership.”[192] In contrast to the older movement that was sometimes not inclusive of women and people with “alternative identities,” the hip-hop generation includes a “feminist discourse” and “it’s very rare that you see men champion these issues as much as women do.”

An old school organizer, Ron Gregory, age 72, said the “difference is, in the ‘60s, we were disciplined. We were trained when we marched.”[193] “They are not afraid to die,” said another older activist, Dennis Brown, age 48: “That brazen defiance is fueled by an anger a lot of older people can’t comprehend.” A college student in Ferguson, Bradley Rayford explained that his generation is more “rageful” because they see and hear violent TV shows and music and they’re “amped by social media.” They’re angry about their lack of economic opportunity and police harassment. Black Studies Professor Cornell West said new militancy characterizes young people of all colors who are breaking out of the look-at-me neoliberal “peacock syndrome” of the 1960s and ‘70s that was the “culture of superficial spectacle, driven by money.” He observed that the young activists are “disproportionately black, disproportionately women and, significantly, disproportionately black, queer women.”[194] He believes keys to movement success are breaking out of fear and focusing on the “love ethic” of caring about other people.

The first gathering of national Movement for Black Lives was held Cleveland State University in July 2015 in order to build a national movement, discuss a new civil rights organization led by young people, back candidates for office, and heal their experiences with racism in a loving environment. They included workshops on sustainable farming and cultural arts as well as political education. Representatives of local groups attended such as Black Youth Project 100, Cleveland Action, Ferguson Action, and Million Hoodies Movement for Justice. Activist writer Ben Reynolds suggested the black movement should learn from the Rojava Revolution in northern Syria. The conference recommended that neighborhoods should organize assemblies coordinated by councils and tenants’ unions:  “All power to the councils, and long live the revolution!”[195] The next year an umbrella of over 50 BLM organizations released a platform calling for racial justice. Part of its global intersectionality it supported the Palestinian struggle against the “apartheid state” of Israel, along with the BDS movement to Boycott, Divest and Sanction Israel.

In April 2015, Baltimore police gave Freddie Gray (age 25) a “rough ride” in a police van that resulted in his death from spinal injuries. Thousands went to the street in a protest that was widely covered in the global news and social media. Twitter feed called it the “Baltimore Uprising.” When Israeli police beat up an Ethiopian man, Israeli demonstrators chanted, “Baltimore is here.”[196] The 35-year-old African American Baltimore chief prosecutor Marilyn Mosby handled police violence against young black men much differently than in Ferguson where the police shooter wasn’t charged. Mosby charged six police officers with manslaughter, stating in her announcement, “To the youth of this city: I will seek justice on your behalf. This is your moment.”[197] The trial of one officer ended in a hung jury in December 2015 and the driver of the van was put on trial in 2016, acquitted by the judge, as were the other policemen involved in Gray’s death.

Local branches of BLM organized a tent city in November 2015 to protest police killing of Jamar Clark in Minneapolis. They shut down the Mall of America and some airport terminals the next month, coordinated with demonstrations in five other cities. Large marches were held in Chicago around the same time when a year-old video was finally released showing a policeman shooting a black teen 16 times as his back was turned away from him. Some of the groups involved in the protests included Black Youth Project 100 and ColorOfChange.org. A BLM Super PAC was formed to contribute to political campaigns and use virtual reality software to allow the public to have more understanding of discriminatory practices like solitary confinement. BLM activists interrupted Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton campaigns to motivate them to pay attention to racism.

Black Twitter and Black Tumblr also change public understanding of racism. The phrase “Black Twitter” emerged as activists communicated with hundreds of thousands of followers; three of the popular tweeters read some of their tweets on video.[198] Popular handles are #MarcThompson, #EricGarner, #OscarGrant, #MichaelBrown, #TamirRice, #SandraBland, #TrayvonMartin, #ICantBreathe, #JusticeOrElse, #Ferguson, #IStandWithMizzou, and #Iftheygunnedmedown. In the wake of criticism of lack of coherent strategy, in January 2015 #BlackLives Matter published a manifesto with 12 demands, including full employment at a living wage, teaching Black history in schools, and reforming the criminal justice system. Campaign Zero is dedicated to ending police violence.[199] Young African Americans rekindled the activism of the 1960s, as when high school students protested police killing of another black man, Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte, North Carolina, in September 2016 (see the protest on video[200]). More police officers were charged with murder or manslaughter in 2015 than previous years and a Pew Research Center poll reported that half of Americans believe racism is a serious problem. Campaign Zero credits BLM for this progress.[201] Patrisse Cullors commented five years after she helped found BLM that it resulted in the popularization of street protests, and expanded from a spotlight on police violence to racism in general, aiming to transform the system with a long-term strategy. The movement also aroused white nationalism under the Trump Presidency.

                                    High School Student Activism

High school students have much to fight for now that the average grade for state public education is a D and no state scored higher than a C on six criteria, according to the 2016 “Network for Public Education” report.[202] However, apathy is problematic as explored in the documentary #ReGeneration (2012) that features five high-school students from the suburbs referred to as Generation Vexed.[203] One of the girls said her generation isn’t activists because they don’t go outside. Teenage Rebels (2015), a book about successful high school activists, reported that over half of their goals for changemaking concentrated on their schools, including defending school officials, and the other half joined with larger movements.[204] The online StudentNation magazine reports on student activism. Students protested over-testing in an “opt-out movement;” in New York, 20% of students opted out in 2015. The Obama administration responded by issuing guidelines suggesting that test time be less than 2% of time in the classroom. Santa Monica High School was the start of the political activism of right-wing advisor to President Trump, Millennial Stephen Miller. He told students not to speak Spanish and sponsored conservative speakers. A Santa Monica High School student shares a photo look into his peers.[205] The appearance and activities of students haven’t changed since my friend Califia graduated in 1995. In 2016 students at Rainier Beach High School in Seattle convinced the City Council to fund free bus passes for Seattle students and lobbied to start an AP computer science class.

High school students rolled back effort of conservative school boards to censor AP history curriculum by deleting references to slavery and mistreatment of Native Americans in Jefferson County, Colorado. Students in Arkansas protested a 2017 bill by Republican legislator Mr. Kim Hendren to ban Howard Zinn’s realistic books such as A People’s History of the United States (2005) from classrooms, posting signs such as “You can’t handle the truth.” Similar attempts failed earlier in Indiana and Arizona. High schools discussed the issues raised by Black Lives Matter, drawing from sites such as TeachableMoment.org, Facing History and Ourselves, and #FergusonSyllabus.[206]

Hundreds of students and teachers protested when a conservative school board policy in Jefferson County school district near Denver tried to propose curriculum standards advocating patriotism, respect for authority and free enterprise, and prohibit materials that encourage civil disorder.[207] In September 2014, students carried signs like “Civil Disobedience is Patriotism,” “There’s nothing more patriotic than protest, “and “It’s world history, not white history.” Students organized in Facebook groups. Leighanne Grey, a senior, said, “For all the good things we’ve done [as a country], we’ve done some terrible things. It’s important to learn about those things, or we’re doomed to repeat the past.”      Arizona students protested against censorship of their biology textbook mention of abortion, around the US some students boycott Common Core State Standard tests. Other student activism is described on various Internet sites.[208] High school students fought the 2010 Arizona law that banned teaching ethnic studies classes, resulting in a federal court reinstating them in 2013 and adding African American studies. A documentary called Precious Knowledge (2011) documents their campaign. However, “little research examines participation by today’s youth in moderate campus-based social movement organizations.”[209] Students are more likely to get involved if they believe the organization has the ability to achieve its goals, similar to older activists.

Boston high school students organized protests against proposed $50 million in education budget cuts at a time when the city gave huge funding to corporations. The organizers were surprised when over 3,500 students joined them in walking out of school to protest. The mayor rescinded cuts to high schools but not other levels. One of the organizers, Jahi Spaloss observed the effect of “adultism” in the spending priorities and not taking the students seriously in their “fight for the younger generation.”[210] Fellow organizer Harry Saunders said he loved the support and, “We need to be upset. We need to be irrational. We can’t be disorganized. We have to be united and show solidarity. We have to have equity.” He fears the country will fall apart, so, “We need to revolutionize this.” They work with groups like the Boston Area Youth Organizing Project in their ongoing struggle against adultism.

Curriculum to teach students about how to prevent sexual assault are provided by California high schools required to teach about sexual consent, the Our Whole Lives program developed by the Unitarian Universalist Church, and the It’s All One lessons from the Population Council. Another teen issue is a 2016 US government study of LGBTQ youth was the first large national survey about the health issues of “sexual-minority” youth, finding that they are much more likely to be the victims of violence, bullying, rape, and depression. A consequence, more than 40% had seriously considered suicide. The Centers for Disease Control reported that about 8% of high school students identify as GLBTQ; the report includes programs schools can adopt to assist these students.

 In 2016 I asked a high school class in Chico, California, about what they wanted to change in their school: limit the amount of homework because it’s too many hours a night, schedule tests so a student doesn’t have many on the same day, explore block scheduling with two-hour classes on fewer days of the week, change the too-strict tardy penalties, do away with tenure for teachers who don’t care about teaching or who are incompetent, and make their student government more activist–not just a pep club.

In interviews with Gen Z about their generation, the high school students in Chico, California, reported they’re very stressed and sleep deprived, which leads to anxiety and depression (discussed in my Ageism in Youth Studies). They feel pressured by their parents to get good grades to get into good universities. Megan (16, f) said on our YouTube interview,

We have a lot of pressure on us with school, with our many hours of homework until midnight, with extracurricular activities. I feel I have expectations to live up to. My mom and whole family wants me to get straight As, go to college, be successful in life. I feel if I don’t live up to that I’ll be a disappointment to them. I’m trying my best to get myself to the point they want me to be at.[211]

Megan averages only six or seven hours of sleep a night. She explained, “We girls want to make ourselves known, prove our worth, in reaction to sexism like Donald Trump’s.” She stands firm in her Christian beliefs, despite family disbelief. A typical young humanitarian, she plans to be a gerontologist because, “I love helping old people, hearing their stories.”

University Student Activism

Protests against university tuition increases, up nearly 600% in the US since 1980, occurred in the US, Canada, Britain, Chile and Taiwan. Recent university student activism is reported on by the StudentNation blog.[212] MIT libertarian-socialist professor Noam Chomsky believes that privatization of education is part of a plot against democracy to keep citizens ignorant, as explained in a report called “Failure by Design” by the Economic Policy Institute.[213] Yes! Magazine editor Dean Paton described the formula to privatize schools: underfund schools, crowd rooms, mandate testing by private firms that “prove” public schools are failing, blame teachers and their unions, and push for-profit charter schools to solve the problems.[214] Rising tuition costs reduce the university graduation rate in the US, which lags behind 12 other countries with no progress in the past 30 years.[215] Georgia State University provides a model of how to retain students and help them graduate.[216] A third of US workers are college graduates but more than a third of them work in jobs that used to only require high school graduation. The exception is STEM degree holders who are more likely to get jobs in their majors.

Generally US university students haven’t protested high tuition costs as effectively as their peers in Quebec who belong to strong student federations. The US has more private than public universities and they lack institutional ties to each other.[217] The US is larger and more diverse, making it harder to communicate. In Quebec, the student organization ASSE was founded in 2001 with 25 member student unions representing over 50,000 students. The US has nothing like it although students at Ohio State University organized the nationwide Student Power Convergence in 2012 with national conventions (their last Facebook posts were in 2014).[218] Only about 4% of workers aged 16 to 24 belong to a union, but some are active in graduate student unions.[219] The Free and Equal Elections Foundation, founded by Christina Tobin when she was 27, organized a campus bus tour to encourage young people to have more influence on politics.[220]

University students campaigned to turn their campuses into sanctuaries for undocumented students during the Trump Administration’s attempts to deport undocumented people, especially in California, the state with the largest number of undocumented immigrants. Nationally, about 30,000 undocumented students enroll in colleges each year, but fewer than 2,000 will graduate due to financial struggles and lack of support.[221] Students and faculty from over 100 campuses joined the campaign to make their campuses “sanctuaries.” On the right, students organized a “Professor’s Watchlist” to accuse professors of discriminating against conservative students. Some of these students are also tired of political correctness, calls for trigger warnings from instructors, and charges of microaggressions.

Around the same time as Occupy Wall Street, students organized university demonstrations around the country.[222] UCLA graduate student Omar Zahzah observed, “The university in itself is really the central nexus for the dynamics of race and oppression that are playing out in the United States right now. There has been a lot of solidarity and an increasing connection of Palestine with the plights of other marginalized communities.”[223] More than 75 campuses listed their goals on thedemannds.org. They demanded recruitment of more faculty and students of color, programs to end racist treatment of students, programs to retain them headed by a diversity officer, the end of fraternity parties and Halloween costumes making fun of people of color (“Crip’mas party, black- face party like the one portrayed in the film about black students Dear White People, a Yale fraternity’s “white girls only” party), ethnic studies courses, and removing the names of slave owners and segregationists from campus buildings. Students at Brown University campaigned to assign the book The New Jim Crow (2012) by Michelle Alexander as summer reading for new students. More than a thousand Berkeley High School students walked out of class in November 2015 to protest racist KKK statements left on a school computer.

