YOUTH-LED COMMUNITY ORGANIZING This page intentionally left blank Youth-Led Community Organizing Theory and Action MELVIN DELGADO LEE STAPLES 1 2008 1 Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Copyright # 2008 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Delgado, Melvin. Youth-led community organizing : theory and action / Melvin Delgado and Lee Staples. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN: 978-0-19-518276-7 1. Youth movement. 2. Youth in development. 3. Youth development. 4. Community organization. 5. Young volunteers in community development. 6. Social action. I. Staples, Lee. II. Title. HN19.D35 2008 361.20835—dc22 2006100993 Epigraph extracted from Andrew Malekoff’s want to make waves Reprinted with permission from Families in Society (www.familiesinsociety.org), published by the Alliance for Children and Families. 135798642 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper This book is dedicated to Denise, Laura, and Barbara (Melvin Delgado) Louise, Josh, and Becca (Lee Staples) This page intentionally left blank want to make waves want to make waves want to jump in want to make some waves want to make waves want to make waves want to get wet want to make some waves want to make waves. This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank Sara Perks, Patricia Soung, Alison Conway, Rebekah Gowler, Suzanne Hogan, Yi-Chin Chen and Youth 1st in Jackson Square, Boston (with particular thanks to Gian Gonzalez and Leo Peguero), and the following external reviewers of the initial book draft: Barry Checkoway (University of Michigan), Ben Kirshner (University of Color- ado), Laurie Ross (Clark University), and Carmen Sirianni (Brandeis Uni- versity). This page intentionally left blank Contents Part I Setting the Context 1 Overview of Youth-Led Community Organizing 3 2 Social and Economic Justice Foundation 23 3 Overview of Community Organizing, Youth-Led Field, and Youth-Led Organizing 41 Part II Conceptual Foundation for Youth-Led Community Organizing 4 Guiding Principles and Analytical Framework 75 5 Participatory Democracy 95 6 Leadership Development 111 7 Recruitment, Screening, Preparation, and Support of Youth-Led Community Organizers 127 8 Crosscutting Theoretical and Practice Themes 147 Part III A View and Lessons from the Field 9 Youth First in Jackson Square! (¡Jovenes Primero!) 175 10 Challenges Inherent in Youth-Led Organizing 194 11 Epilogue 213 References 219 Index 249 This page intentionally left blank Part I Setting the Context Today’s youth are coming of age in a complex world im- pacted by global forces. However, they generally feel disenfranchised from socio-political processes. ...Youths may turn to social action to speak out and effect change in relation to issues touching their lives. —Lombardo, Zakus, and Skinner, Youth Social Action (2002) This page intentionally left blank 1 Overview of Youth-Led Community Organizing Youth organizing gives young people the po- tential to exercise power to affect key policy decisions and create proactive new realities. —YouthAction, Why Youth Organizing? (1998) There is no nation on earth that can afford to neglect its youth and still hope to play a viable role in a global economy and meet the social and educa- tional needs of its citizens. However, there also is no nation that will pub- licly acknowledge that it systematically and purposefully marginalizes its youth. Rhetoric must be separated from reality and actions, as in the case of the United States. A review of any standard statistic on child/youth well- being would find the United States far from being a world leader in its treatment of this population group (Males 2004). A nation that systemati- cally neglects its youth must be prepared to invest considerable sums of money in remedial services and correctional supervision, both now and in the future. These resources, in turn, can better be spent as social capital investment, helping to prepare youth to assume contributing roles in society (Tienda and Wilson 2002a, b). The price that a nation pays for not constructively engaging and sup- porting its youth is ultimately far greater than what any natural disaster or armed conflict can possibly extract from its coffers (Jenkins 2001; Rizzini, Barker, and Cassaniga 2002). But the true cost cannot be measured simply in monetary standards, as some governments are prone to do. The social and political consequences far exceed any financial costs (Mangum and Waldeck 1997). Such nations must be prepared to have youth rebel under 4 SETTING THE CONTEXT dire circumstances or organize to change existing conditions (Anderson, Bernaldo, and David 2004; Welton and Wolf 2001). Both