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Young People Shaping
Democratic Politics
Interrogating Inclusion,
Mobilising Education
Edited by
Ian Rivers · C. Laura Lovin
Young People Shaping Democratic Politics
Ian Rivers · C. Laura Lovin
Editors
Young People Shaping

Democratic Politics
Interrogating Inclusion, Mobilising Education
Editors
Ian Rivers C. Laura Lovin
University of Strathclyde Independent Scholar
Glasgow, UK Glasgow, UK
Dr C. Laura Lovin’s work on this volume was funded by a Leverhulme Trust

Research Project Grant (ECF-2017-175)
ISBN 978-3-031-29377-1 ISBN 978-3-031-29378-8 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29378-8
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2023
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to all the contributors of this collection of works who

have given so generously of their time in drafting their chapters. The
chapters demonstrate the diversity of scholarship in the field of political
movements of young people and demonstrate how narratives that suggest
youth apathy when it comes to politics are misplaced. We would also
like to thank Rob Wannerton for assisting us with the final drafts of the
chapters, ensuring that references were in order. There is always a great
deal to do in preparing final drafts for submission and this has been a
collective effort on the part of the chapter authors and those who have
provided us with additional support.
v
Contents
1 Introduction 1
Ian Rivers and C. Laura Lovin
2 Black Youth Activism Was Pivotal to the Civil Right
Movement: How Black Lives Matter Is Inspiring
Education Activists of Today 9
Wanda J. Blanchett and Shelley D. Zion
3 Political Participation of Young People in Serbia:
Activities, Values, and Capability 31
Dragan Stanojević, Jelisaveta Vukelić,
and Aleksandar Tomašević
4 The 2018 Road Safety Protest in Bangladesh:
How a Student Crowd Challenged (or Could
not Challenge) the Repressive State 55
Nafisa Tanjeem and Rawshan E. Fatima
5 From the Streets to the Campus: The
Institutionalization of Youth Anti-Sexual
Harassment Activism in Post-Coup Egypt 83
Susana Galán and Angie Abdelmonem
vii
viii CONTENTS
6 When David Defeats Goliath. The Case of MeToo

University: The Solidarity Network of Victims
of Gender-Based Violence in Universities 109
Gemma Geis, Patricia Melgar, and Ana Vidu
7 Practising Sectarianism: Lebanese Youth Politics
and the Complexity of Youth Political Engagement 131
Elinor Bray-Collins
8 Interrogating Vulnerability Within the University:
A Case Study of Undocumented/DACAmented
Students at a Jesuit Institution 161
Anna Sampaio and Jesica Siham Fernández
9 Making Visible Intersectional Black Pain: Embodied
Activism and Affective Communities in Recent South
African Youth Movements 189
Grant Andrews
10 Existential Activism: The Complex Contestations
of Trans Youth 211
Mary Hawkesworth
11 Critical Literacies and the Conditions of Decolonial
Possibility 235
Navan Govender
12 Conclusion: International Perspectives on Youth
Political Mobilisations 261
Index 277
List of Contributors
Angie Abdelmonem Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

Grant Andrews University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South
Africa
Wanda J. Blanchett Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA
Elinor Bray-Collins Humber College, Toronto, ON, Canada
Rawshan E. Fatima Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA
Jesica Siham Fernández Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA, USA
Susana Galán Dimmons Research Group, IN3, Universitat Oberta de
Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain
Gemma Geis University of Girona, Girona, Catalonia, Spain
Navan Govender University of Strathclyde, GLASGOW, UK
Mary Hawkesworth Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA
C. Laura Lovin Independent Scholar, GLASGOW, Scotland, UK
Patricia Melgar University of Girona, Girona, Catalonia, Spain
Ian Rivers University of Strathclyde, GLASGOW, Scotland, UK
Anna Sampaio Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA, USA
ix
x LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Dragan Stanojević University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia

Nafisa Tanjeem Worcester State University, Worcester, MA, USA
Aleksandar Tomašević University of Novi Sad, Novi Sad, Serbia
Ana Vidu University of California, Berkeley, USA;
University of Deusto, Basque Country, Spain
Jelisaveta Vukelić University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia
Shelley D. Zion Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ, USA
List of Figures
Fig. 3.1 Conventional and unconventional participation for two

age groups (Source ESS, IX round Serbian population) 41
Fig. 9.1 Chumani Maxwele throwing excrement at a statue
of Rhodes Image: © David Ritchie/African News Agency
(2018) 201
Fig. 11.1 Visual components in the multimodal grammar of power 252
xi
List of Tables
Table 3.1 Theoretical scales—Descriptive statistics 42