An article lists 15 youth movements to dismantle white supremacy in the summer of 2015, including creation of the Million Hoodies for Justice Arts Network platform, Liberation schools in Charleston, divestment from private prison companies at Brown University, changing school discipline practices in Illinois, immigrant rights in Los Angeles, and refusal to take the standardized school tests in Chicago, and against screening the war film American Sniper (2014) sat the University of Michigan.[224]

Black university students led protests against racism on over a dozen campuses in the fall of 2015. Students succeeded in their demands for the president of the University of Missouri (known as Mizzou), to resign due to his  lack of action to end racism on the campus where only 8% of the students are black. For example, the student body president Payton Head, who is queer and black, was repeatedly called the n word. His description of the racist slur on his Facebook page went viral, and it took the college president a week to respond. The football team threatened to strike and a tent camp was established on the Quad. A black student leader named Johnathan Butler conducted a hunger strike for eight days because he wasn’t treated like a human being on campus. Some graduate students and faculty walked out of classes to conduct teach-ins and students put up tents to occupy the quad in support of Butler. President Wolfe and Chancellor Loftin resigned on November 9 and the university announced it would hire a diversity officer. Students also demanded a 10% quota for black faculty and staff

African American students and allies also advocated for no tuition fees, living wages, an end to the school-to-prison pipeline for young men of color, divesting from private prison companies, voting rights, compliance with Title IX gender equity, immigrant rights, LGBT rights, and justice for Palestinians.             Various organizers describe recent campus protests on The Nation magazine’s StudentNation. They conducted die-ins, recited poetry, walked out of class, wrote about their issues on social media, registered new voters, used art as done by the Million Hoodies for Justice Arts Network, organized trainings, and disrupted campaign rallies and got arrested, as well as marched and shut down highways.[225] Morgan State University led an art project to respond to BLM activism. Students from #AUCShutItDown, a BLM affiliate group in Atlanta’s black colleges, disrupted a Clinton rally chanting “black lives matter,” accusing her of relying on rhetoric rather than action. BLM also has branches in Canada, making the news for disrupting Toronto’s Gay Pride Parade in 2016, asking for more inclusion and support for people of color.

The next police shooting of a black man occurred in July 2016 in Florida and Minnesota, sparking large demonstrations. At a Dallas march an angry black man shot five white policemen to retaliate. Many blamed BLM for inciting him, including the Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and 100,000 people signed a petition to the White House to classify BLM as a terrorist organization. An African-American sheriff spoke at the Republican convention in Cincinnati warning the cheering crowd, “So many of the actions of the Occupy movement and Black Lives Matter transcend peaceful protest and violates the code of conduct we rely on.” In response, President Obama listed other contentious movements that contributed to progress towards equality: the abolition movement, women’s suffrage, the Civil Rights movement, the anti-war movement and environmentalism.

After Cameron Sterling’s father Alton was shot by white police in Baton Rouge in July 2016, Cameron (age 15) became a young black spokesperson for peaceful protests, asking people to protest “the right way, with peace, no violence what so ever.” He asked people of all races to “come together as one united family.”[226] By July of 2016 at least 37 groups identified themselves as part of Black Lives Matter. BLM supporters marched to protest police killings of black men in the UK, Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands and South Africa, as well as various US cities. The Movement for Black Lives released a BLM platform supported by more than 50 groups in 2016 demanding an end to the war against Black people, reduction of US military spending, reparations for past injuries, demilitarization of police, etc. Journalist Sonali Kolhatkar concluded that BLM succeeded in getting mainstream news coverage of movement issues and it pressured Democratic presidential candidates to address racism, making “its leaderlessness a strength.” [227]

                                                Latino Immigrants

The largest youth-led immigrant organization is United We Dream with organizations in 25 states. The United We Dream board has a majority of young women, co-founded by Cristina Jiménez (age 28) who reported two million Hispanics have been deported. Organized by local groups in 2009, United We Dream’s goal is to provide citizenship for all 11.7 million undocumented immigrants and access to higher education for the 1.4 million undocumented students. One of them, a young woman, is featured in Edge of 18 series on Al Jazeera TV. Many of them became activists in high school when they realized they couldn’t go to some universities. Reyna Grande describes her experience being an undocumented immigrant from Mexico in The Distance Between Us: A Memoir (2013). She was separated from her parents when they immigrated before her. (Videos illustrate the lives of other immigrants from Mexico.[228])

Youth activists use a variety of tactics to move Congress to pass immigrant reform and stop the Obama and Trump administrations from deporting undocumented youth. They knock on the doors of Latino voters, talk with Congress members, organize street protests, and organize conferences. Some protesters walked from Miami to Washington DC and San Francisco to Denver to publicize their issues, Immigrant youth risk deportation by publically telling their stories of lives in hiding. They receive training in how to hold coming-out ceremonies with signs like “undocumented and unafraid.” Immigration activists were critical of groups like Occupy Los Angeles for being led by middle-class hipsters and using the term “occupy” as a positive action,[229] but Occupy and immigrant groups worked together in 2012, as seen on Occupy El Paso’s Facebook page.

Managing director Christina Jimenez, 28, noted, “One of our success has been that we have created a shared identity about being a Dreamer.” They successfully lobbied President Obama to defer deportation for undocumented youth in 2012; more than 750,000 young people received deferrals by 2016 (about 1.9 million were eligible–only young people born before 1982 are eligible). The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy for children who were brought to the US as children exempted them from deportation as long as they didn’t violate the law. However, more than 1.9 million undocumented immigrants were deported by President Obama’s administration.[230] Legal aid clinics were organized to help immigrants apply for the deferrals and for work permits. United We Dream also conducted Latino voter registration drives. Under the Trump administration’s increased targeting of undocumented people, United We Dream conducted #HeretoStay campaigns to release detained DACA young people such as Daniela Vargas and Daniel Medina from ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) detention.

An 11-year-old Mexican American video blogger who lives in Texas, Andrew says, “I am Mexican and I am Muslim and I am Trump’s biggest nightmare.”[231] He started posting video commentaries on his Facebook page when he was seven. A children’s immigrant issue was the increasing number of unaccompanied children crossing the border from Central America in 2014, tens of thousands of children escaping violence in forced drug gang initiations and killings, lack of work or to search for a parent who left them behind. The US responded with a “Don’t Go North” campaign and pressured Mexico to also send them back—40,000 children were returned to Central America in five years. A newer group, the National Immigrant Youth Alliance, risks arrest with sit-ins in public offices. The director of a group against amnesty for Latinos acknowledged, “They have framed their story in a very popular way, and they’re leveraged that story very effectively.”[232]

                        First Nation Youth Protest Pipeline

In October of 2016, Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and about 300 other Native American tribes united to as water protectors protest building a $3.8 million oil pipeline across sacred land, as reported in the Facebook page Standing Rock Rising and shown on video.[233] Their goal was to stop a company called Energy Transfer Partners from completing the Dakota Access pipeline across private land, Army Corps land and under the Missouri River to carry oil from North Dakota to Illinois. Activists said no proper Environmental Impact Statement was done. Dakota Access Pipeline’s #NoDAPL is the largest protest since the Ferguson, Missouri riots in 2014 against police killing of teenager Michael Brown. Protesters believe the 1,100-mile pipeline is a violation of treaty rights and will threaten water quality, the manifestation of the Lakota prophecy about a great black snake that will bring destruction. (Previously that year, indigenous people protested violation of sacred land on Mauna Kea volcano on the island of Hawaii and Oak Flats in Arizona.) The water protectors were joined by various unions like National Nurses United and media stars like Shailene Woodley and Mark Ruffalo. They kept up a steady stream of tweets to report what they witnessed (also see Woodley’s Facebook page). Supporters sent over $3 million to fund the campaign. Ruffalo reported, “It’s led by young people; the people who began this movement were young people from 10 years old to 17 to 18 years old. And the tribal leaders are still taking their lead from them.”[234] The DAPL (Dakota Access Pipeline) protests were the most peaceful he’s seen, with prayers, sacred dance and singing, and drumming. A frequent chant was, “We will be peaceful, we will be prayerful, we will not retreat.” He said every demonstrator was trained in peaceful resistance.

Members of the Indigenous Youth Council and others—around 220 people, camped on the site owned by the company but claimed it as tribal land in order to protest threats to their land and water and to protest police violence. Arriving on horseback, youth set up the spiritual Sacred Stone camp on April 1, 2016. (Keep in mind that on the Pine Ridge Reservation 75% of native youth drop out of school and at least 60% of homes lack electricity or sewage.[235]) As pipeline construction started in July, the Standing Rock tribe invited other tribes to join them and the Rosebud Camp was started nearby on the reservation. As thousands of supporters arrived, the largest camp was the Oceti Sakowin Camp on Army Corps of Engineers’ land centered in its sacred fire and frequent ceremonies, dances, and speak-outs. By September about 300 tribes were represented along with around 5,000 people from as far away as Palestine and the Amazon. This was the largest gathering of tribes since colonization, represented by tribal flags.

Thousands of people assembled in prayer camps on Standing Rock Sioux land. As in other recent occupations, the camps experimented with new ways of living together in tipis and tents for months. The largest camp, Oceti Sakowin, created an elementary school, radio station, media center, solar-powered charging station, a security force, first aid station, massages, communal kitchen, library, screen-printing lab, sewing machines, herbal medicine and teas, a lacrosse field, sweat lodges, and horse messenger system. The natural birth doula group assisted a birth. The belief is when people live in a community with children and elders, they behave better.[236] Clyde Bellecourt, co-founder of the American Indian Movement, said at a campfire that being tin campy was a mode of prayer and prayer is a mode of being.

Using tactics employed by environmentalists, protesters locked themselves to construction equipment. They also shut down access to construction sites with vehicles and people, called caravan blockades and some construction equipment was torched. They included ceremonies, drumming and prayers while planting sacred corn or willow trees, led by tribal elders. Youth would arrive first at conflict lines so they at times faced police rubber bullets, pepper spray, and Mace. Private security forces used pepper spray, attack dogs, and punched protesters, which of course increased global attention on the struggle. Police left a larger camp alone on federal land near a town called Cannon Ball, south of Bismarck.

To clear protesters from the company’s land, militarized police dressed in riot gear in armored tanks, bulldozers, sound cannons, and security forces with dogs attacked peaceful demonstrators with rubber bullets, beanbag shotgun rounds, pepper spray, tasers, mace, batons, and water cannon, arresting hundreds of people. Protesters set fires to deter police efforts to clear the camp. On a video a protester says, “We’re not afraid to die, but the police are afraid” and “We’re a prayerful people.[237] On October 27, sheriffs, National Guard, and police from various states evicted the Frontline camp with sound cannon and armed vehicles.

Non-Native supporters were reminded about cultural differences: “Whiteness and Christian dominance, which are the basis of US settler identity, are built on perfectionism, superiority, purity, competition, individualism, binaries and suppressed emotion. This impacts how we do our ally work, how we approach the tasks of dismantling oppression.”[238] Visitors were also advised to let indigenous people speak first and listen more than talk.

Young teens occupied Hillary Clinton’s campaign headquarters in Brooklyn to ask for her support on DAPL and presented a declaring that silence is not acceptable (seen on video[239]). Gracey Claymore, age 19, said she came to the headquarters because, “We want her to uphold the treaties and her promise to protect unci maka [Mother Earth].”[240] Another young woman present at the headquarters said, “Young people need to speak up and not be scared of adult leaders. We are left to take care of what they mess up.” The young First Nation activists put up a tipi and drummed and sang inside the headquarters. They were joined by four Oceti Sakowin teens who ran 2,000 from North Dakota to Washington, DC to protest DAPL. Solidarity protests shut down New York City’s Grand Central Station and unity protests were held across the US and in Montreal, Quebec. Tribal leaders promised to help other tribes in their fights against corporations. Under President Obama, the Army Corps of Engineers withheld the permit needed to complete the pipeline, but President Trump overturned their environmental study so the pipeline could be completed. Activists in various countries turned to demanding that banks such as Wells Fargo divest from funding the pipeline. The last occupiers were removed from Cannon Ball in February 2017 and some Trump advisors suggested privatizing tribal lands.

                                                Canada

Also during October 2016, Canadian young people protested at Parliament Hill against the Kinder Morgan Pipeline to British Columbia. A McGill University student arrested during the demonstration, Sophie Birks said, “My generation wants to see real action on climate change and Indigenous rights. This starts with rejecting the Kinder Morgan pipeline…I know that, as young people, we have the power to make some big changes.”[241]

The Maple Spring

Canadian Millennial author Geoff Dembicki said the future looks grim; “The global recession as felt by my overeducated and underemployed millennial generation never really ended. The one percent’s stranglehold on our future seems to asphyxiate any serious efforts at making the world a better place.”[242] He asks, “So are we screwed?” but, typical of his generation, he’s optimistic that gradual progress is happening. In support of Occupy Wall Street, Occupy protests occurred in Canadian cities at a time when economic inequality increased.

 In Canada’s most sustained student protests, from March to June 2012, tens of thousands of students protested tuition increase of $325 and other austerity measures in Quebec. Quebec was already one of the most heavily taxed places in Canada and the government bailed out large banks in 2008 and 2009 to the tune of $114 billion.[243] Students chanted, “We must fight the thieves in ties,” and “Your wealth is our poverty.” The issue was not just tuition increase and debt but, “it’s aimed at the elite class itself…that only sees a child as a future employee,” a demonstrator explained.[244] Precursors were student strikes in 1996 and 2005 against tuition costs and environmentally destructive actions such as the strategy for northern development called Plan Nord.

Brigette DePage, co-editor of Power of Youth with Erica Shaker, reported in 2012 that the myth that youth are apathetic and self-indulgent is wrong.[245] Inspired by global youth activism, the anthology reports on Canadian youth activism for the environment, indigenous solidarity, racial justice and community “in a society being ripped apart by inequality and oppression.” One of the chapter authors, Harsha Wallia, brought up the debate between the approaches of reformists versus revolutionary organizing. She advocated discussing the systemic problems of capitalism and colonialism, while working for change by creating “decolonized spaces” like alternative media co-ops, bike stores, and organic gardens. Another chapter author, Tara Mahoney started a group called GenWhyMedia to create “an alternative voice for our generation.” She believes youth are ready to work together to build new systems. She rejects putdowns that youth are self-centered, saying these comments are meant to “keep us down.”

 The Maple Spring began in February 2012 and lasted for over three months with over 175,000 demonstrators, illustrated in a documentary and photos.[246] Canadian Naomi Klein called it the largest social mobilization in decades, but it wasn’t widely reported by English-language press. Protesters called for unions and other groups to join the student federations to protest the neoliberal agenda of privatizing public services instead of increasing progressive taxation. They built on existing organizing against police violence organizing. Mothers of students joined the strikes by standing in the way of police attacks on students.  Teachers and professors also joined in the strike, but not traditional unions.

The largest of the four provincial student union coalitions with 65 group members, CLASSE tweeted, “We are witnessing the biggest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history. We have a rendezvous with history, and we won’t miss it.” ASSÉ (left-wing, founded in 2001), FECQ, and FEUQ were some of the local student federations that joined in the strike under the broad umbrella of CLASSE, a temporary coalition expanded from ASSÉ, the most militant federation. CLASSE claimed over 400,000 demonstrators on the streets of Montreal at one time and about 1,000 of them were arrested. They advocated free and equal access to public services, including education and shared decision-making in their “Share Our Future” manifesto.

