What Youth Activists Do That Adults Can’t
Young activists capture peoples attention. They also bear an impossible weight of expectation. In 1860, Anna Elizabeth Dickinsonthe daughter of Quaker abolitionistsattended a public debate in her native Philadelphia titled Womens Rights and Wrongs. She had not planned to speak. But when a bristling, dictatorial manas she later called himstood to insist that his daughters were equal to all men, just better suited to domestic lives than commercial pursuits, Dickinson could not resist. She shook her finger at him and thundered her retort: In heavens name, sir, what else is to be expected of such a father? No wonder his daughters were destined for such circumscribed lives, she was saying; with a father like that, the girls were doomed. The man fled the hall. Dickinson had just turned 17. Over the next few months, Dickinson showed up at other events. When the Civil War broke out, the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison helped her launch a multistate tour as an orator. Lucretia Mott, the abolitionist and womens-rights activist, admitted that the girl had more fight than I can go with. In 1864, Dickinson became the first woman to address the House of Representatives. But even at age 21, she was still identified in the press as a girl. In the Washington Chronicle , a writer admired her curls cut short, as if for school, and her expression lit with the mirthfulness of a child, except when it blazed with the passions of a prophetess. Dickinson was renowned for her furiesthe fight that women like Mott could never let themselves muster. But when her girlhood expired, her success was snuffed out with it. In her 30s, she struggled to land even modest speaking gigs. She tried her hand at writing and acting, but got scathing reviews. She remained rageful. It stopped seeming so charming. Exceptional girl activists have for centuries become famous for their demonstrations of raw emotion in protest. Their precociousnessall that vim and vigor in smaller bodieshas allowed them a public voice even in societies uninterested in hearing from grown women. Whereas adult activists who want to appeal to the masses must typically demonstrate emotional control to be taken seriously, girl activists have in many cases thrived by shouting, screaming, sometimes weeping, and often impudently castigating older generations. Such melodramamore than sober charts or poll results or legislative agendashelps children make their case. In 2013, Malala Yousafzai, whom Taliban militants shot in the head and who later became a global advocate for girls education, delivered an incandescent speech in which she warned her audience that she would be loud: I raise up my voicenot so that I can shout, but so that those without a voice can be heard. In 2018, Samantha Fuentes, a survivor of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, whod been wounded in the attack, vomited in the middle of her speech while dozens of live TV cameras rolled. News outlets praised her for continuing the speech afterward. And in 2019, Greta Thunberg cried at the United Nations as she delivered a scathing address to world leaders. I shouldnt be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope, Thunberg said. How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. A few months later, Time named Thunberg a Person of the Year. Read: Students should refuse to go back to school For adolescents dissatisfied with the status quo, activism can be one of the few opportunities for political expression. People under 18 have been excluded from all kinds of formal political processes, Sarah Gaby, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington who studies youth protest movements, told me. Minors cant vote; they also cant incorporate nonprofits or run for elected office. Yet their protests work. Research from the United States Institute of Peace has found that major nonviolent protests with democratic aimssuch as calls for territorial independence and demands for regime changewith high levels of participation from activists ages 10 to 29 have greater than average rates of success. Youth activism has its risks. The USIP research found that although movements that include young people are no more violent than those that adults lead, the state tends to react to them with more aggressive tactics. The USIP report cites other academic work indicating that regimes use violence against young people precisely because they want to deter more youth-led protests. History shows many examples of that kind of preemptive violence: the Childrens Crusade against segregation, in 1963; the Kent State protests of the Vietnam War in 1970; Tiananmen Square, in 1989; and the more recent face-offs between the state and demonstrators in Hong Kong and Iran. And then there are the accusations. Teenage activists are constantly accused of reading the cue cards of adults. In the Democratic-opposition press back in the 19th century, Dickinson was called a parrot. More recently, right-wing news outlets have dismissed anti-gun-violence activists as puppets. Gaby has observed that adolescent activists tend to burn out faster than adult ones, too: Some of them give their all to a cause and then find themselves depleted. They havent learned what incremental triumph can look and feel like. For young women, the burden can exact a particular toll. In Young and Restless: The Girls Who Sparked Americas Revolutions , I make the case that girls are especially capable activists. Although all genders joined the civil-rights movement and the anti-war movement, and now battle the climate crisis, girls are uniquely visible. Thunberg, Yousafzai, and Dickinson have all been perceived as innocent in a way thats specific to their gender and age. The threat that societys moral failuresclimate inaction, brutal discriminationpose to them makes their plight feel urgent. But girls are also doubly disadvantaged, as USIP calls them: without the political rights of adults, and living in societies that might treat them unequally. Then, when they grow up, the very traits that made them powerful advocates can be used against them. Dickinson had been christened Americas Joan of Arc. She was never burned at the stake, but she was ostracized. She had been a furious girl, and then she was a mad woman. While I worked on Young and Restless, dozens of people asked me versions of the same question: Were the kids all right? Would girls save us? The process of writing this book filled me with hope. Over and over, impatient girlsbrimming with the determination that adolescence affordshave stepped into the breach. But young people should not be burdened with compensating for the failures of grown-ups. Instead of just marveling at our indefatigable girls, perhaps adults can work with them. When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.