Building Young People’s Political Power, from #NationalSchoolWalkout and Beyond

When students were murdered at a Parkland High School, we were heartbroken at more loss of life in our nation’s public schools. Like many of you, we have been inspired by the survivors who have shifted the public conversation away from fruitless thoughts and prayers to civic engagement, voting, and direct action.

Although most of our groups have not historically focused on gun violence, young people in our communities have taken us there in recent weeks. Newly engaged young activists from across the country have been reaching out to ask for help in organizing marches, rallies, walkouts, and of course, voter registration. And our network has answered with an enthusiastic hells yeah!

From Missoula to Miami, Chicago to Denver, Portland to Erie, Providence to Columbus, we have been blow away by the incredible actions across the network. It’s taken us 2 days to uplift all of their work on social media because there has been so dang much. The power of long-term organizing in communities is that even if we’re not known to work on a specific issue, the organizations in our network are trusted peers, partners, and allies when it comes to taking action alongside our nation’s youth.

To help support these activations, we were so lucky to receive rapid response support from a few donors (thank you!), which means $90,000 will be going to 17 organizations over the next week to support rapid response youth organizing between now and the April events.

At the same time, here at the Alliance, we want to be clear about our role in this work. We recognize that very few of our groups work on gun violence prevention. And if they do, it’s usually through the lens of organizing against the school to prison pipeline and uplifting its impact on youth of color. At a minimum, we want to ensure that these newly engaged young people have local, youth-led organizing homes to grow their skills and keep fighting for social justice. Ending up on a national email list is not good enough; this generation deserves so much more. That’s why we’re working to help organizations in our network scale to add additional paid organizing staff and student interns to mobilize these newly engaged activists in the long run.

And we want to make sure that folks are aware of and supporting groups like Community Justice Reform Coalition, an organization that centers black and brown communities at the nexus of gun violence prevention and criminal justice reform (if you haven’t heard of them, please check them out!). CJRC is filling a much-needed gap in the gun violence prevention movement – one where most impacted communities are too often forgotten or ignored. We know that only when groups like CJRC are uplifted will we ever be successful in this fight, and we hope you check them out.

For a closer look at the amazing work that took place around the country, take a look at our social on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Engage Miami, PA Student Power Network

Welcome to the network, LIT!

What a week! Our entire team is in awe of the incredible work and the result in Alabama. The turnout of young people and black voters, specifically black women, puts front and center the founding principle of the Alliance’s theory of change — when people from/in their local communities lead, organize and make their collective voice heard, our democracy is stronger and better reflects our values. In addition to glorious victory for democracy on Tuesday — we also have some pretty exciting news at the Alliance!
On Monday, our boards of directors formally approved a new Alliance Affiliate: Leaders Igniting Transformation (LIT) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

At the Alliance, we’ve always believed that locally-led, youth-led political institutions have the power to change the world. We’ve seen it demonstrated with Chicago Votes, Engage Miami, Ohio Student Association, and MOVE San Antonio that the Alliance model can be adapted and implemented all over the country. Now, we’re helping a new operation get off the ground and we’re not just going in for 2018 — we’re incubating new infrastructure to last.

We first met LIT as part of the 16 young leaders from Wisconsin who received scholarships to attend the Youth Organizing Summit (Thanks, Brico Fund!) in April. Right after the conference, LIT became a Youth Organizing Partner and almost immediately, our program staff and local leaders flagged LIT as a rising star in the Midwest and prompted incubation conversations with organizers, donors, and other progressive leaders on the ground. After an in-depth process of vetting and analysis, we concluded that we’re incredibly excited to work with Leaders Igniting Transformation!

Positioned on the western shore of Lake Michigan, Milwaukee both translates and first served as an Indigenous ‘meeting place’ given its name by the Potawatomi Tribe. It couldn’t be more apparent that Milwaukee has deep community building and culture at it’s core.

Dakota Hall, founding Director of LIT has worked as a community organizer alongside his new board members and young volunteers at local organizations such as Milwaukee Inner City Congregations Allied for Hope (MICAH), Youth Empowered in the Struggle (YES!), and others. It’s a team reflective of the city’s heart and soul and they’re looking to build a new force for positive change.

The interest in this effort from the beginning has been tangible, both locally and nationally. Brico Fund, Movement Voter Project, NextGen America and a series of individual donors’ support have been critical for the Alliance to have space for a series of conversations in WI and to provide seed funding to these local leaders to develop their own plan. 

LIT has a ton of work ahead of them in order to organize and mobilize a new generation of Milwaukeeans to build a community that works for everybody. In 2018 and beyond, they’ll be focusing on criminal justice reform, specifically fighting the school-to-prison pipeline and working to redistribute and invest misused public funds into schools and other public services; reinstating basic voting rights for marginalized communities and specifically during the voter registration process; and long-term economic justice through reducing the weight of student debt and promoting free community college for the next generation – plus a ton of the young voter mobilization and leadership development (in MKE called “Black Hogwarts”) that you’ve come to expect from Alliance affiliates.

Please join us in welcoming LIT to our network by making a contribution towards their start up fund  and/or liking them on Facebook and Twitter!