Activist Andrew Gavin Marshall contrasted their large-scale activism with charges that young people are apathetic, lazy, spoiled, entitled, and obsessed with technology and entertainment, a self-indulgent generation who care more about celebrities than social issues.[247] Accused of being Generation Obscurity, the economic recession with high youth unemployment and large student debt (nearly 60% of Canadian students graduate with a debt averaging $27,000) galvanized them to change: “We have come to realize we are a powerful force when united,” said Marshall. He marched in the streets of Montreal where he was charged by riot police and watched as police drove their van through a crowd of students.

Students shut down public universities and organized nightly demonstrations for more than 100 nights. Their symbol was a red felt square signifying being in the red financially, first used in a 2005 student strike, and worn by tens of thousands of people. Supporters banged pots and pans all over the city at 8:00 PM, as in protests in Latin America, Iran, Egypt and Turkey. Chileans, Greeks and others expressed their support. Neighbor Assemblies met, including some that were specifically anti-capitalist, according to Nauss who was an active participant. He was a college dropout that I met in Amsterdam at the Global Uprisings conference.

Montreal activist and artist Stefan Christoff reported, “It was always extremely clear that the ASSE-driven strike was not simply about stopping the tuition hike, but also about challenging a neo-liberal model being imposed on Quebec society within a global context of violent austerity economics.”[248] Students’ radical politics—Christoff calls them revolutionary, manifested in democratic general assemblies and direct actions as taught in an ASSE booklet and workshops. Their aim was not to reform the Liberal government, but to “take it down.” They used the old tactic of rapport de force, leveraging power rooted in unionism, but criticized traditional unions for being reformist. In March, CLASSE voted to take action to disrupt the economy and the state, as by blockading government offices and bank buildings. In April the “For a Quebec Spring” demonstration against the provincial and national Conservative Party and a large Earth Day demonstration were both well-attended.

When the Quebec government attempted to divide the movement by excluding CLASSE from negotiations, the other groups withdrew. Premier Jean Charest attacked the students for being spoiled brats and quickly passed Law 78 on May 18 to ban demonstrations near universities, require advance registration with police for demonstrations in any public space, and institute heavy fines for violations. Similar to Russia, Spain, Egypt and Ukraine, the government tried to stem the tide of protest by outlawing demonstrations, wanting to clear the streets in time for tourist season. Called a declaration of martial law against students, the bill generated larger demonstrations of over 200,000 people. Some believed it was the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history. In May an “emergency law” was passed to “restore order.” Opposition party leader Pauline Marois and student leaders like Martine Desjardins called on Premier Charest to talk with the students rather than legislating against them, asking, “Why is the premier attacking the youth of Quebec?” The student movement was considered an important factor in the defeat of the Liberal party in Quebec’s September election.

Support from the public led to a larger social movement against the government and neoliberalism with nightly demonstrations for over a month including nightly “casserole” protests banging pots and pans. Some neighborhoods formed assemblies and many youths were radicalized. On May 22, the 100^th day of the protests, over 100,000 people marched in Montreal. Large demonstrations continued through the summer. A CLASSE conference in August voted to continue the strike and create a Canadian anti-neoliberal coalition against Prime Minister Harper’s Conservative government. In September the premier lost the election and Pauline Marois, the new premier, relaxed restrictions on protests.

The strike experience radicalized a new generation of activists to fight neoliberalism and initiate their own direction actions. For example, unaffiliated people initiated the pots and pans protests of sometimes over 1,000 people in a neighborhood and nightly protests at Emilie Gamelin Square where people talked together in a new way: “The strike reasserted street politics” and “learning from the group up.” Literature and art students launched their own projects, as you can see.[249] Cristoff’s zine (a self-published short magazine) in French about the 2012 uprisings is listed in the previous endnote, along with a video.

Anarchists were a minority but active in the struggle, including some who occupied public buildings and engaged in vandalism. Nauss, who participated in the protests, corrected my statement: “This is not accurate, because many anarchists did not do these things, and many of the people who did do these things were not anarchists.” In March 7 students blockaded a university building with the intent of creating a counter power to the state, police, and university administration. They wanted to open up a space they controlled. In the ensuing struggle with police, a student was blinded in one eye and the police cleared the building. Students called for a rally in the main public square.

 On March 15, CLASSE piggybacked on an annual event to protest police brutality, generating the largest crowd ever. In May they distributed an anarchist zine for protesters including advice to wear a mask. A week later CLASSE led economic disruption and attacked police cars. In a May 3 demonstration in Montreal students stripped to their underwear to get the government’s attention, distract the police, and respond to the mayor’s prohibition of masks.[250] Media focused on the young women’s bodies rather than economic issues. The GA discussed a campaign of economic destruction by blockading highways and skyscrapers. One of the protesters said on a video by Frank Lopez that it’s fun to attack the police.[251] Anarchists promoted a large May Day demonstration where everyone wore black, created the biggest Black Bloc demonstration ever seen in Montreal that evoked massive amounts of tear gas from police. Students owned the streets holding regular night demonstrations in April until the end of the Maple Spring.

Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois was a student leader in CLASSE who described his activism in Tenir Tête, a book translated as In Defiance (2015). Videotaped in November 2012, he explained why the Maple Spring was successful in mobilizing the largest protest in Canadian history, with the majority of the Quebec population supporting the students.[252] He said Quebec student strikes against tuition increase became a strike opposing neoliberalism in general. The finance minister who tried to increase tuition 75% over five years said his budget was an ideological “cultural revolution” to privatize public services. The strike was against the hike, but students also talked about the goal of free education and narrowing economic inequality. Nadeau-Dubois said the strike wasn’t about the youth generation, but about class conflict: “Our fight was not only to keep accessibility to education, which is obviously important–but also to keep capitalism from eating the last part of society which is not completely integrated into its logic. It’s not a generational issue.”

Nadeau-Dubois explained the first reason for their success was the structure and culture of the Quebec student movement gained experience in direct democracy. In Quebec many students see their associations as their political voice in political debate, more than any political party. Student associations developed a history of victories by going on strike for specific objectives. Two years before the strike, the student associations organized at each university, drawing on their experience organizing strikes since the late 1960s, with mass student strikes in 1974, 1978 and 2005. In 2005 ASSE started using the symbol of the red square and economic disruption tactics. Student assemblies decided on the strategy and the action plans. Student organizers circulated a petition against the tuition increases, and then decided to do civil disobedience and break the law. Nadeau-Dubois described meetings of 4,000 students or more debating, and then voting to launch student strikes. During the strike, around 2,000 demonstrators participated in the weekly assemblies.

Nadeau-Dubois said the second component of success was the strong culture of hard work. He corrected accounts that students organized decentralized autonomous groups as inaccurate. They’re not like a soldier answering to a general, but a certain amount of centralization was required to make sure the strike would begin and grow. Using a structured process of decision-making, organization power and democracy led to success. Other strategies for young activists were collected by a youth-run resource center in Vancouver called the Purple Thistle Centre. Their book Stay Solid!: A Radical Guide for Youth (2013) includes personal essays, poetry, comics, and photographs.

Thousands of young activists distributed flyers and newspapers for two years before the strike. For two years the organizers talked with individual students in their associations. Although some were opposed to a strike, three years later activists got the strike vote in a democratic decision. Their slogan was “Together, we can stop the hike.” In Nadeau-Dubois’ association of humanities students they printed 100,000 flyers in the two or three months before the strike, so many that they had to buy a new printer. He says this work was the most important part. His generation’s use of social media is a way to mobilize, but they also needed to hand out flyers and newspapers. Social media can inform people about protest events but not convince them to join or vote for the student strike. It played a part when 100,000 people were already striking. He resigned as spokesman for CLASSE in the fall of 2012, saying it needed “fresh faces.”

Writing a year after the strike, although they succeed in ousting the Liberal government in elections and getting the tuition increase cancelled, plus a moratorium on shale gas exploration, on the surface it looked like little had changed in Quebec. The Parti Quebecois governed with a “shopkeeper mentality.” But, Nadeau-Dubois realized “social battles rarely end with victories.”[253] As in all the other uprisings, many of the participants continued their political interests. A young activist with Idle No More told him that mobilizations are like a wave that seems to withdraw from the shore but is always followed by a new wave.

In June 2013, the government banned wearing a mask during an unlawful assembly, subject to punishment with a maximum 10-year prison sentence. After taking power in September 2013, new Premier Pauline Marois of Parti Quebecois cancelled the mask law and the Liberal Party’s tuition increases. However, a “hidden” tuition increase in 2014 reduced the tax credit for tuition. The student associations proposed it as a way to pay for increased financial aid. Canadian youth are rebuilding civil society and strengthening democracy, according to Alex Himelfarb, a former government official.[254] Nauss added after critiquing this section, “I think it is a critical part of the story to explain how this beautiful amazing movement disappeared, and why these things aren’t happening anymore, and why we didn’t destroy capitalism.”

In a 2013 paper mentioned below, ASSÉ seems to take credit for the spread of horizontal organizing: “Anti-austerity movements have adopted, in most cases and in a manner similar to ASSÉ, a relatively horizontal model with few elements of hierarchy. We can also point to a growing refusal to use institutionalized political structures to make demands of politicians, apart from the recent rise in popularity of the Greek party SYRIZA and Spain’s Podemos Party.” Some students did run for office in Quebec (and Chile). Law student Bureau-Blouinran was elected when he was 20, the youngest ever member of the National Assembly of Quebec, and served for two years.

ASSÉ organized another large round of demonstrations and a national strike in Printemps 2015 (Spring) to protest the Liberal Party’s austerity cuts in the education budget and its efforts to privatize social services like health care in Quebec, its support of the oil pipeline, and neoliberalism in general. “It is not like 2012. This time, it is a global political struggle,” commented student Gioia Cazzaniga.[255] A march held in Montreal on March 21was titled “A Popular Protest Against Austerity and the Petro-Economy.” Demonstrators demanded free education similar to Scandinavian countries. It attracted from 5,000 to 10,000 supporters, but I didn’t see it covered in the US press. Police mounted their usual response with pepper spray and tear gas, which severely injured Naomie Trudeau-Tremblay in the face, leading Nadeau-Dubois to criticize media commentators for encouraging the use of force. Over 60,000 students went on strike for weeks starting on March 23 and another “National Protest” strike was held on April 2.

 ASSÉ published a paper titled “Who Benefits from Austerity?” to show alternatives to neoliberal policies in an era when average Canadian average university fees almost tripled in the last two decades.[256] A spokeswoman for the association of 66 local student organizations, Camille Godbout stated, “We will continue to increase the pressure. We’re angry.”[257] Labor groups and the Red Hand Coalition joined them. The latter is a coalition of over 80 community groups formed in 2009 to oppose cuts, while Printemps 2015 is a new coalition with some overlapping members, similar to CLASSE’s role in 2011 to 2012. Students from 24 student unions from six Montreal universities went on strike in March. Police responded with rubber bullets. Similar protests were held at the University of Saskatchewan, with smaller numbers, led by Izabela Vlahu, Mairi Anderson, and others. A Social Strike was held on May 1. Also in Spring 2015, students and staff at Toronto’s York University went on strike for a month to protest rising tuition costs and stagnant staff salaries, including striking graduate teaching assistants. A campaign to encourage young Canadians to vote was launched called “Ivote4.” In October 2016, Canadian young people protested at Parliament Hill against the Kinder Morgan Pipeline to British Columbia. A Canadian socialist magazine about the youth movement is called Rebel Youth and provides current news.[258]

Idle No More

Various struggles aim to preserve over 350 million indigenous people’s cultures from settler dominance, as illustrated in The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book (2010) drawn by a native Canadian.[259] A horizontal indigenous rights movement originated in Canada and spread globally in 2012, called Idle No More.[260] Four middle-aged women from Saskatchewan started it to protect the land and water from proposed legislation (Bill C-45) that threatened the rights of First Nations and the environment. Three of the founders were indigenous. Women continued to lead and support the movement. They started a Facebook page to brainstorm a plan of action. Since Idle No More values horizontal organizing, they don’t have designated media spokespersons, thus the movement gets criticized for lacking leadership and being disorganized.[261] They do connect on their website and Facebook pages calling for “a peaceful revolution.”[262] They explain, “The point of Idle No More is about shifting our understanding and our actions so that we aren’t defined by colonization. We’re ourselves.”

They protested the KXL pipeline designed to cross hundreds of First People’s sacred sites and burial grounds, as well as two major sources of drinking water. The Stephen Harper government planned for 13 pipelines not only to the Gulf Coast of Texas, but also to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Chief Theresa Spence conducted a hunger strike near British Columbia’s Parliament in 2012. The group also speaks out against racist “redskin” team mascots, violence against indigenous women and youth suicide. Six young Cree men and a guide snowshoed in January 2013 on a Quest for Unity, a two-month walk to Ottawa from northern Quebec to support Idle No More.

Native activists speak at Youth Forums around Canada, including an Indigenous Nation Movement Youth Forum in February 2013. Tyler Duncan, a 16-year-old Cree Nation youth chief, said, “For the first time basically in history First Nations people look empowered, look strong and they look like they mean something.” They discussed how more youth could join Idle No More. Videos show an Idle No More youth protest at the Manitoba legislature to protect Lake Winnipeg, chanting traditional songs and drumming in 2014.[263] They walked 286 kilometers to the capital to publicize the endangered lake. Indigenous people of various ages hold round dances, flash mobs, and protests to improve life for First Peoples. To stay current see their webpage.[264] Indigenous movements are also active in the US, Mexico, Philippines, Indonesia, Burma, India, New Zealand, and Australia.

Trump Ignited Opposition Groups

            Interviews with 1,833 US young adults in February and March of 2017 in all 50 states found that majorities of all ethnic groups disapprove of President Trump.[265] Many question the legitimacy of his election, mistrusting the Russian intervention in the campaign. Their dislike leads a majority of them to oppose his policies online and express their views to public officials—the most popular is Bernie Sanders. Smaller percentages donate money and participate in demonstrations. A majority of people of color approve of protests against Trump, but only 47% of white respondents approve. The Millennials also dislike Vice-President Mike Pence. Their top concerns are about health care, education, racism and immigration, although white respondents don’t list racism in their top three issues, which are health care, the environment, and education.