Table 3.2 Logistic regression models for conventional politics
(young people 15–30 years old) 42
Table 3.3 Logistic regression models for non-conventional politics
(young people 15–30 years old) 44
Table 11.1 A multimodal grammar of power 246
xiii
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
For several years, there were suggestions that children and young people
were disinterested in politics because of numerous studies linked to voter
turnout. Voter apathy among younger age groups was assumed to repre-
sent a greater ambivalence toward politics among children and young
people. Yet, for nearly fifty years, researchers have shown that children
and young people engage with political messages, sometimes from a
very early age. The contributors of this volume go beyond theorizing
what is wrong with the exclusion of youth politics from the scholarly
and public debate in order to explore ways that disrupt these exclu-
sions. In this process, they drew on feminism, anti-racist thought and
critical race theory, legal theory, anti-colonial and decolonial theories
and methodologies, critical pedagogy, trans* theories and critiques of
heteronormativity, feminist theory, and transnational methodologies. This
I. Rivers
University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland, UK
e-mail: ian.rivers@strath.ac.uk
C. L. Lovin (B)
Independent Scholar, Glasgow, UK
e-mail: lovin@scarletmail.rutgers.edu
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2023
I. Rivers and C. L. Lovin (eds.), Young People Shaping Democratic
Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29378-8_1
2 I. RIVERS AND C. L. LOVIN
diverse scope is intentional and necessary. Through innovative analyt-

ical approaches that span the continuum of qualitative and quantitative
research, the volume calls for the recognition of grievances, tactics, strate-
gies, politics, and visions for change that are not readily legible. In doing
so, our volume simultaneously attends to the material-discursive condi-
tions that lead to the depoliticization of youth or their incorporation in
status-quo politics in order to set the scene for engaging with young
people’s political thought, actions, and visions for social change. We
sought to expand our own engagement with inclusion beyond educational
institutions by situating young people at the center of our inquiry, as
agents of political processes that promote, problematize, and re-imagine
inclusive societies. Together with our contributors, we have been moti-
vated by our conviction that young people’s political worlds are essential
yet often neglected when theorizing power, agency, ideology, inequality,
citizenship, democracy, social movements, and transformation. Last but
not least, the theoretical and methodological diversity of the volume is
intricately connected to the volume’s geographical scope and the develop-
ment of individual movements endemic to particular socio-cultural spaces,
even when traversed by global discursive currents, geopolitical vectors,
and global political economies. The most important themes of this book
include racism, patriarchy, colonialism, cis-genderism, heteronormativity,
classism, nationalism, neoliberal capitalism and/or old and new colo-
nialisms—and the ways they intersect with ageism, thus interweaving
dynamic assemblages of forces that shape young people’s life realities.
During 2015 and 2016, the editor of this volume (Ian Rivers), along
with colleagues in the US, undertook a cross-cultural study of chil-
dren’s and young people’s engagement with political narratives during
the 2015 UK general election and the 2016 US presidential election
(see Rivers et al., 2018). Rivers et al. (2018) found that discussions
among children and young people in primary/elementary school and
junior high/high school in both countries focused on three core themes:
the trustworthiness of political candidates, the promotion of equal rights,
and narratives surrounding immigration. In both UK and US schools,
children and young people were able to recall a great many negative
campaign messages and only a few positive ones. Issues relating to immi-
gration were often confused with racism and there was little in the way of
curricula space at school to unpack these meaningfully. Ultimately, Rivers
and his colleagues argued that it was important for children and young
people to have spaces where they could explore and interrogate political
1 INTRODUCTION 3
messages in meaningful ways, but they also suggested that a corollary of

