Redefining Civic Engagement

I remember very clearly the last time I sat in a principal's office, being yelled at for acting "irresponsibly." This had happened to me many times growing up, but I didn't expect to have the experience again at the age of 24.

I am a community organizer working with inner-city youth in Wichita's predominantly low-income northeast side. Those youth had recently fought the Wichita school district's disproportionate minority suspension rate and had publicly forced concessions from Kansas' largest school district. At one moment in the campaign, before a crowd of over 250 supporters, one of the youth leaders presented a list of demands and forced the superintendent, the deputy superintendent and several school board members to answer yes or no to each one. The mostly white school officials, already visibly uneasy sitting in front of a room of angry black faces and unable to resort to their long-winded we-are-experts speeches, squirmed.

Later that month, I found myself sitting in the superintendent's office with five top school officials. They were pissed. Copies of the numerous articles our campaign generated in the press were spread out on the table. "How dare you put us on the spot like that?" they yelled. "You know there was no way that we could say no to your demands in front of all those people!"

"Yeah," I replied, "that's kind of the point."

They accused me of "corrupting" the youth and setting a bad example, insisting, "radical '60s-style power tactics are not appropriate now." As the officials continued to yell, it occurred to me that this was the first time in their long careers that they had ever seen youth effectively assert themselves and demand -- not ask -- for solutions to their problems. And they were scared. This kind of social change was not what they taught in civics class. It wasn't pretty. It required more than going to a voting booth and checking a box. Here were youth who did not fit the reliable pattern of disengagement and complacency. Here were youth who had found their voice.

Before finding my way into community organizing, I held jobs that ran the gamut of the different models of political and social change. I worked for a U.S. senator and became disillusioned with the ability of electoral politics to even begin to address the problems I saw around me. I watched a visiting family get turned away while trying to meet with their elected representative. As they left disappointed, Bill Gates and his entourage strolled right in and held an hour-long closed-door session with the senator.

I realize that my journey into organizing was a simultaneous quest for efficacy (to really address root problems and achieve real results) and a full commitment to my own radical value of self-determination. Once I began to work with youth, I realized that the disillusionment I felt with the ability of traditional means of civic engagement to accomplish anything was not unique to me, but one of the defining characteristics of the post-X generation.

Among all traditional indicators of civic engagement, including youth voting rates, statistics paint a disturbing picture of youth nonengagement, causing many to question the civic health of youth in America. There is, however, one indicator in which youth excel. Today's 15- to-25-year-olds post the highest rates of volunteerism. Forty percent have given time to a group in the past year, compared to 32 percent of "Xers" (21-to 35-year-olds) and "Boomers" (36-to 54-year-olds) and just 22 percent of "Matures" (55-to 69-year-olds).* The fact that youth voter turnout is at historically low levels while civic participation and volunteerism among the same demographic are at all-time highs presents an interesting duality and is actually indicative of a healthier, self-determined vision of democracy among today's youth.