Existing movements coalesced to resist Trump’s policies, including activists trained in the Occupy movement of 2011, the Working Families Party that works on income inequality, environmentalists, the $15 minimum wage movement, Black Lives Matter, Latino United We Dream, Planned Parenthood, and the DAPL pipeline protests—referred to as isolated “silos.” Move.On.org continued its online advocacy for liberal causes, while groups sprung up embracing interlocking issues in contrast to earlier “silo” social movements for civil rights, feminism, or the environment. Some of their members say “resist” instead of goodbye at the end of a conversation. Coalition groups included Demand Progress, Democracy for America, People’s Action, and the Latinx (the inclusive term for Latino/Latina) Presente Action.

Women organized the largest demonstrations and included younger multi-ethnic leaders. The Women’s March on Washington and sister marches continued organizing after the huge marches the day after Trump’s inauguration. Slogans from international marches are quoted online.[266] Women’s groups such as NOW said they didn’t have a voice in the White House; Trump didn’t staff the White House Council on Girls and Women and supposed advocate for women entrepreneurs Ivanka Trump didn’t advocate for it. She also defended her father’s decision to end a rule to prevent pay discrimination by requiring large employers to report wage data to the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.) [267]

Thousands of Indivisible chapters mushroomed around the country, focused on organizing protests at Congressional offices, based on a 26-page article written by former Congressional staffers who analyzed the Tea Party tactics of focusing on local members of Congress. The Town Hall Project 2018 updates a Google spreadsheet to list town-hall meetings with Congress members. In the first Congressional recess after Trump’s inauguration Moveon.org reported that more than 100,000 often angry people joined more than 600 events to lobby Congress members in “Resistance Recess.”

Activist Van Jones organized the #LoveArmy a month after the election, quickly attracting 100,000 people who signed up online. He said he’s talking about “mama bear” love to defend Dreamers, Muslims, Blacks, and women—especially providing information to students at historical black and tribal colleges. The group organized study circles to teach “effective defenders.” Other progressive groups include MoveOn.org and Resistance.Org, all united in resistance to Trump’s fascist politics. The ACLU organized People Power volunteers to “mobilize in defense of our civil liberties, volunteers will build local communities that affirm our American values of respect, equality, and solidarity.” Groups like the Community Learning Partnership train community college students to become the next generation of local leaders, with Community Change Studies courses including internships in over 12 colleges (75% of those enrolled are students of color).[268]

Trump lost his battle with the courts over his executive order Muslim travel ban and then lost his first major legislative effort, blaming the Democrats although their votes weren’t needed to pass the bill. Although Republicans campaigned for seven years to defeat the Affordable Care Act, once they had control of Congress and the White House they were unable to get the votes to repeal and replace what they call Obama Care. The defeat seems due to three tactics, which can be applied in other struggles. One, large grassroots protests at town hall meetings following the Indivisible guide, plus letters and phone calls. Two, the unity of the alt-right Tea Party/Freedom Caucus that doesn’t want government involvement in health insurance, and three, the ineptitude of Trump who admitted he didn’t understand how to work with Congress members. He even threatened some conservatives with, “I’m gonna come after you,” if they didn’t vote for Paul Ryan’s American Health Care Act. In response to the failure, Sanders proposed a Medicare-for-all single-payer program and California legislators initiated a similar state government bill. In a divided USA, which side will prevail?

                        Never Again Movement

About 30,000 American die each year due to the use of firearms in the most heavily armed nation on earth—the second biggest cause of children’s deaths (after auto accidents). After the Valentine’s Day school shooter killed 17 people at his former high school in Parkland, Florida, students leaped into action—unlike previous school shootings such as the 1999 Columbine High School shootings. Student Cameron Kasky said, “We’re going to lead the rest of the nation behind us. This time we’re going to pressure the politicians to take action. This isn’t about the GOP. This isn’t’ about the Democrats. This is about the adults. We feel neglected. At this point, you’re either with us or you’re against us.” Students concluded it’s up to them to make change because adults f…..ed up.

Within a week the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High students announced a national march in Washington, D.C. to be held on March 24, organized hundreds of students to meet with state legislators, raised millions of dollars on GoFundMe, designed T-shirts, organized a Facebook and other social media pages, wrote op-eds for newspapers such as the New York Times, appeared on TV news shows on CNN, MSNBC, Fox, and Bill Maher’s’ HBO show, etc. They worked with CNN to organize a televised town hall including their Senators, a sheriff, and a representative of the NRA. Some met with President Trump in the White House where he proposed arming teachers to make schools “harder,” a response met with derision. (In a meeting with legislators in the White House he joked that they were afraid of the NRA, probably in response to student reiteration of the theme. Then he met with an NRA lobbyist and backed down on gun control.)

The Never Again movement put the powerful NRA on the defensive, as its head Wayne LaPierre resorting to scare their supporters with fears that Democrats would “European socialism” if elected in 2018 and beyond. It appears that many of the student leaders are in Advanced Placement classes and debate clubs where they studied gun control issues and the school newspaper the Eagle Eye wrote about mental health issues.

Slogans

Enough

Your silence is killing us

Am I Next?

Protect our children

Never again

Vote them out

Do something now

Don’t let my friends die

Guns don’t kill people….umm yes they do

My friends died for what?

Don’t Let My Classmates’ Deaths Be in Vain

Discussion Questions and Activities

1. The US is touted as a land of opportunity where hard workers can achieve the American Dream. What caused the decline into the most unequal of developed nations?
2. Why did Occupy Wall Street attract so many demonstrators so quickly and why did the Occupation movement stop? Was anarchist philosophy helpful or harmful? What impact did the Occupy movement have?
3. US youth of color are especially prominent in recent social movements. Why?
4. What can the Quebec student uprisings teach activists about successful organizing?

Activities

1. Compare and contrast organizing techniques used in Occupy Wall St. the Quebec uprising as seen in videos, and recent campus protests.[269]
2. What themes do you see in the Youth Activism Project database, comparing North America with other regions?[270] Also check out the WE Movement, started by two Canadian brothers, including WE Charity, ME to WE Social Enterprise and WE Day.[271]
3. Get involved with an activist youth organization such as Youth United for Global Action and Awareness, the international group Youth Coalition for Sexual and Reproductive Rights and the Coalition of Adolescent Girls. [272]

Conclusion

Educated young people will lead our future in an egalitarian direction. Activists want to create a new person in a new cooperative non-capitalist world.  They’re dissatisfied with the economic status quo and want change. They realize that elected representatives often serve their funding sources rather than the people. Confident youth exchange information and encouragement online to create change while they scorn media-designated leaders and stars. They’re more comfortable with women in activist roles and more accepting of people with different backgrounds than earlier generations of rebels. Most (87%) of the world’s young people are growing up in developing nations in a world with a growing gap between rich and poor and undergoing harmful climate change, as acknowledged by the head of the conservative International Monetary Fund, Christine Laguarde. A large majority of youth experience “lower levels of wellbeing” according to a report on global youth wellbeing in 30 countries. [273]

Of course, many youth are apathetic, lacking hope they can change the economic system, sucked into their video games or in a cycle of poverty, feel overwhelmed by global problems, content with signing an online petition and consumed by many hours of study. Village youth I talked with aren’t aware of global issues like climate change, not literate or online, left out of the support network of educated young people. Therefore, middle class youth tend to lead recent protest movements with few exceptions such as a woman’s movement led by teenagers living in rural Southern Brazil in the 1980s. The girls led their movement, despite the patriarchal tradition of fathers’ restricting girls’ ability to go outside their homes.[274] The feminists were encouraged by educated liberal Catholic priests and nuns.

Youth are more egalitarian than their elders and are less likely to judge people by their ethnicity, sexual preference or gender. More young women graduate with university degrees than men, so more women will move into leadership positions. Studies generally find that women politicians take more action to actually help families and girls are more egalitarian than boys. Youth activists influenced the priorities of global leaders as seen in President Obama’s State of the Union address in 2012 with its focus on economic equality after Occupy Wall St.

The Arab Spring and global Occupy Movements led by youth show us their resistance to hierarchies and fixed positions, valuing freedom of expression, direct democracy and consensus decision-making. Students in the US are taught to be sensitive to diversity leading some to accuse overprotected college students of being so afraid of being politically incorrect they lack humor. Some universities even ask faculty to include “trigger warnings” about textbooks or films that might create discomfort, provide “safe spaces” for minority students, and hire diversity officers to provide “safe spaces” and sensitize students to racist and sexist “microaggressions.”[275] Another politically incorrect attack is on “cultural appropriation” when white authors write about people of color or white women wear cornrow braids.[276] They substitute the term  “first year student” for “freshmen.” A self-described liberal, Lionel Shriver (a woman born in 1957) faulted the “identity politics movement” as an “assertion of generational power.”[277] Young people compete to see “who can be more righteous and aggrieved” over offensive statements such as “Asians are good at math,” resulting in restrictions on freedom of speech.

Generally, down to earth, young people are interested in cooperative gardening to produce healthy food. They value relationships more than material success, including a lasting marriage and most importantly to them– being good parents. The generation gap is smaller than it was with Baby Boomers and their parents. They feel close to their parents and they are willing to work cooperatively with various age groups, enhanced by their open-mindedness and acceptance of diversity.

An ah ha moment for me was that realization that ageism is at play in academic circles, elaborated on in Ageism in Youth Studies: The New Ism, 2017. Most of the academics who read drafts of the book erroneously said many books were written about youth activism and cited books that didn’t focus on youth at all, indicating that a blind spot or bias was at play. Some publishers and a TEDx tryout group told me that readers aren’t interested in youth. This phenomenon is the same as sexism that kept scholars of both sexes from focusing on women’s contributions, until feminists pointed it out in the second wave of the woman’s movement. I wrote my dissertation on the religious ideas of the 19^th century novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe. Her novels clearly focus on the saving grace of virtuous women but no one had discussed the very obvious theme due to the sexist blind spot. Even books describing bias against young people don’t include their actual voices, just like history books included few women’s or people of color’s voices. The focus on great men is corrected by doing “history from below” and “Standpoint” theory approaches to research by including the thoughts of actual participants—in this case, youth.    

It’s astonishing that youth were able to quickly overthrow entrenched dictators in the Arab Spring. They’re masters of selling their brand of democracy and mobilizing mass support, but they failed to design alternative governments, influenced by anarchist thinking to be anti-state and anti-politician. However, two Greek professors observed, “If nothing else this ‘staging’ of democracy throughout the squares of the world has regenerated the political imagination of thousands of people, putting a halt to widespread pessimism and fatalism.”[278] The main villain is global neoliberal capitalism that is increasing rather than reducing its control, as evidenced by the Citizens United Supreme Court decision in the US and the fact that 62 people own as much wealth as the poorest half. The result of the power of oil companies and other corporations is increasing inequality and environmental destruction.                     

 Horizontalism’s solution of implementing small utopias in the cracks of the existing capitalist solution will take a long time to make broad change. With the failure of communism in the USSR and China, no national models exist of successful anti-capitalist revolutions that implement more equality for the people but local models of direct democracy exist as in Kurdish Rojava. That’s a huge task ahead of us. When searching for egalitarian models, I always look to Scandinavia as state governments doing the most for its citizens. In reports of well-being and happiness, they’re always in the top tier. Some radical youth decided to run for office to change government in Chile and Quebec and leftist parties with young leaders emerged in Spain’s Podemos and Greece’s SYRIZA party. This may be the future trend away from anarchism.

Some developmentalists disagree with generational scholars who think there are distinctive age differences shaped by different historical events. It’s true that all adolescents face the task of shaping their adult identity and values, but young people shaped by access to information and communication technologies are different from previous generations. Baby Boomers said don’t trust people over 30, while Gen Y and Gen Z value their parents because they are cynical about other authorities, political and religious and are interested in historical heroes and heroines. For example, Millennial composer Mohammed Fairouz evokes John F. Kennedy, Anwar Sadat, Seamus Heaney and Yehuda Amichai in his music.[279] Young people have access to news about scandals concerning politicians and religious leaders, transferring respect for elders to ones they know and love. Youth are more egalitarian than previous generations, raised on media coverage of successful women and people of color. Marshall McLuhan is correct that the characteristics of the media we imbibe influence us as well as the information it conveys. Not only does the speed of communication make Generations Y and Z impatient with old ways of doing things, but it connects them to each other in a global youth support group for change that shares tactics of disruption.

A surprise for me was how similar media-connected educated youth are globally. We could construct a profile of a young person in any urban area where youth wear jeans and T-shirt, listen to hip-hop on headphones, text on smart phone, are disgusted with authorities’ lack of integrity, and informed about global problems. They create “glocal” or hybrid cultures, such as hip-hop songs in local languages and youth slang combining various languages and abbreviations. In contrast, young people in rural areas in developing countries where most youth live are raised more traditionally, often poorly educated and not aware of global issues. I’m thinking of children I interviewed in rural Indonesia and Pakistan who don’t know about climate change. If Facebook’s Gen Y Mark Zuckerberg succeeds in his goal to provide Internet access to everyone, rural areas will have access to global information sources that provide the foundation for changemaking.

We all know that our main problem is our planet is in jeopardy because of global warming with increasing carbon and methane emissions. A UN survey reported that young people often didn’t make the connection that their lifestyle has to change in order to save the planet. This means not using fossil fuels and not eating meat that’s responsible for 70% of agricultural emissions and over a third of methane gases. We’ve seen that educated SpeakOut youth are more altruistic and informed than older generations at their age. Will they be able to transform the revolution of rising expectations to consuming less and acting locally?