outcomes have tremendous implications for current and future generations. Further, dis- investments in young people effectively serve to divide a nation along age groups, which can compound other social relations based upon ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, class, and religion. To say that the world around us is changing dramatically would be a serious understatement. There are few, if any, countries in the world where this statement does not apply, including our own. The United States has experienced significant demographic, technological, economic, and political changes in the past decade that have tied it more closely to the rest of the world. For example, a remarkable increase in the number of newcomers has fundamentally altered the composition of the nation’s population (Levitt 2001). These new Americans have had a propensity to settle in cities, par- ticularly on both coasts, essentially reshaping these geographic areas by making them much more diverse in character (Delgado, Jones, and Rohani 2005). This dramatic increase in newcomers, particularly those who are undocumented, has become a major political issue that threatens to further divide a nation that is already fractured along a variety of focal social, economic, and political lines. The United States has also witnessed significant structural changes in its economy, reflecting growth in the service sector, increased prominence of communication and information technology, and the decline of manufac- turing. Employment in the industrial sector, or in ‘‘skilled trades’’ that historically enabled members of immigrant groups and low-income youth of color lacking college degrees to achieve relatively swift economic success, is increasingly much more limited. The remaining service-sector jobs that are available usually offer few opportunities for career advancement, often trapping newcomers and other members of groups of color in low-paid, ‘‘dead-end’’ positions (Bartik 2001; Moss and Tilly 2001; Newman 1999). Consequently, youth sharing a particular socio-demographic profile are increasingly marginalized in this society. At the same time as these demographic shifts have been occurring, the number of youth in American society, particularly adolescents, has grown at a rapid pace. This phenomenon also has played a prominent role in helping to shape day-to-day life as well as social policies (Damon and Gregory 2003; Delgado 2000, 2002; Tienda and Wilson 2002a). The number of youth aged 10 to 19 years increased dramatically between 1995 (37 mil- lion) and 2000 (almost 40 million). According to the U.S. Census Bureau (2000), it is projected that youth under the age of 18 will increase an addi- tional 7 million to 77.6 million by the year 2020. The population under the age of 18 has increased from 62.9 percent in 1978 to 72.4 percent in 2000 (Lopez 2002). Overall, there is nearly an even split along gender lines, with males accounting for 51 percent and females for 49 percent of that age cohort (U.S. OVERVIEW OF YOUTH-LED COMMUNITY ORGANIZING 5 Department of Health and Services, 2002). However, when gender is broken down into ethnic categories, the discrepancy between males and females is greater and has a history of greater fluctuation. African-American/blacks’ gender breakdown is approximately 54 percent female and 46 percent male, with the Latino youth population being approximately 47 percent female and 53 percent male; nonwhite Latinos, in turn, are nearly evenly split at 50 percent for each gender (Lopez 2002). Diversity among youth becomes a factor to consider alongside numerical increases, particularly in urban areas. In 2000, it was estimated that 1.3 million immigrants entered the United States (Immigration Update 2002). Over the past ten years, 43 percent of the nation’s population growth was attributed to immigration (Bayer and Bonilla 2001). Currently, the break- down of youth under the age of 18 by race is 64 percent white, 16 percent Latino, 15 percent African-American/black, 4 percent Asian/Pacific Is- lander, and 1 percent Native American (ChildStats.gov 2001). The amount of all children under the age of 18 living in poverty is 16 per- cent with great variation by race and ethnicity: 9 percent of white children, 33 percent of African-American/black children, and 30 percent of Latino children were living below the poverty level in 1999 (ChildStats.gov 2001). According to O’Hare and Mather (2003), the number of children living in severely distressed urban neighborhoods increased by 18 percent between 1990 and 2000: Of the 5.6 million children growing up in severely distressed neighbor- hoods, 55 percent are black, and 29 percent are Hispanic.