this was the acceptance by educators (and the institutions to which they
belong) that their own political positions would, at times, be challenged.
This book explores the ways some of those challenges have been made—
both in educational institutions and in wider society—by young people,
often student activists, seeking affirmation and change.
A key innovation in this volume is the inclusion of a section for
key terms and a pedagogical feature at the end of each chapter. Each
pedagogical feature is presented in a way that can be used in the class-
room to better understand how young people make decisions, mobilize
and participate politically. It also enables readers to develop comparative
observations among the young people’s political interventions profiled,
which span a variety of arenas across the globe.
In Chapter 2 of this edited volume, Wanda J. Blanchett and Shelley
Zion consider how the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in the
United States (US) is inspiring education activists today. They argue that,
while there has been progress over the last seven decades in terms of
Civil Rights, the road toward educational and social justice and equity has
been challenging. Following the deaths of several unarmed young Black
people either by law enforcement officers or by local White vigilantes, the
BLM movement became a clarion call to resist law enforcement and state
racial oppression and discrimination. Blanchett and Zion discuss the chal-
lenges that Black and other students of color experience in their pursuit
of educational and societal access in the US and illustrate how schools can
be part of the problem, reproducing inequity and injustice. They offer an
overview of the impact of student activism in seeking social justice in the
US and discuss how the BLM movement has become a form of political
and societal resistance for young people nationally. Finally, they discuss
the transformation needed at university, school, and community levels to
support young people realizing their political participation in democracy.
In Chapter 3, Dragan Stanojević, Jelisaveta Vukelić, and Aleksandar
Tomašević offer an insight into levels of young people’s political activism
in Serbia, focusing specifically on the practices of young people in a post-
socialist context. They ask questions related to forms of political engage-
ment, issues of trust in political actors, and young people’s personal
capabilities to participate in political life. In a context of prolonged social
crisis, limited economic opportunity, low institutional and social trust,
they find that youth participation is shaped by instrumental goals, clien-
telism, and authoritarianism. While the traditional political party structure
still mobilizes a relatively large number of young people in Serbia, this

activity is only partly inspired by political and ideological goals: the domi-
nant strategy is one of getting a job and social promotion. However,
they also describe a counterpoint to the conventional political activities
in which the maintenance of a semi-authoritarian regime also creates
space for self-organizing and alternative protest politics grounded in the
traditions of the 1990s.
In Chapter 4, Nafisa Tanjeem and Rawshan E. Fatima explore the
mass student protests demanding road safety in Bangladesh in July and
August 2018 following a terrible “accident” where two young people
died. They ask the question, what does it mean when middle and high
school students reject the mainstream development narratives of the state
and associated claims of structural transformation of a severely unregu-
lated and accident-prone traffic system in Bangladesh? Additionally, they
consider how student protests pose an existential threat to an autocratic
state raising questions about state accountability, surveillance, inequity,
and democratic citizenship. The authors draw upon social movement
studies, critical cultural studies, and transnational and postcolonial femi-
nist frameworks to explore how the student movement in Dhaka not
only demonstrates ways in which repressive regimes adopt strategies that
subsume grassroots protests but also reveals the possibilities for radical
coalition building.
In Chapter 5, attention focuses on Egypt where, in 2012 and 2013,
young people, inspired by the January 25th Revolution, organized against
sexual harassment and assault in Tahrir Square and on the streets.
This chapter examines one of the few remaining anti-sexual harassment
initiatives that persisted until 2020 under Egypt’s authoritarian polit-
ical climate, HarassMap, and its Safe Schools and Universities program.
Drawing upon interviews with members of HarassMap and other anti-
sexual harassment activists between 2013 and 2015 and again in 2019,
Susana Galán and Angie Abdelmonen explore the civil and political
context that gave rise to the institutionalization of anti-sexual harass-
ment activism in Egypt. Focusing on Cairo University, they examine the
formation of multiple alliances between activists, students, and faculty,
and discuss the transformative potential such initiatives had during the
state’s attempt to co-opt anti-sexual harassment efforts.
In Chapter 6, focus shifts to the university campus and an initia-
tive to end Gender-Based Violence (GBV) in educational contexts.
Here, Gemma Geis, Patricia Melgar, and Ana Vidu describe how silence
1 INTRODUCTION 5
surrounding GBV has been a feature of Spanish university campuses