Please email gkimball@csuchico.edu to share your observations about how Gen Y and Z will shape our future and report green local solutions to human problems—the topic of my next book.[280]

                        Endnotes

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[1] http://occupylove.org/

[2]  All facts in this paragraph are from this report. “15 Economic Facts About Millennials,” The Council of Economic Advisors, October 2014.

http://docplayer.net/31158-15-economic-facts-about-millennials-the-council-of-economic-advisers.html

[3] http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/interactive/2011/oct/18/occupy-protests-map-world

[4] Joseph Stiglitz, “Inequality is Not Inevitable,” New York Times, June 27, 2014.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/27/inequality-is-not-inevitable/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

[5] Pierce Nahigyan, “8 Facts About American Inequality,” Counter Currents, October, 2014.

http://www.countercurrents.org/nahigyan211014.htm

[6] Patricia Cohen, “A Bigger Economic Pie, but a Smaller Slice for Half of the U.S.,” New York Times, December 6, 2016.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/06/business/economy/a-bigger-economic-pie-but-a-smaller-slice-for-half-of-the-us.html?_r=0

[7] David Brooks, “Revolt of the Masses,” New York Times, June 28, 2016.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/28/opinion/revolt-of-the-masses.html

[8] Paul Buchheit, “How 90% of American Households Lost an Average of $17,000 in Wealth to the Plutocrats in 2016,” Common Dreams, March 6, 2017.

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/03/06/how-90-american-households-lost-average-17000-wealth-plutocrats-2016

[9] Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page, “Testing Theories of American Politics,”

Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 12, pp. 564-581. doi:10.1017/S1537592714001595.

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=9354310

[10] http://earthhavenchico.wix.com/theglobal-youth#!economic-inequality-in-the-us/c9na

[11] “Thomas Piketty On the Rise of Bernie Sanders,” Occupy.com, February 17, 2016.

http://www.occupy.com/article/thomas-piketty-rise-bernie-sanders-us-enters-new-political-era

[12] “Noam Chomsky: Young Bernie Sanders Supporters are a ‘Mobilized Force that Could Change the Country,” Common Dreams, April 28, 2016.

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/04/28/noam-chomsky-young-bernie-sanders-supporters-are-mobilized-force-could-change

[13] https://ourrevolution.com/issues

[14] Deirde Fulton, “Millennials Poll Shows Sanders’ Revolution Reshaping US Electorate,” Common Dreams, April 25, 2016.

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/04/25/millennials-poll-shows-sanders-revolution-reshaping-us-electorate

[15] Jake Johnson, “Seizing the Moment: Young Socialists Take on the Old Democratic Guard,” Common Dreams, September 12, 2016.

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/09/12/seizing-moment-young-socialists-take-old-democratic-guard

[16] “Trust in Institutions and the Political Process,” Harvard IOP.

http://iop.harvard.edu/trust-institutions-and-political-process

[17] Robert Reich, “Power to the People,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 24, 2014.

http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Power-to-the-people-It-s-up-to-us-to-win-it-5706644.php

[18] Robert Reich, “The Commencement Address That won’t Be Given,” Robert Reich blog, May 18, 2012.

http://robertreich.org/post/23301640941

[19] Mark Rank, “Poverty in America is Mainstream,” New York Times, November 2, 2013.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/02/poverty-in-america-is-mainstream/?_r=0&gwh=7638750285042A7D42DA9A070786F615

“Child in the US is Worse than in Slovakia or Turkey,” TruthDig, May 7, 2016.

http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/print/the_united_states_trails_slovakia_and_turkey_in_childhood_poverty_20160507

[20] http://www.aecf.org/resources/the-2015-kids-count-data-book/

[21]  Rakesh Kochhar and Richard Fry, “Wealth Inequality has Widened Along Racial, Ethnic Lines Since End of Great Recession,” Pew Research Center, December 12, 2014.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/12/12/racial-wealth-gaps-great-recession/

[22] Jeff Bryant, “How Much Do We Hate Our Children?” Common Dreams, January 15, 2016.

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/01/15/how-much-do-we-hate-our-children

[23] Robert Reich, “Back to School and Widening Inequality,” Robert Reich blog, August 25, 2014.

http://robertreich.org/post/95749319170

[24] Dave Lindorff, “War: Where 69 cents of Each of Your Tax Dollars Go,” Nation of Change, February 8, 2015.

http://www.nationofchange.org/2015/02/08/war-69%C2%A2-tax-dollars-goes/

https://www.nationalpriorities.org/analysis/2015/presidents-2016-budget-in-pictures/

[25] Paul Buchheit, “More Evidence that Half of America is In or Near Poverty,” Nation of Change, March 24, 2014.

http://www.nationofchange.org/more-evidence-half-america-or-near-poverty-1395672039

[26] Determined by the American Pet Products Association. http://time.com/23225/americans-spend-56-billion-on-pets/

[27] Kimberly Amadeo, “U.S. Military Budget,” About News, February 23, 2016.

http://useconomy.about.com/od/usfederalbudget/p/military_budget.htm

[28] Richard Fry, “Millennials Surpass Gen Xers as the Largest Generation in the U.S. Labor Force, Pew Research Center, May 11, 2015.

Leah McGrath Goodman, “Millennial College Graduates: Young, Educated, Jobless,” Newsweek, May 27, 2015.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/11/millennials-surpass-gen-xers-as-the-largest-generation-in-u-s-labor-force/

http://www.newsweek.com/2015/06/05/millennial-college-graduates-young-educated-jobless-335821.html

[29] Derek Thompson, “The Unluckiest Generation: What Will Become of Millennials?” The Atlantic, April 26, 2013.

[30] Ashley Stahl, “The 5.4% Unemployment Rate Means Nothing for Millennials,” Forbes Magazine, May 11, 2015.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleystahl/2015/05/11/the-5-4-unemployment-rate-means-nothing-for-millennials/

[31] Diane Swanbrow, “How Much Money Parents Give to College-Age Kids,” Institute for Social Research, May 3, 2012.

http://www.sampler.isr.umich.edu/2012/research/how-much-money-parents-give-to-college-age-kids-um-study/

[32] Guy Standing. The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. Bloomsbury Academic, 2014.

[33] Katie Rose Quandt, “Money in Politics is Darkening the Future for Millennials,” Moyers & Company, April 21, 2015.

http://billmoyers.com/2015/04/20/money-politics-darkening-future-millennials/

[34] David Brooks, “The American Precariat,” New York Times, February 10, 2014.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/11/opinion/brooks-the-american-precariat.html?_r=0

[35] Rick Lyman, “Empty Nest?” New York Times, April 20, 2015.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/21/world/europe/young-slovakians-find-hotel-mama-easy-to-check-into-hard-to-leave.html

[36] http://wp.me/p47Q76-4t

[37] “Understanding Millennials: Nationwide Survey,” Harstad Strategic Research, April 2014.

https://salsa3.salsalabs.com/o/50742/images/Harstad.Millennial_May15.pdf

[38] “Global Justice and OWS: Movement Connections, Socialism and Democracy, August 26, 2013.

http://sdonline.org/59/global-justice-and-ows-movement-connections/

[39] Ryan Harvey, “Remembering the 2011 Wisconsin Uprising,” TeleSUR, February 23, 2015.

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/blog/Remembering-the-2011-Wisconsin-Uprising-20150223-0030.html

[40] Yong Jung Cho, et al., “Millennials Can No Longer be Silent About Our Broken System,” Popular Resistance, November 14, 2015.

https://www.popularresistance.org/millennials-can-no-longer-be-silent-about-our-broken-system/

[41] Micah White and Kalle Lasn, “The Call to Occupy Wall Street Resonates Around the World,” The Guardian, September 19, 2011.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/sep/19/occupy-wall-street-financial-system

Ruth Milkman, Stephanie Luce and Penny Lewis, “Changing the Subject: A Bottom-Up Account of Occupy Wall Street in New York City,” Russell Sage Foundation, 2013, p. 14, p. 6.

http://www.russellsage.org/research/reports/occupy-wall-street-movement

[42] Nicholas Kristof, “The Bankers and the Revolutionaries,” New York Times, October 1, 2011.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/opinion/sunday/kristof-the-bankers-and-the-revolutionaries.html?_r=0

[43] http://www.adbusters.org/blogs/adbusters-blog/keep-going-and-do-not-stop.html

[44] Quinn Norton, “Anonymous 101: Introduction to the Lulz,” Wired.com, November 8, 2011.

http://www.wired.ocm/threatlevel2011/11/anonymous-101/all1

[45] Clay Clairborne, “Anonymous Speaks Out on Black Bloc,” The North Star, February 8, 2012.

http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=225

[46] Ruth Milkman, Stephanie Luce and Penny Lewis, “Changing the Subject: A Bottom-Up Account of Occupy Wall Street in New York City,” Russell Sage Foundation, 2013, p. 22.

http://www.russellsage.org/research/reports/occupy-wall-street-movement

[47] Michael Moore’s blog, November, 2011.

 http://michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/where-does-occupy-wall-street-go-here

http://www.nationofchange.org/why-we-occupy-declaration-occupy-dc-1323356340

[48] “Bailout Tracker,” Pro Publica, July 22, 2014.

http://projects.propublica.org/bailout/

[49] Jeffrey Juris, “Reflections on #Occupy Everywhere,” American Ethnologist, Vol. 39, No. 2, May 2012.

DOI:10.1111/j.1548-1425.2012.01362.x

[50] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/04/occupywallstreet-zombie-p_n_994424.html#s387936

[51] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ05rWx1pig

[52] “Occupy Arrests Near 8,000 as Wall Street Eludes Prosecution,” The Huffington Post, May 23, 2013.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/23/occupy-wall-street-arrests_n_3326640.html

[53] Jack Bratich, “Occupy All the Dispositifs,” Communication and Cultural Studies, Vol. 1-10, 2013.

DOI: 10.1080/14791420.2013.827351

[54] Chris Hedges, “Occupy Draws Strength From the Powerless,” TruthDig, February 13, 2012.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/occupy_draws_strength_from_the_powerless_20120213/

[55] http://current.com/shows/vanguard/93576420_the-99-percent-vanguard-trailer.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIaLypY5qag

[56] Jeffrey Juris, “Reflections on #Occupy Everywhere,” American Ethnologist, Vol. 39, No.2, 2012.

DOI:10.1111/j.1548-1425.2012.01362.x

[57] TIME magazine editors, What is Occupy? Inside the Global Movement. TIME    Books, 2011.

[58] Mark Engler and Paul Engler, “What Makes Nonviolent Movements Explode?,” Waging Nonviolence, December 10, 2014.

http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/makes-nonviolent-movements-explode/

[59] David Graeber, “Occupy and Anarchism’s Gift of Democracy,” The Guardian, November 15, 2011.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/15/occupy-anarchism-gift-democracy

[60] James Rowe and Myles Carroll, “Reform or Radicalism: Left Social Movements in the Battle of Seattle to Occupy Wall Street,” New Political Science, March 2014.

http://escholarship.org/uc/item/4pw6j9s1

[61] James Rowe and Myles Carroll

[62] Thomas Swann, “The Cybernetics of Occupy,” ROAR Magazine, June 20, 2014.

http://roarmag.org/2014/06/cybernetics-occupy-anarchism-stafford-beer/

[63] http://gothamist.com/2011/11/17/video_daily_show_shows_owss_class_d.php#photo-1

[64] “Fall 2011 Survey,” Harvard Institute for Politics, December 11, 2011. Over 2,000 respondents.

http://www.iop.harvard.edu/Research-Publications/Survey/Fall-2011-Survey

[65] Jeffrey Juris, “Reflections on #Occupy Everywhere,” American Ethnologist, Vol. 39, No. 2, May 2012, p. 285.

DOI:10.1111/j.1548-1425.2012.01362.x

[66] Sasha Costanza-Chock, “Mic Check! Media Cultures and the Occupy Movement,” Social Movement Studies, August 7, 2012, pp. 375-385.

http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/csms20/11/3-4#.Uz8knK1dV8k

[67] “How Millennials Want to Work and Live,” Gallup, 2016.

http://www.gallup.com/reports/189830/millennials-work-live.aspx

[68] “Millennials, Activism, and Race,” Applied Research Center, May 2012.

https://www.raceforward.org/research/reports/millennials-activism-and-race-dont-call-them-post-racial

[69] Jason Leopold, et al., “Latest Batch of DHS Occupy Documents Contains New Details About Monitoring of Protest Movements,” Truthout, May 3, 2012. http://truth-out.org/news/item/8667-department-of-homeland-security-releases-another-batch-of-ows-files-to-truthout

[70] Henry Giroux, “Criminalizing Dissent and Punishing Occupy Protesters,” Truthout, March 14, 2012.

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/14224-criminalizing-dissent-and-punishing-the-occupy-movement-protesters-introduction-to-henry-girouxs-youth-in-revolt

[71] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AdDLhPwpp4

[72] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFNT3fzRXHY

[73] https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.288787344479797.79299.160382763986923&type=3

[74] David Graeber, “Fancy Forms of Paperwork and the Logic of Financial Violence,” ROAR Magazine, September 17, 2016.

https://roarmag.org/magazine/david-graeber-interview-debt-occupy/

[75] www.adbusters.org/abtv/consensus-occupy-wall-street.html

Information about the consensus process: http://www.consensus.net/flowchart.html

[76] James Rowe and Myles Carroll, “What the Left Can Learn from Occupy Wall Street’s Swift Rise and Current Impasse,” forthcoming Studies in Political Economy, Vol. 96, p. 12.

https://www.academia.edu/13223298/What_the_Left_can_Learn_from_Occupy_Wall_Streets_Rapid_Rise_and_Current_Impasse

[77] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Bu9K26Qt1I

[78] Chris Hedges, “The Sparks of Rebellion,” TruthDig, September 30, 2012.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_sparks_of_rebellion_20130930/

[79] Elizabeth Flock, “Occupy Wall Street: An Interview with Kalle Lasn, the Man Behind it All,” The Washington Post, October 12, 2011.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/occupy-wall-street-an-interview-with-kalle-lasn-the-man-behind-it-all/2011/10/12/gIQAC81xfL_blog.html

[80] Bill McKibben, “Movements Without Leaders,” Huffington Post Green, September 18, 2013.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-mckibben/movements-without-leaders_b_3777136.html

[81] http://workshops.350.org/toolkit/start/

[82] http://neworganizing.com/content/page/about-noi

http://neworganizing.com/content/toolbox/about-the-toolbox

http://thedailyattack.com/2011/08/01/the-snowflake-model-marshall-ganz-on-how-technology-has-changed-organizing-revolutions/

http://workshops.350.org/toolkit/organize/ 

[83] http://www.consensus.net/flowchart.html

[84] “’Snapchat Generation’ Weights in on the 2016 Race,” CBS News, February 23, 2016.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/snapchat-frank-luntz-poll-young-voters-bernie-sanders-2016-race/

[85] Bill Zimmerman, “The Aftermath of Occupy Will Surpass the Gains of 1960s Activism,” Occupy.com, July 11, 2012.

http://www.occupy.com/article/aftermath-occupy-will-surpass-gains-1960s-activism

[86] C. Robert Gibson, “Youth Civil Rights Leaders Explain How to Activate their Generation,” Huff Post Politics, January 1, 2016.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-gibson/youth-leading-americas-ne_b_7040818.html

[87] Rolling Stone, June 7, 2012.

