Beyond Resistance! Youth Activism and Community Change: New Democratic Possibilities for Practice and Policy

Abstract

Children, Youth and Environments Vol. 16 No. 2 (2006) ISSN: 1546-2250 Beyond Resistance! Youth Activism and Community Change: New Democratic Possibilities for Practice and Policy Ginwright, Shawn and Noguera, Pedro and Cammarota, Julio (2006). New York: Routledge Press; 336 pages. $34.95. ISBN 0415952514. Beyond Resistance! Youth Activism and Community Change: New Democratic Possibilities for Practice and Policy for America’s Youth offers an inspiring account of the ways young people are “agents of social change,” as well as a sobering evaluation of what stands in the way of young people achieving full citizenship in the United States. Youth activism has exploded over the last decade in cities across the United States as young people have struggled against neoliberal policies that have eviscerated youth rights, expanded the penal state, and exacerbated racial and class inequalities. This book provides a timely exploration of civic engagement among youth of color, how youth participation can improve public policies, and how youth activism affects the youth development process. At its broadest, the editors look to youth activism for a model of how to reinvigorate a truly inclusive American democracy. Beyond Resistance is an important resource for policy-makers, youth advocates and inter-disciplinary scholars interested in youth activism and civic engagement. This collection is unique in the way it combines theoretical and practical concerns, and in the way it grounds an understanding of civic engagement in fundamentally political questions of race, inequality and power (c.f. Flanagan and Sherrod 1998; Sherrod 2006). This collection builds on earlier efforts to document, advocate for, and network among youth activist groups in the U.S. (Cervone 2002; Young Wisdom Project 2004; the Freechild Project; and the Funders’ Collaborative on Youth Organizing). But this collection has more theoretical ambitions. It combines a critique and revision of youth development 379 models with a theoretically rich – if unevenly developed – account of youth agency and political identity. The editors (and many authors) demonstrate the virtues of walking across the lines between research and practice. Shawn Ginwright is a professor of education at San Francisco State and co-founder of Leadership Excellence, a model African-American social justice youth development agency in Oakland, California. Julio Cammarota is an anthropology professor who directs an action-research project at the University of Arizona. Pedro Noguera is an education professor at NYU who has served as an advisor to urban school districts. Ginwright and Cammarota’s brief introduction develops a conceptual frame for understanding youth agency and democratic participation. They lay out four guiding principles: 1) young people should be conceptualized in relationship to specific economic, political and social conditions; 2) youth development should be understood as a collective response to social marginalization; 3) young people are agents of change, not simple subjects of change; 4) young people have basic civic and human rights, including the right to real political power. These principles sketch out a compelling revision of youth development models and a new approach to the study of civic engagement (contra Putnam 2000). But the collection would benefit from a longer introduction that more fully elaborated these theoretical contributions. The first section of the book builds on these principles to develop a compelling, if fragmented, theoretical foundation for the study of youth activism. Hosang’s analysis of youth activism in New York and Los Angeles offers a powerful argument for the importance of combining short-term policy reform with broader ideological challenges to dominant images that frame youth of color as problems. Watts and Guessous document the importance of sociopolitical development, arguing that youth development for marginalized youth must include developing a critical consciousness of the social forces that affect their lives and communities. Akom offers a significant critique of theories of social capital that ignore the significance of racial identity in shaping political networks, civic 380 engagement and activism. And Lewis-Charp and colleagues’ national study of youth activist organizations documents the importance of identity in facilitating collective action among marginalized youth. This focus on race and political identity serves as a vital correction to literature on youth development and civic engagement, which has generally failed to adequately attend to race, power and the radically unequal social and political contexts of...