for decades. In this chapter, Geis and her colleagues consider how the
Solidarity Network of victims of gender violence (which was driven by
university students) brought together those people who had been victims
and those who support them. They show the barriers that were imposed
by some representatives of the institution and how those barriers were
overcome through alliances with other parts of the university community,
other universities, and other young people across the globe. They show
how this approach, where action focuses on promoting the intervention of
everyone in a community, not only has social impact but reduces violence
and protects victims.
A key feature of Elinor Bray-Collins’ chapter (Chapter 7) is her anal-
ysis of the challenges of student activism on a campus in a complex and
divided country, namely Lebanon. She describes how Lebanese youth
and students have protested to end political sectarianism and corruption
and achieve greater democratic accountability. Through an examination
of student political activity at the American University in Beirut, Elinor
explores the diverse motivations that drive young people’s politics, and
the attempts of partisan and secular youth activists to challenge polit-
ical elites. She shows us how educational spaces enable youth political
participation and how their political activities reproduce the dynamic that
constrains them.
By way of contrast, in Chapter 8 Anna Sampaio and Jesica Siham
Fernández explore the issue of undocumented/DACAmented student
activists. They show how race, gender, class, and status impact the
mobilization and inclusion of immigrant and undocumented youth on
college campuses. Through an ethnographic case study of undocu-
mented/DACAmented student organizing at a Jesuit institution, they
interrogate narratives of inclusion, along with supporting policies and
practices that both enable and disempower student mobilization. Their
examination highlights the various states of vulnerability that students
face, from the state as well as the university, and how those students
navigate this terrain to form their own spaces and places of resistance.
In Chapter 9, Grant Andrews provides an account of three student
movements in South Africa—#RhodesMustFall, #FeesMustFall, and the
#EndRapeCulture. Grant shows us how embodied activism was central
to these movements: this is where bodies were strategically used to visi-
bilize Black pain and to occupy spaces that excluded and oppressed
Black people. This chapter explores these various embodied forms of
student activism and argues that the inclusion of the body can unsettle
discourses of “appropriateness” and disembodiment in higher education
as well as foreground communities of affect and experience and highlight
intersectionality among different movements.
From embodied activism we move to existential activism in Mary
Hawkesworth’s chapter (Chapter 10) on trans youth. Here we see how
trans students in the US have launched innovative campaigns to educate
their peers, teachers, school administrators, elected officials, and the
public by responding to questions, giving presentations at school assem-
blies, meeting with teachers and administrators, explaining trans issues,
creating “diversity clubs” at school, testifying before school boards and
legislative committees, and creating social media sites interacting with
larger audiences. In this chapter, Hawkesworth introduces us to existential
activism—a mode of transformative action that debunks the notion that
there are only two configurations of human bodies (male/female) and
the belief that sex is fixed from birth. She demonstrates that, for many
people, gender identity and gender expression do not conform to those
dichotomous constructions of sex and gender championed by science,
medicine, religion, and the state. By analyzing the complex ways that
trans youth challenge “common sense,” Hawkesworth shows how trans
students illuminate multiple forms of injustice that are routinely ignored
in contemporary society. She argues that “through their daring existen-
tial activism, trans students make a compelling case for sex, gender, and
sexual variation as creative diversities essential for wise, flourishing, and
socially just societies.”
In Chapter 11, we move from the existential to the literary and
consider how critical literacies offer decolonial possibility. In this chapter,
Navan Govender explores how his own scholar-activist position influ-
enced the design of a project run with student-teachers at the University
of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland. Using multimodal critical discourse
analysis, Navan and a group of student-teachers critically engaged with a
local artifact in the City of Glasgow through a process of talking, seeing,
reading, writing, and (re)designing. Issues of coloniality, empire, class,
heteronormativity, heterosexism and cisnormativity, human relationships
to the environment, language variety, and multimodality, among others,
were imprinted in the texts student-teachers produced. Navan’s anal-
ysis of these texts reveals a host of possibilities for critical literacies as
a means to create conditions of decolonial possibility in the form of
political-pedagogical action in schools, colleges, and universities.
1 INTRODUCTION 7
Finally, in Chapter 12, the learning from each of the chapters is synthe-
sized and offers a perspective on the challenges to inclusion, integration,
affirmation, and equity as a result of institutionalization, often by those
who see young people as “incapacitated” rather than agents of positive
change. In this chapter, we discusses the roles of allies in promoting visi-
bility and eradicating silence and how political activism by young people is
often complex and full of contradictions—some from within movements
and some from outside. Ultimately this collection brings together educa-
tors, activists, and educator-activists, to better understand why, how, and
where young people mobilize to challenge political leadership and shape
their futures.
Reference
Rivers, I., Carragher, D. J., Couzens, J., Hechler, R. C., & Fini, G. B. (2018,
December). A cross-national study of school students’ perceptions of polit-
ical messages in two election campaigns. International Journal of Educational
Research, 92, 10–19.
CHAPTER 2
Black Youth Activism Was Pivotal to the Civil