[88] Robert Gibson, “The Movement Lives On,” Ocupy.com, September 18, 2015.

http://www.nationofchange.org/2015/09/18/the-movement-lives-on-four-years-later-occupy-has-succeeded-in-spite-of-its-failures/

[89] “It’s Time for a New Political and Economic System,” Popular Resistance, December 19, 2015.

[90] http://interoccupy.net/

[91] http://studentmarch.org/

[92] www.truth-out.org/michael-moore-theres-no-turning-back/1320084730#.Tq-hH15K3z6.facebook

[93] James Rowe and Myles Carroll, “What the Left Can Learn from Occupy Wall Street’s Swift Rise and Current Impasse,” forthcoming Studies in Political Economy, Vol. 96.

https://www.academia.edu/13223298/What_the_Left_can_Learn_from_Occupy_Wall_Streets_Rapid_Rise_and_Current_Impasse

[94] Bernardo Gutiérrez, “It is Not a Revolution, It is a New Networked Renaissance,” OccupyWallSt.org, February 2, 2014.

http://www.occupy.com/article/it-not-revolution-it-new-networked-renaissance

[95] Robert Reich, “The Six Principles of the New Populism,” Robert Reich blog, May 6, 2014.

http://robertreich.org/post/84984296635

[96] Bernie Sanders, “An Economic Agenda for America,” TruthDig, December 2, 2014.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/an_economic_agenda_for_america_12_steps_forward_20141202

[97] https://www.brookings.edu/series/election-2016-and-americas-future/

[98] http://wearethedistricts.tumblr.com/

[99] Arun Gupta, “Arundhati Roy,” The Guardian, November 30, 2011. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/30/arundhati-roy-interview

[100] http://tidalmag.org/

[101] Rob Hopkins. The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience. Chelsea Green Publishing, 2008.

 The Transition Companion: Making Your Community More Resilient in Uncertain Times. Chelsea Green Publishing, 2011.

http://transitionculture.org, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQF09NG00V8

[102] Shane Burley, “Solidarity Networks as the Future of Housing Justice, ROAR Magazine, February 28, 2016.

http://loveandragemedia.org/2016/02/29/solidarity-networks-as-the-future-of-housing-justice/

[103] Nathan Schneider, “From Occupation to Reconstruction,” Al Jazeera, June 29, 2014.

http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/6/occupy-movement-inequalitysystemicchange.html

[104] Gar Alperovitz, “The Rise of the New Economy Movement,” blog, May 22, 2012.

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gar-alperovitz/the-rise-of-the-new-econo_b_1532549.html

American Community Gardening Association estimates there are 1 million community gardens in the US.  http://www.communitygarden.org

[105] http://occupyphillyga.net/groups/free-university-of-philadelphia

[106] Werner Puschra and Sara Burke, eds. The Future We the People Need: Voices from New Social Movements. Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, February 2013, p. 102.

http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/iez/global/09610-20130215.pdf

[107] http://strikedebt.org/The-Debt-Resistors-Operations-Manual.pdf

[108] www.responsibletechnology.org

Dr. Vandana Shiva founded a network of non-GMO seedbanks and organic farmers in India. http://www.vandanashiva.org/?page_id=2

www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=htt91SjI7uY

Steven Drucker. Altered Genes, Twisted Truth. Clear River Press, 2013.

Jane Goodall. Seeds of Hope: Wisdom and Wonder From the World of Plants. Grand Central Publishing, 2013.

[109] Lynne Peeples, “Prop 37 GMO Labeling Law,” Huffington Post Green, November 7, 2012.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/07/proposition-37-gmo-labeling_n_2090112.html

[110] Ben Vitelli, “Reports of Occupy’s Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated,” Occupy Baton Rouge, June 9, 2012.

http://occupybr.com/2012/06/09/reports-of-occupys-death-have-been-greatly-exaggerated

[111] Accra Shepp, “Occupy Wall Street: Where Are They Now?” New York Times, September 18, 20116.

http://nyti.ms/2cS4w0t

http://www.stevenkasher.com/exhibitions/occupying-wall-street-a-visual-diary-by-accra-shepp/selected-works?view=slider

[112] “Mindful Occupation: Rising Up Without Burning Out,” Occupy Mental Health Project, 2012

www.mindfuloccupation.org/files/booklet/mindful-occupaton-singles-latest.pdf.

[113] “Ben & Jerry’s Support for Occupy Wall Street Melts Away,” New Statesman, October 3, 2012.

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/business-blog/2012/10/ben-jerrys-support-occupy-wall-street-melts-away

[114] Jake Olzen, “The Making of a “99% Spring,” NationofChange, March 26, 2012.

http://www.nationofchange.org/making-99–spring-1332774913

[115] http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/

[116] http://s3.moveon.org/video/99spring_houseparty1.mov

[117] http://www.nationofchange.org/occupy-turns-2-rejecting-american-exceptionalism-tpp-protests-escalate-resistance-report-007-1379171

American Autumn: An OccuDoc (about Occupy Wall Street)

http://www.mediaed.org/assets/products/164/transcript_164.pdf

[118] Chris Hedges, “Thank You for Standing Up,” Nation of Change: Progressive Journalism for Positive Action, January 24, 2012.

http://www.nationofchange.org/thank-you-standing-1327425435

[119] http://www.popularresistance.org/issues/

More specific solutions are suggested in Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, “Economic Democracy: Creating the World We Want,” Centre for Research on Globalization, February 23, 2014.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/creating-the-world-we-want-knowing-what-we-oppose/5370214

[120] Chris Wright, “Fight for $15 Marks a New Era of Workers’ Struggle in a Global Society,” ROAR Magazine, May 1, 2015.

http://roarmag.org/2015/05/fight-for-15-low-wage-workers/

http://www.wrightswriting.com/

[121] “Landmark Report,” Common Sense Media press report, November 3, 2015.

https://www.commonsensemedia.org/about-us/news/press-releases/landmark-report-us-teens-use-an-average-of-nine-hours-of-media-per-day

[122] N’Tanya Lee and Steve Williams, “More Than We Imagined,” Ear to the Ground, May 2013. http://eartothegroundproject.org/report

http://eartothegroundproject.org/

[123] Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, “Major Social Transformation,” AlterNet, December 30, 2013.

http://www.alternet.org/activism/major-social-transformation-lot-closer-you-may-realize-how-do-we-finish-job

[124]

Dave Oswald Mitchell and Andrew Boyd. Beautiful Trouble, OR Books, 2012.

[125] http://beautifultrouble.org/trainings/

[126] http://interoccupy.net/natgat2014/

[127] http://www.popularresistance.org/out-of-occupy-a-new-populist-political-party-forms/

[128] https://mayday.us/

[129] http://poorpeoplescampaign.org/

[130] http://gazette.com/protesters-clash-with-police-in-albuquerque-nm/article/feed/103991#iaROk3WXHQ36Oupd.99

http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2014/03/albuquerque-protests-police-killing.html

[131] “The 30-Year Growth of Income Inequality,” A Civil American Debate, April 10, 2011.

http://acivilamericandebate.com/2011/04/10/the-30-year-growth-of-income-inequality/

[132] Jonathan Timm, “Can Millennials Save Unions?” The Atlantic, September 7, 2015.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/millennials-unions/401918/

[132] https://www.freeandequal.org/about/

[133] https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/123/billion-people-march-revolutionary-new-tactic.html

[134] http://fieldguidetodemocracy.org/

[135] Juan Cole, “Who’s to Blame for the Rise of Donald Trump,” TruthDIG, October 3, 2016.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/whos_to_blame_for_the_rise_of_donald_trump_20161003

[136] Stephen Hoffman, “The Power Vertical and its Chilling Effect on Democracy,” Rights in Russia blog, March 5, 2012.

http://www.rightsinrussia.info/archive/blog/hoffman/power-vertical

Yonatan Zunger, “From Russia, With Oil Explosive Details in the Trump-Russia Investigation,” Medium.com, March 15, 2017.

https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/from-russia-with-oil-4d027411bcc5#.2ard9saxg

[137] http://www.joinaya.com/why/

[138] Jeffrey Juris, “Reflections on #Occupy Everywhere,” American Ethnologist, Vol. 39, No.2, 2012, p. 273.

DOI:10.1111/j.1548-1425.2012.01362.x

[139] Laura Bonham and Keyan Bliss, Occupy.com, November 4, 2014.

http://www.occupy.com/article/how-sallie-mae-and-privatization-student-loans-eroding-america

Charles Eisenstein, “Don’t Owe. Won’t Pay,’ Everything You’ve Been Told About Debt is Wrong,” Yes! Magazine, August 20, 2015.

http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/the-debt-issue/don-t-owe-won-t-pay-charles-eisenstein-debt-20150820

[140] McClatchy Washington Bureau, November 4, 2011.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/davidbrooks/www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/11/04/v-print/129269/rising-college-costs-debts-crushing.html

[141] http://stfuconservatives.tumblr.com/post/45867666470

[142] Anonymous, Debt Resistors’ Operation Manual, Strike Debt and Occupy Wall Street, September 2012.

http://www.strikedebt.org/The-Debt-Resistors-Operations-Manual.pdf

[143] http://www.aflcio.org/content/download/148081/3774741/file/YoungWorkers_PlanningEconomyFuture-FINAL.pdf

[144] Patricia Cohen, “What Could Raising Taxes on the 1% Do?,” New York Times, October 16, 2015.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/17/business/putting-numbers-to-a-tax-increase-for-the-rich.html

[145] http://undercommoning.org/category/alternatives/

[146] https://www.popularresistance.org/millionstudentmarch-time-to-build-political-revolution/

[147] Frances Moore Lappé, “What I Learned From My March With Democracy Spring,” Medium.com, April 12, 2016

http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/what-i-learned-from-my-march-with-democracy-spring-20160412?utm_source=YTW&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=20160415

[148] James Trimarco, “Meet the Organizers Planning the Biggest Sit-In in a Generation,” Yes! Magazine, March 30, 2016.

http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/meet-the-organizers-planning-the-biggest-sit-in-in-a-generation-20160330

[149] Robert Reich, “How to Understand the Presidential Campaign,” San Francisco Chronicle, February 28, 2016.

http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/reich/article/Understanding-the-presidential-campaign-The-6854497.php

[150] Debra O’Gara, “Invisible Women: Sexism in the Black Panther Party,” Freedom Socialist Party, June 1994.

http://www.socialism.com/drupal-6.8/?q=node/2291

[151] Claude Fischer, “Occupy! Now What?,” Made in America, November 8, 2011.

https://madeinamericathebook.wordpress.com/2011/11/08/occupy-now-what/

[152] C. Robert Gibson, “Youth Civil Rights Leaders Explain How to Activate their Generation,” Huff Post Politics, January 1, 2016.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-gibson/youth-leading-americas-ne_b_7040818.html

[153] Andreana Clay. The Hip-Hop Generation Fights Back: Youth, Activism and Post-Civil Rights Politics. New York University Press, 2012.

[154] “Millennials: Much Deeper Thank Their Facebook Pages,” Nielsen, February 18, 2014.

http://www.nielsen.com/content/corporate/us/en/insights/news/2014/millennials-much-deeper-than-their-facebook-pages.html

[155] Editorial Board, “The Cost of Letting Young People Drift,” New York Times, June 20, 2015.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/21/opinion/the-cost-of-letting-young-people-drift.html?_r=0

[156] http://www.heri.ucla.edu/monographs/TheAmericanFreshman2014.pdf

[157] “Organizer Ilai Kenney on the Generational Divide Among Civil Rights Activist,” Moyers & Company, August 30, 2013.

http://billmoyers.com/tag/illai-kenney/

[158] Mychal Denzel Smith, “A New Generation of Black Activism,” The Nation, August 28, 2014.

http://www.nationinstitute.org/featuredwork/fellows/4181/a_new_generation_of_black_activism/

[159] Arlene Eisen and Kali Akuno, “Report on the Extrajudicial Killing of 120 Black People,” Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, July 16, 2012.

https://mxgm.org/report-on-the-extrajudicial-killings-of-120-black-people/

[160] http://redefy.org/about/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks7_yX6gpas

[161] Jeff Burlew, “Occupy Tallahassee’s Days May Be Numbered at Johns Site,” Tallahassee.com, March 27, 2012.

http://blogs.tallahassee.com/occupy-tallahassee-getting-comfy-downtown/

[162] James Trimarco, “Day Four: Youth-Led Occupation of Florida Capitol Still Growing,” Yes! Magazine, July 18, 2013.

http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/day-four-youth-led-occupation-florida-capitol-still-growing-rick-scott-naacp

[163] http://dreamdefenders.org/#what-is-dream-defenders

[164] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yWa7EPMqgU

[165] http://ddblackedouthistory.tumblr.com/

International revolutionary organizations: Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Sandinistas, South African Student Movement, Young Lords, Zapatistas, and FRELIMO: The Mozambique Liberation Front.

