By Veronica Morris Moore“Try not to focus on the thing that’s wrong. You’re organizers; ya’ll could go on for days about what’s wrong with the world. Focus on the changes you want to see” urged Curtis Muhammad, an elder involved with Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Civil Rights Movement, to a room full of eager youth activist and adult allies. The annual Crossroads Fund youth gathering is an opportunity for youth activist to convene across the region and build together to ensure that youth are not only active in their projects, but as individuals in communities. It is also an opportunity to connect youth to broader social justice movement-building, across issues and communities. This year’s gathering was centered around the current state of youth organizing/movements, youth movements outside the nonprofit framework and how, historically, youth movements sustained themselves before the nonprofit framework. Curtis Muhammad shared his experience with SNCC and what it was like being a youth activist during the Civil Rights Movement. He recalled days where organizers spent most of the day knocking on doors of community members and local business to get people involved. Curtis also touched on how many victories organizers were able to achieve with no paycheck or other form of compensation-just the strength of the people and the common love for community. After the invigorating opening discussion with Curtis, Alejandro Molina, with the National Boricua Human Rights Network, gave the youth a history lesson. He asked of series of questions about historical youth movements and quickly the lack of knowledge of historical struggles surfaced. Everyone in the room unanimously agreed that there is a dire need for education on the history of Black and Brown struggles, especially ones where youth played a major role in the movement. By lunch the entire agenda had been taken over by the desire to discuss the history of youth organizers and how we’ve become so separated from it, as well as the complex of organizing for a paycheck. We paused for a second to enjoy the delicious lunch and performances from volunteers in the audience. Once lunch was over we went back to the discussion of how heavily we as organizers rely on the 501©3 status compared to the organizers of the 1960-70s who carried on without it. The youth identified that there needs to be more discussion around coming up with ways to survive and sustain organizations through practices that will produce funds without dependence. The group closed out the gathering with a brainstorm of all the things we want to see in our communities and society overall. Curtis challenged us to internalize three main steps necessary to grow our organizing efforts:Step 1 – 90% of our time as organizers should be spent going to people’s homes, barber shops, and churches, talking about what kind of change people want to see, y 10% of our time should be spent setting up safe spaces to invite folks that expressed interest to gather, identify their needs, and strategize on how to get them met.Step 2 – We need to create ways that people can contribute to the organizing by figuring out what are ways that people can give/fundraise.Step 3 – Confront anybody who holds oppressive authority over the people to make a change.The overall experience was very powerful, enlightening and inspiring for a rainy Saturday morning in Humboldt Park.