Right Movement: How Black Lives Matter
Is Inspiring Education Activists of Today
Wanda J. Blanchett and Shelley D. Zion
Key Terms
Systemic and Structural Racism—is used to refer to any system
whether education, social, health, economic, laws, policies, or proce-
dures or other phenomena that negatively impacts Black and other
people of color on the basis of race.
W. J. Blanchett (B)
Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA
e-mail: wanda.blanchett@gse.rutgers.edu
S. D. Zion
Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ, USA
e-mail: zions@rowan.edu

Switzerland AG 2023
10 W. J. BLANCHETT AND S. D. ZION
Youth Activism—is used to describe formal and informal social, polit-

ical, educational, and other forms of activism aimed at improving the
human conditions with a specific focus on historically underserved
and underrepresented communities.
Transformative Student Voice—is the creation of sustained and
systemic opportunities for minoritized students to 1) inquire about
the root causes of problems in their schools and communities, and 2)
take action to address them by working with adult allies to develop
and implement better policies and practices that redesign/transform.
Introduction
I am not sharing these experiences for any other reason than to help
educate and better this town because I love and care about the people
who live here and its future. The only way we can make positive and effec-
tive change is to go back, look at the history, relearn the truth, reckon
with the past, and make sure things like this never happen again on any
level…I’m not talking about the racist acts, I’m talking about the racist
lack of action-- let’s make sure that never happens again.
Hope, 22-year-old Township alumna
More than 200 people enter the zoom meeting, for a first of its kind
townhall meeting, focused on conversations about how race and racism
are impacting the local school and community. This meeting is hosted
by a coalition of local mothers and educators who came together to
raise awareness and address racial issues in the school district and town,
prompted by a petition created by high school students and recent grads,
demanding a more racially inclusive curriculum, a more racially diverse
teaching staff, and diversity training for the school and community. The
petition was signed by 1609 community members. The facilitator opened
the conversation:
We are not here because something new is happening. We are here because
events that have continued to happen in the history of our country are
now occurring in a sequence and a way that has attracted our focus. The
context of COVID-19 has magnified our attention to these issues, but
the murders of George Floyd and Ahmad Aubry and Breonna Taylor and
incidents such as those that were publicly captured on video between Amy
2 BLACK YOUTH ACTIVISM WAS PIVOTAL TO THE CIVIL … 11
Cooper and Christian Cooper are common to those of us who are part
of the Black or Brown or People of Color communities. These are not
new experiences. The combination of the historical and current instances
of interpersonal and institutional racism are just now getting the attention
of a broader audience and that is powerful, and it creates an opportunity
to address and redress these issues by listening to the stories of people who
are impacted, by learning together, and by committing to action.
It is the summer of 2020, halfway through a year that, through the

onset of a global pandemic, and series of highly visible murders of Black
men and women at the hands of police, the Black Lives Matter Move-
ment was re-ignited culminating in calls for racial reckonings, alongside
daily protests, marches, demonstrations, and riots. Young people, in high
schools and in college, began to come together, to demand changes—
to hold their schools accountable for the current and past histories that
contribute to the systemic racism that pervades our systems and Country.
Often, it is only the national protest movements and marches that capture
the attention of our nation, where young people in these communities
have organized and participated in those as well. But, in this chapter, we
focus on the work of young people who are working locally, engaging
with school and community leaders, and working to make immediate
and concrete changes in their local schools and communities. We present
the stories of the young people across numerous small towns in a state
on the eastern seaboard, where communities are racially homogenous,
local control looms large, and thus young people of color are frequently
one of very few in their schools. In these communities, White students
often attend elementary and middle school with students who look like
them—then, arrive at regional high schools where students from multiple
local townships come together for the first time. Janae, a 17-year-old and
Township Senior explained:
Racism is present and prevalent to those it effects… the worst form of