In the US: Black Panther Party, Brown Berets, and Left Roots.

ttps://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/dreamdefenders/pages/188/attachments/original/1457123378/Final_BOHM_Curriculum_1234.pdf?1457123378https://www.scribd.com/doc/302090495/BOHM-Rebellion-Curriculum

[166] http://millionhoodies.net/who-we-are/

[167] “A Thousand Youth Take to the Streets,” Common Dreams, October 9, 2015.

http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2015/11/09/thousand-youth-take-streets-demanding-justice-race-climate-and-immigration

[168] http://blacklivesmatter.com/

[169] Jamilah King, “Thousands Nationwide March for Eric Garner,” Color Lines News for Action, December 4, 2014.

http://colorlines.com/archives/2014/12/images_thousands_march_in_nyc_for_eric_garner_grand_jury_decision.html

[170] Janie McCauley, “Kaepernick Decision Not to Stand for Anthem Gets NFL Talking,” Daily Tribune, August 28, 2016.

http://www.dailytribune.com/article/DT/20160828/SPORTS/160829660

[171] Julie Turkewitz, “Protest Started by Colin Kaepernick Spreads to High School Students,” New York Times, October 3, 2016.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/04/us/national-anthem-protests-high-schools.html

[172] http://rooseveltinstitute.org/next-generation-blueprint-2016-report/

[173] Emily Green, “Voting at 16 in S.F.?” San Francisco Chronicle, March 16, 2015.

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Voting-at-16-in-S-F-Supervisor-says-the-time-6137855.php

[174] “A Conversation About Growing Up Black,” Op-Doc video, May 2015.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/07/opinion/a-conversation-about-growing-up-black.html?emc=edit_th_20150508&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=68143430&_r=0

[175] David Von Drehle, “Black Lives Matter,” TIME Magazine, April 20, 2015, pp. 29-30.

[176] “Operation Ghetto Storm: 2012 Annual Report on the Extrajudicial Killings of 313 Black People,” 2012.

https://mxgm.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Operation-Ghetto-Storm.pdf

[177] http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/12/ferguson-redux/

[178] Tim Walker, “Michael Brown Shooting: Youth Leads the Fight in Ferguson Protest Movement,” The Independent, November 27, 2014.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/michael-brown-shooting-youth-leads-the-fight-in-ferguson-protest-movement-ahead-of-grand-jury-verdict-9880620.html

[179] Chris Hedges, “Rise of the New Black Radicals,” TruthDig, April 26, 2015.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/rise_of_the_new_black_radicals_20150426

[180] Julie Bosman, “Lack of Leadership and a Generational Split Hinder Protests in Ferguson,” New York Times, August 16, 2014.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/17/us/lack-of-leadership-and-a-generational-split-hinder-protests-in-ferguson.html?_r=0

[181] “’Ferguson is Here’: Black Brazilians Bear the Brunt of Deadly Police Violence,” Global Voices, December 19, 2014.

http://globalvoicesonline.org/2014/12/19/ferguson-is-here-black-brazilians-bear-the-brunt-of-deadly-police-violence/

[182] Kayla Schultz and Mary Hansen, “I’m Scared to Be a Black Male Walking Down the Street,” Yes! Magazine, November 26, 2014.

http://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/scared-black-male-walking-down-street-seattle-teens-skip-school

[183] “Thousands Across Nation March Against Police Killings,” Associated Press, December 14, 2014.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/eric-garner-ferguson-missouri-protesters-converge-on-washington/

[184] http://blackyouthproject.com/resources/national-organizations/

[185] Katherine Mirani, “Nurturing Black Youth Activism,” in Chicago Reporter posted in Popular Resistance, October 8, 2014.

https://www.popularresistance.org/nurturing-black-youth-activism/

[186] John Eligon, “Protesters United Against Ferguson Decision, but Challenged in Unity,” New York Times, November 28, 2014.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/29/us/protesters-united-against-ferguson-decision-but-challenged-in-building-movement.html?_r=0

[187] Peniel Joseph, “How Ferguson Has Exposed a Civil Rights Generational Divide,” The Root, August 18, 2014.

http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2014/08/ferguson_uprising_should_come_as_no_surprise.html

[188] “Decades Since His Death, MLK’s Shadow Still Shapes Today’s Activism,” NPR, January 17, 2016.

http://www.npr.org/2016/01/17/463387671/decades-since-his-death-mlks-shadow-still-shapes-todays-activism

[189] John Eligon, “One Slogan, Many Methods: Black Lives Matter Enters Politics,” New York Times, November 18, 2015.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/19/us/one-slogan-many-methods-black-lives-matter-enters-politics.html?ref=topics

[190] Barbara Reynolds, “I Was a Civil Rights Activist in the 1960s, But It’s Hard for Me to Get Behind Black Lives Matter,” The Washington Post, August 24, 2015.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/08/24/i-was-a-civil-rights-activist-in-the-1960s-but-its-hard-for-me-to-get-behind-black-lives-matter/?postshare=5221440433170944

Sekou Franklin. After the Rebellion: Black Youth, Social Movement Activism, and the Post-Civil Rights Generation. New York University Press, 2014.

[191] Matt Pearce, “Modern Civil Rights Movement Expands on Classic Methods,” Los Angeles Times, March 5, 2015.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-selma-civil-rights-movement-20150306-story.html

[192] Marion Deschamps Interviews Tef Poe, “’You’ll Never Kill their Music:’ The ‘Voice of Ferguson’ Tef Poe Talks BLM, Feminism in Rap,” TeleSUR,

February 23, 2017.

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/The-Voice-of-Ferguson-Tef-Poe-Talks-BLM-Feminism-in-Rap-20170222-0034.html

[193] DeNeen Brown, “In Ferguson, Young Demonstrators are Finding it’s Not their Grandparents’ Protest,” Washington Post, August 21, 2014.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/in-ferguson-young-demonstrators-are-finding-its-not-their-grandparents-protest/2014/08/21/95110be0-28a0-11e4-86ca-6f03cbd15c1a_story.html

[194] George Yancy and Cornel West, “Cornel West: The Fire of a New Generation,” New York Times, August 19, 2015.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/19/cornel-west-the-fire-of-a-new-generation/

[195] Ben Reynolds, “After the Uprising: Lessons from Rojava for Baltimore,” ROAR Magazine, June 12, 2015.

http://roarmag.org/?s=ben+reynolds

[196] Carl Gibson, “Are Baltimore’s Protests the Prelude to a Revolution?” Occupy.com, April 30, 2015.

http://www.occupy.com/article/are-baltimores-protests-prelude-revolution

[197] Emily Shapiro, “Marilyn Mosby: What to Know About Baltimore’s State Attorney,” ABC News, May 1, 2015.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/baltimores-state-attorney-marilyn-mosby/story?id=30730441

[198] http://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000003841604/blacktwitter-after-ferguson.html?emc=edit_th_20150811&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=68143430

[199] http://www.joincampaignzero.org/#vision

[200] http://www.charlotteobserver.com/sports/high-school/article103655822.html

[201] Terrance Heath, “The Year that Black Lives Mattered, At Last,” Common Dreams, December 26, 2015.

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/12/26/2015-year-black-lives-mattered-last

[202] “NPE State Report Card 2016,” The Network for Public Education.

http://networkforpubliceducation.org/tomswisher/current_map.html

[203] http://regeneration-themovie.com/ABOUT-TRAILER

[204] Dawson Barrett and Mark Rudd. Teenage Rebels. Microcosm Publishing, 2015.

[205] Nico Young, “Inside Santa Monica High School,” New York Times, September 11, 2016.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/09/11/magazine/11mag-santa-monica-high-photo-essay.html?emc=edit_th_20160911&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=68143430

[206] http://www.morningsidecenter.org/teachable-moment/lessons/challenging-stereotypes-michael-brown-and-iftheygunnedmedown

https://www.facinghistory.org/

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2014/09/ferguson_and_college_education_sociology_and_history_professors_teach_the.html

https://twitter.com/hashtag/fergusonsyllabus?src=hash

[207] Jack Healy, “In Colorado, a Student Counterprotest to an Anti-Protest Curriculum,” New York Times, September 23, 2014.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/24/us/in-colorado-a-student-counterprotest-to-an-anti-protest-curriculum.html?_r=0

[208] “Rethinking Schools,” http://dianeravitch.net

[209] Fletcher Winston, “Decisions to Make a Difference, The Role of Efficacy in Moderate Student Activism,” Cultural and Political Protest, Vol. 12, Issue 4, 2013.

DOI: 10.1080/14742837.2013.82569

[210] Keegan O’Brien, “Making Sense of the Boston Public Schools Walkout,” Student Nation, May 2, 2016.

https://www.thenation.com/authors/keegan-obrien

[211] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SznisYhNf5U

[212] http://www.thenation.com/authors/studentnation/

[213] Noam Chomsky, “The Assault on Public Education,” In These Times, April 4, 2012. http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/12985/the_assualt_on_public_education/

“Failure by Design” report http://www.epi.org/resources/shop/

[214] Dean Paton, “The Myth Behind Public School Failure,” Yes! Magazine, February 21, 2014.

http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/education-uprising/the-myth-behind-public-school-failure

[215] Pat Garofalo, “The US Has Made No Progress on College Graduation Rates in 30 years,” Think Progress, April 3, 2012. http://thinkprogress.org/education/2012/04/03/457145/chart-the-us-has-made-no-progress-on-college-graduation-rates-

[216] David Kirp, “What Can Stop Kids From Dropping Out,” New York Times, May 1, 2016.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/01/opinion/sunday/what-can-stop-kids-from-dropping-out.html?_r=0

[217] Kathryn Seidewitz, “Where is the US Student Movement?” Occupy.com, January 2, 2013.

http://www.occupy.com/article/where-us-student-movement-ohio-wants-know

[218] https://www.facebook.com/studentpower2013

[219] Jonathan Timm, “Can Millennials Save Unions?” The Atlantic, September 7, 2015.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/millennials-unions/401918/

[220] https://www.freeandequal.org/about/

[221] Tanya Golash-Boza and Benigno Merlin, “Here’s How Undocumented Students are Able to Enroll at American Universities,” The Conversation, November 24, 2016.

http://theconversation.com/heres-how-undocumented-students-are-able-to-enroll-at-american-universities-69269

[222] Yale’s March of Resilience and Claremont McKenna after controversies about racist Halloween costumes and other racist incidents; Purdue’s People of Color student group called for the president to resign,; Princeton’s campaign to remove segregationist Woodrow Wilson’s name from buildings; Amherst, Guilford, Cincinnati, Clemson University, Washington and Lee ‘s removal of confederate flags; Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, and Georgetown protest to remove the names of slave owners from buildings; “Smith Stands with Ithaca and Mizzou;” and other protests at University of Georgia, University of Maryland, Colby College, Emory, Virginia Commonwealth, University of Kansas, Kalamazoo College, Marquette University, University of Pennsylvania, Alabama at Tuscaloosa, and Wright State.

[223] Tareq Radi, “Criminalizing Student Organizing On-Campus,” Popular Resistance, December 13, 2015.

https://www.popularresistance.org/tag/student-organizing/

[224] “15 Movements to Dismantle White Supremacy Rising This Summer,” StudentNation, August 7, 2015.

https://www.thenation.com/article/15-youth-movements-to-dismantle-white-supremacy-rising-this-summer/

[225] http://www.thenation.com/authors/studentnation/

[226] http://abcnews.go.com/US/video/alton-sterlings-son-cameron-urges-people-protest-peace-40546094

[227] Sonali Kolhatkar, “Why Black Lives Matter is the Movement of the Year,” TruthDig, January 2, 2016.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/why_black_lives_matter_is_the_movement_of_the_year_20151230?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%253A+Truthdig+Truthdig%253A+Drilling+Beneath+the+Headline

[228] http://globalvoicesonline.org/specialcoverage/latin-america-migrant-journeys/

[229] Justu Uitermark and Walter Nicholls,  “How Local Networks Shape a Global Movement,” Social Movement Studies, Vol. 11, No. 4, July 17, 2012.

https://www.academia.edu/2301704/Uitermark_J._and_W._Nicholls_2012_How_local_networks_shape_a_global_movement._Comparing_Occupy_in_Amsterdam_and_Los_Angeles_Social_Movement_Studies_11_3-4_295_301

[230] Julia Preston, “Young Immigrants Turn Focus to President in Struggle Over Deportations,” New York Times, February 23, 2014.

[231] http://fusion.net/story/316759/muslim-mexican-american-video-blogger/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialshare&utm_content=theme_bottom_mobile

[232] Julia Preston, “Young Immigrants Say It’s Obama’s Time to Act,” The New York Times, November 30, 2012.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/01/us/dream-act-gives-young-immigrants-a-political-voice.html?pagewanted=all

[233] http://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000004805966/a-timeline-from-standing-rock.html?emc=edit_th_20161207&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=68143430

[234] Mike Miller, “Shailene Woodley and Mark Ruffalo Speak Out Against Dakota Access Pipeline as Protests Intensify,” People, October 27, 2016.

http://people.com/movies/shailene-woodley-and-mark-ruffalo-speak-out-against-dakota-access-pipeline-as-protests-intensify/

[235] Native News Online Staf, “1,000 Lakota Sioux Youth to Descend Upon Dakota Pipeline Protest Site,” Native News Online.net, October 3, 20116.

http://nativenewsonline.net/currents/1000-lakota-sioux-youth-descend-upon-dakota-pipeline-protest-site/

[236] #IndianWinter, “Standing Rock: The Story of a Heroic Resistance,” ROAR Magazine, November 19, 2016.

https://roarmag.org/essays/standing-rock-no-dapl-protests/

[237] “Arrests and Violence at Pipeline Protest,” October 29, 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000004736396/arrests-and-violence-at-dakota-pipeline.html?emc=edit_th_20161030&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=68143430

[238] http://www.standingrocksolidaritynetwork.org/uploads/4/2/9/2/4292077/joining_camp_culture_final.pdf

[239] https://www.rt.com/usa/364481-dakota-access-protest-clinton-hq/

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/US-Revives-War-on-Native-Americans-in-North-Dakota-20161028-0014.html?utm_source=planisys&utm_medium=NewsletterIngles&utm_campaign=NewsletterIngles&utm_content=36

[240] Deirdre Fulton, “’Silence Is Not Acceptable,’” Common Dreams, October 27, 2016.

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/10/27/silence-not-acceptable-indigenous-youth-demand-clinton-take-stand-dapl

[241] Nika Knight, “Over 75 Arrested in Ottawa as Youth Demand Climate Action from Trudeau,” Common Dreams, October 24, 2016.

