‘If You’re Not Kind To People, You’re Not Doing The Work’: 3 Activists on Multigenerational Organizing

All three organizers, whose portfolio of initiatives range from voter education and registration to public art and racial healing, got their start young, spurred by inequality and injustice they recall witnessing in school. So they know firsthand how challenging it can be to be a youth activist. 

“We're dealing with a lot at the same time,” explained Li, 25, who, as a part of her contributions to a multigenerational community justice coalition in Collierville, Tennessee, founded a youth organizing fellowship in 2022. “We're balancing jobs, we're balancing care-giving, demanding school schedules, and then we're more economically-insecure compared to other generations. So, in order to engage youth, I feel like the first priority should be making sure that they feel like they belong, and designing programs and organizational structures that really make them feel like they have a voice in the decision-making.”

Another major consideration to involving more young people in movements to create change? Ensuring that wherever possible, nonprofit and advocacy opportunities are funded—and paid. 

Taylor, 50, who is the founder of Chicago-based social justice organization Organic Oneness, has made local teens key collaborators in the organization’s mission to foster healthy communities through art, service, and learning. She said investing in young people is essential: “If you're an artist, youth, whoever you are, if we are working together, I will do what needs to be done for the budget to make sure that we are compensated fairly."

Equally crucial, according to Brown, 24, currently working as a Marshall-Motley Scholar at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, is meeting young people where they are—and leading with kindness. “Kindness is at the center of all the work that we do. People are only receptive to who they feel heard by,” she told a rapt room. “If you're not kind to people, [if you’re] not listening to the people that you're serving, you're not doing it correctly. If you're not kind to people, then you're not doing the work.”