racism stems from the institutionalized perception of certain races based
on demeaning stereotypes that somehow seep into my peers’ minds, and
into my education.
To fully grasp the significance of the events described above, and

further explored later in this paper, we need to understand a bit about the
history of institutionalized racism and the range of responses, resistances,
and reactions to it.
Since being brought to this country over 400 years ago literally bound
in chains as enslaved people, Black Americans “have had to fight” for
their human, civil, and constitutional rights (i.e., right to education,
right to be fully counted, right to vote) while these same rights were
granted originally to White men, and subsequently to White women,
and children at birth just by being white. Although the Emancipation
Proclamations abolished legal enslavement in 1865, the legal, structural,
and systemic racism that gave birth to slavery would continue to deny
Black Americans their constitutional rights through “Jim Crow Laws”
and White Only signs legally and visibly posted in the south. Together
these practices prevented Black and other students of color from attending
schools attended by their White peers and denied them other basic rights
and privileges afforded to White Americans (Blanchett, 2013). While
“Jim Crow Laws” were legal and practiced throughout the southern
United States, make no mistake about it, regardless of where Blacks
lived in America, they encountered some form of systemic and structural
racism (Blanchett, 2013), that to this day, still contributes to signifi-
cant economic, educational, and health disparities in Black communities
(American Psychological Association, 2012). The dismantling of “Jim
Crow Laws” and other legally sanctioned forms of discrimination and
bias inherently built into American systems and structures, including the
American education system, was achieved in large part through national,
state, and local communities organizing protests and other forms of resis-
tance such as legal actions, which all culminated into what is now known
as the Civil Rights Movement, which began in the 1950s.
The Civil Rights Movement represented a carefully crafted and coor-
dinated set of activities aimed at “challenging segregation and discrim-
ination through the 1960s” (Britannica, 2021). While there were many
groups that supported and contributed to the Civil Rights Movement, the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
(Ling, 2000) along with “the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
(SCLC)…, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)” are credited with being
responsible for organizing “nonviolent demonstrations to call attention to
specific inequalities, while individuals also challenged unjust laws indepen-
dently” (Britannica, 2021). However, an important and often overlooked
aspect of this movement is the fact that young people were at the center
of this work and were on the frontlines on the ground engaged in the
local work of the movement (Ling, 2000). Though there were many
significant victories and achievements coupled with tremendous pain and

loss during the Civil Rights Movement, one of the first major victo-
ries was the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954. Brown is
so significant because, the decision in this historic case declared that
“separate but equal” schools were indeed unconstitutional and cleared
the way for American schools to be integrated (Blanchett et al., 2005).
Although the Governor of Arkansas deployed the National Guard to stop
them, another notable milestone was achieved when President Eisen-
hower deployed U.S. soldiers to protect “The Little Rock Nine” as they
integrated a then all-White historic Central High School. The year of
1960 marked yet another sign of progress in education as then, six-year-
old Ruby Bridges integrated a then all-White New Orleans William Frantz
Elementary School protected by U.S. Marshals (Britannica, 2021).
Given that Black Americans and other communities of color have “had
to fight” for all of the progress we have made, to date, toward access to a
more equitable education, it is not surprising that after years of witnessing
violence, cruelty, brutality, and even murder of Black women, men, and
children at the hands of law enforcement and White vigilantes that young
Black people would lead this new movement toward racial reckoning in
the fight for social justice. Founded in 2014, following the acquittal of the
Florida man who killed an unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin (Morris,
2021; Rim, 2020), the Black Lives Matter Movement (BLM) was young
people’s response to the injustice of Black people being murdered by
police as if Black Lives were worthless and simply did not matter or
certainly were not as valuable as White lives. Though the BLM move-
ment was indeed started by young Black people who had had enough
and were, as Fannie Lou Hammer stated back in 1964, “Sick and tired
of being sick and tired,1 ” they were able to galvanize young people of
all races, ages, and backgrounds literally all over the country and globally.
The twin pandemics of COVID-19 and its disproportionate impact on
Black and other communities of color in the United States, coupled with
the reality that almost everyone was working and/or going to school from
home, created the perfect storm for a nation to watch the 9-minute video
of the murder of George Floyd at the hands of then Minneapolis police
officer Chauvin and to call for national, and eventually, global, racial reck-
oning. Like the activism of the 1950s and 1960s that called attention to
1 https://awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/2019/08/09/im-sick-and-tired-of-being-sick-
and-tired-dec-20-1964/.
segregation and discrimination, while the primary purpose of BLM was to

stop the killing of unarmed Black people by police, the movement also has
both a national and local component that is focused on speaking truth to
power regarding a wide range of social injustices perpetrated against Black
people that contributes to education, health, and economic disparities,
among others.
Black Lives Matter Movement as a Current