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/10/24/over-75-arrested-ottawa-youth-demand-climate-action-trudeau

[242] Geoff Dembicki, “A Millennial Asks Are We Screwed?” The Tyee, March 13, 2014.

http://thetyee.ca/News/2014/03/13/Are-We-Screwed/

[243] Andrew Gavin Marshall, “In June 11, The Global Elite Gather in Montreal,” Andre GavinMarhall.com, June 11, 2012.

http://andrewgavinmarshall.com/2012/06/05/on-june-11-the-global-elite-gather-in-montreal-will-the-maple-spring-say-hello/

[244] “10 Things Everyone Should Know About Quebec’s Student Movement,” Occupy.com, May 30, 2012.

http://www.occupy.com/article/10-things-everyone-should-know-about-quebecs-student-movement

[245] Brigette DePape and Erika Shaker. The Power of Youth. Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, 2012.

https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/ourschools-ourselves/our-schoolsour-selves-spring-2012

http://thetyee.ca/Books/2012/09/01/PowerOfYouth/

[246] http://www.submedia.tv/street-politics-101/

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/08/09/gabriel-nadeau-dubois-resigns_n_1759424.html

[247] Andrew Gavin Marshall, “The Maple Spring and the Mafiocracy,” andrewgavinmarschall.com, June 3, 2012.

http://andrewgavinmarshall.com/2012/06/03/the-maple-spring-and-the-mafiocracy-struggling-students-versus-entitled-elites/

[248] Stefan Christoff, “Building a Movement,” New Socialist Webzine, August 11, 2013.

http://www.newsocialist.org/711-building-a-movement-reflections-from-the-quebec-student-strike

[249] http://ecolemontagnerouge.tumblr.com/#11

Stefan Christoff, “Le Fond de L’ai est Rouge”

http://howlarts.net/post/46664214765/le-fond-de-lair-est-rouge

A film about the uprising is Insurgence with English subtitles.

[250] http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/03/05/quebec-student-protests-tuition-increases_n_2814977.html#slide=938209

[251] http://www.submedia.tv

[252] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1–uffcGHq0

[253] Ibid., p. 1223-124.

[254] Werner Puschra and Sara Burke, eds. The Future We the People Need: Voices from New Social Movements. Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, February 2013, p. 112.

http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/iez/global/09610-20130215.pdf

[255] David Gray-Donald, “Quebecois on the Streets Fighting Austerity,” Axis of Logic, April 3, 2015.

http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_69876.shtml

[256] http://www.austerite.org/assets/pdf/en/policy-paper.pdf

Maria Babbage, “Canadian University Cost to Rise 13 percent over 4 Years,” CBC News, September 9, 2014.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canadian-university-costs-to-rise-13-per-cent-over-4-years-report-1.2761406

[257] Kate Aronoff, “Quebec Students Strike Against Austerity and the Petro Economy,” Common Dreams, March 28, 2015.

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/03/28/quebec-students-strike-against-austerity-and-petro-economy

[258] www.rebelyouth-magazine.blogspot.com

[259] Matt Hern and the Purple Thistle Centre. Stay Solid: A Radical Handbook for Youth, AK Press, 2013, pp. 213- 217.

[260] Christina Constantini, “Indigenous Movement ‘Idle No More’ Gains Allies,” ABC News, January 11, 2013.

http://abcnews.go.com/ABC_Univision/idle-native-american-protest-canada-gains-latino-support/story?id=18192154

http://idlenomore.ca/about-us/item/1-history-of-idle-no-more-grassroots-movement

[261] Alex Wilson ,“The Blossoming of ‘Idle No More’ Canada’s First Nations Movement,” Socialist Worker, March 14, 2014.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-blossoming-of-idle-no-more-canadas-first-nations-movement/5373516?print=1

[262] http://www.idlenomore.ca/

https://www.facebook.com/IdleNoMoreCommunity with local chapter pages

[263] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7uoCgYT75U

[264] http://rabble.ca/babble/aboriginal-issues-and-culture/idle-no-more

[265] “GenForward: A survey of the Black Youth Project,” the APNORC Center for Public Affairs Research, March 2017.

http://genforwardsurvey.com/assets/uploads/2017/03/March-Report__Trump-memo-Final-Draft.pdf

[266] https://www.facebook.com/WomensMarchesAroundTheWorld

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/pussy-grabs-back-best-placards-9668345

http://nymag.com/thecut/2017/01/funny-protest-signs-womens-march-2017.html

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/inauguration-2017/women-s-march-marked-brash-funny-signage-raised-high-n710321

[267] Julia Conley, “Ivanka Defends Trump Administration’s ‘All-Out Attack on Equal Pay,’” Common Dreams, August 30, 2017.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/08/30/ivanka-defends-trump-administrations-all-out-attack-equal-pay

[268] http://communitylearningpartnership.org/

[269]

US: http://current.com/shows/vanguard/93576420_the-99-percent-vanguard-trailer.htm

www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_sparks_of_rebellion_20130930/

www.mediaed.org/assets/products/164/transcript_164.pdf

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/8802223/Occupy-Wall-Street-protests-spread-across-U.S.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/24/occupy-wall-street-protes_n_979367.html

http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2011/oct/06/occupy-wall-street-protest-video

http://www.thenation.com/authors/studentnation/

Canada: http://www.submedia.tv/street-politics-101/

http://howlarts.net/post/46664214765/le-fond-de-lair-est-rouge

http://globalnews.ca/tag/quebec-student-protests/

http://ourfuture.org/20120606/the_secret_of_joy_six_lessons_from_quebecs_maple_spring?gclid=CjwKEAjwpIefBRCuir7wy-f1kCwSJADXBi2aPZxOUpNtAl7ItTbtyJdZrwZT1gcW70OT1uQvoh9RzxoCIYHw_wcB

[270] http://ypp.dmlcentral.net/projects/youth-activism-project

[271] https://www.we.org/we-movement/

[272] https://yugaplanusa.wordpress.com/about/

[273] Nicole Goldin, The Global Youth Wellbeing Index, Center for Strategic & International Studies and International Youth Foundation, April 2014, p. 2.

ww.youthindex.org/reports/globalyouthwellbeingindex.pdf

[274] Jeffrey Rubin and Emma Sokoloff-Rubin. Sustaining Activism: A Brazilian Women’s Movement and a Father-Daughter Collaboration. Duke University Press, 2013.

http://www.sustainingactivism.com/photo-gallery/

[275] Karen Swallow Prior, “’Empathetically Correct’ is the New Politically Correct,” The Atlantic, May 23, 2014.

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/05/empathetically-correct-is-the-new-politically-correct/371442/

[276] Lauren Cochrane, “Kylie Jenner’s Cornrows and the Racial Politics of Hair,” The Guardian, July 13, 2015.

https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/shortcuts/2015/jul/13/kylie-jenner-cornrows-racial-politics-hair

[277] Lionel Shriver, “Will the Left Survive the Millennials?” New York Times, September 23, 2016.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/23/opinion/will-the-left-survive-the-millennials.html?_r=0

Lionel Shriver, “Linel Shriver’s Full Speech,” The Guardian, September 13, 2016.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/13/lionel-shrivers-full-speech-i-hope-the-concept-of-cultural-appropriation-is-a-passing-fad

[278] Nikos Sotirakopoulos and George Sotiropoulos, “’Direct Democracy Now!’,” Current Sociology, Vol. 61, No. 4, pp. 443-456.

http://csi.sagepub.com/content/61/4/443.abstract

[279] Krista Tippett, “Mohammed Fairouz: The World in Counterpoint,” On Being radio show, April 20, 2015.

http://www.onbeing.org/program/mohammed-fairouz-the-world-in-counterpoint/7511

[280] https://greenlocalsolutions.wordpress.com

https://www.facebook.com/modelsolutions

Conclusion

Educated young people will lead our future in an egalitarian direction. Activists want to create a new person in a new cooperative non-capitalist world.  They’re dissatisfied with the economic status quo and want change. They realize that elected representatives often serve their funding sources rather than the people. Confident youth exchange information and encouragement online to create change while they scorn media-designated leaders and stars. Most (87%) of the world’s young people are growing up in developing nations in a world with a growing gap between rich and poor and undergoing harmful climate change, as acknowledged by the head of the conservative International Monetary Fund, Christine Laguarde. A large majority of youth experience “lower levels of wellbeing” according to a report on global youth wellbeing in 30 countries. [280] With the spread of cell phones, they learn about life styles they desire, insuring that the wave of uprisings and unrest will continue.

Of course, many youth are apathetic, lacking hope they can change the economic system, sucked into their video games or in a cycle of poverty, feeling overwhelmed by global problems, content with signing an online petition and consumed by many hours of study and/or work. Village youth I talked with aren’t aware of global issues like climate change, not literate or online, left out of the global support network of educated young people. Therefore, middle-class youth tend to lead recent protest movements with few exceptions such as a woman’s movement led by teenagers living in rural Southern Brazil in the 1980s. The girls led their movement, despite the patriarchal tradition of fathers’ restricting girls’ ability to go outside their homes.[280] The feminists were encouraged by educated liberal Catholic priests and nuns.

Young people are more comfortable with women in activist roles and more accepting of people with different backgrounds than earlier generations of rebels. Youth are more egalitarian than their elders and are less likely to judge people by their ethnicity, sexual preference or gender. Globally, more young women graduate with university degrees than men, so more women will move into leadership positions. Studies generally find that women politicians take more action to actually help families and girls are more egalitarian than boys, as discussed in Brave: The Global Girls’ Revolution.

The Arab Spring and global Occupy Movements led by youth show us their resistance to hierarchies and fixed positions, valuing freedom of expression, direct democracy and consensus decision-making. Generally down to earth, young people are interested in cooperative gardening to produce healthy food. They value relationships more than material success, including a lasting marriage and most importantly to them–being good parents. The generation gap is smaller than it was with Baby Boomers and their parents. They feel close to their parents and they are willing to work cooperatively with various age groups, enhanced by their open-mindedness and acceptance of diversity.

Some developmentalists disagree with generational scholars who think there are distinctive age differences shaped by different historical events. It’s true that all adolescents face the task of shaping their adult identity and values, but young people shaped by access to information and communication technologies are different from previous generations. Baby Boomers said they didn’t trust people over 30, while Gen Y and Gen Z value their parents but are cynical about other authorities, political and religious. Some are interested in historical heroes and heroines; Millennial composer Mohammed Fairouz evokes John F. Kennedy, Anwar Sadat, Seamus Heaney and Yehuda Amichai in his music.[280] Young people have access to news about scandals concerning politicians and religious leaders, transferring respect for elders to ones they know and love. Marshall McLuhan is correct that the characteristics of the media we imbibe influence us as well as the information it conveys. Not only does the speed of communication make Generations Y and Z impatient with old ways of doing things, but it connects them to each other in a global youth support group for change that shares tactics of disruption, discussed in Global Youth Activism and Goals and Tactics for Changemaking.

An ah ha moment for me was that realization that ageism is at play in academic circles, elaborated on in Ageism in Youth Studies: The Maligned Generation (2017). Most of the academics who read drafts of the book erroneously said many books were written about youth activism and cited books that didn’t focus on youth at all, indicating that a blind spot or bias was at play. Some publishers told me that readers aren’t interested in youth. This phenomenon is the same as sexism that kept scholars of both sexes from focusing on women’s contributions, until feminists pointed it out in the second wave of the woman’s movement. I wrote my dissertation on the religious ideas of the 19^th century novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe. Her novels clearly focus on the saving grace of virtuous women but no one had discussed the very obvious theme due to the sexist blind spot. Even books describing bias against young people don’t include their actual voices, just like history books included few women’s or people of color’s voices. The focus on great men is corrected by doing “history from below” and “Standpoint” theory approaches to research by including the thoughts of actual participants—in this case, youth. 

It’s astonishing that youth were able to quickly overthrow entrenched dictators in the Arab Spring. They’re masters of selling their brand of democracy and mobilizing mass support, but they failed to design alternative governments, influenced by anarchist thinking to be anti-state and anti-politician. However, two Greek professors observed, “If nothing else this ‘staging’ of democracy throughout the squares of the world has regenerated the political imagination of thousands of people, putting a halt to widespread pessimism and fatalism.”[280] The main villain is global neoliberal capitalism that is increasing rather than reducing its control, as evidenced by the fact that 62 people own as much wealth as the poorest half of the world’s population. The result of the power of oil companies and other corporations is increasing inequality and environmental destruction.                     

            Youth activists’ solution of implementing small utopias in the cracks of the existing capitalist solution will take a long time to make broad change. With the failure of communism in the USSR and China, no national models exist of successful anti-capitalist revolutions that implement more equality for the people but local models of direct democracy exist as in Kurdish Rojava. That’s a huge task ahead of us. When searching for egalitarian models, I always look to Scandinavia as state governments doing the most for its citizens. In reports of well-being and happiness, they’re always in the top tier. Some radical youth decided to run for office to change government in Chile and Quebec and leftist parties with young leaders emerged in Spain’s Podemos and Greece’s SYRIZA party. This may be the future trend away from anarchism.

A surprise for me was how similar media-connected educated youth are globally. We could construct a profile of a young person in any urban area where youth wear jeans and T-shirt, listen to hip-hop on headphones, text on smart phone, are disgusted with authorities’ lack of integrity, and informed about global problems. They create “glocal” or hybrid cultures, such as hip-hop songs in local languages and youth slang combining various languages and abbreviations. In contrast, young people in rural areas in developing countries where most youth live are raised more traditionally, often poorly educated and not aware of global issues. If Facebook’s Gen Y Mark Zuckerberg succeeds in his goal to provide Internet access to everyone, rural areas will have access to global information sources that provide the foundation for changemaking.

We know that our main problem is our planet is in jeopardy because of global warming with increasing carbon and methane emissions, but a UN survey reported that young people often didn’t make the connection that their lifestyle has to change in order to save the planet. This means cutting down on use of fossil fuels and eating meat that’s responsible for 70% of agricultural emissions and over a third of methane gases. We’ve seen that educated SpeakOut youth are more altruistic and informed than older generations at their age. Will they be able to transform the revolution of rising expectations to consuming less and acting locally?

Please email gkimball@csuchico.edu to share your observations about how Gen Y and Z  and report green local solutions to human problems—the topic of my next book.[280] Look for updates to this book on the Global Youth SpeakOut page on Facebook and WordPress and new interviews on the YouTube channel.