Form of Political and Societal
Resistance for Today’s Young People
…17-year-old Trayvon Martin was walking through a Florida neighbor-

hood with candy and iced tea when a vigilante pursued him and ultimately
shot him dead…in July 2013, on learning about the acquittal of Martin’s
killer, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi invented the hashtag
#BlackLivesMatter, a rallying cry for numerous local struggles for racial
justice that sprang up across the U.S. (Morris, 2021)
Morris (2021) reminds us that, for decades when local Black and other
people of color, when faced with undeniable injustice that has been perpe-
trated against Black and Brown people, local people have summoned the
courage to start a movement to appeal to the conscious of America and
the world by calling attention to the injustice. Following his murder in
1955, at the hands of White Supremacists, Emmett Till’s mother insisted
that America and the world see the badly beaten, bruised, and shot body
of her child Emmett. Morris notes that it was in fact a lack of justice for
Till that prompted Rosa Parks to refuse to follow Jim Crow bus riding
rules. Likewise, as noted above, the founders of the hashtag #Black Live
Matter started a movement to call attention to the injustice of Trayvon’s
killer not being held accountable for his murder.
BLM has been primarily focused on police and vigilante killings of
unarmed Black children, women, and men. However, it has also sought to
call attention to a plethora of societal injustices and violence committed
by individuals and the state against Black people such as racial, gender,
economic, and health inequalities, inequities, and disparities while also
attacking attempts to suppress and/or limit Black and other people of
color’s participation in our democracy (Morris, 2021). In their own
words, BLM’s mission is to “…eradicate White supremacy and build local
power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state

and vigilante” (Black Lives Matter, 2021). To this end, recently, BLM
have launched campaigns focused on demilitarizing Black neighborhoods
and defunding the police by investing in Black communities and neigh-
borhoods. Though Joseph (2017) describes BLM as “still unfolding” and
“not fitting easily into existing categories” of social justice movements,
and Morris (2021) surmises that, “it is not yet clear what social and polit-
ical transformations it will engender,” these same scholars also conclude
that the BLM Movement “…has taken the baton from the Civil Rights
era” (Morris, 2021) and “[f]ew grassroots uprisings have done as much,
in such a short period of time” (Joseph, 2017). Following the murder of
Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York City,
we saw something that we had theretofore not seen, effective local orga-
nizing and activism bringing together scores of young primarily through
social media to march and protest waving signs and yelling BLM in their
own local communities with some also traveling to “hot spots” (Ferguson,
New York City) across the country. They even shutdown major highways
in Los Angeles and New York City. Thus, it was no surprise that when
George Floyd’s murder was captured on video by a teenaged eyewit-
ness, in the midst of the COVID-19 Pandemic that had hit Black and
Brown communities extremely hard, and with a U.S. President in the
White House who at best was a White supremacist sympathizer, and at
worst an unapologetic racist, that this movement would be more re-
ignited and more effective than ever before in demanding justice. While
BLM was already a global movement, in the days and weeks following
Floyd’s murder, a large number of Black and other young people of color,
coupled with White young people and some of their parents, took to
the streets in outrage across the United States and the world. George’s
murder seemed to be another “Emmett Till” moment in terms of raising
the consciousness of “Unwoke White People” regarding the insidious and
vicious nature of racism in America. But many of us were unsure if the
American legal system would work this time to convict a police officer
who we all watched murder George, as we had seen so many grand juries
not even indict, let alone convict, police officers, and in the few instances
when they were indicted and charged, few were held accountable. Of
course, much of what has been written in the professional literature and
in the media regarding the BLM movement was written prior to the
culmination of what we would call BLM’s two largest victories to date,
which include the significant role that BLM played in turning out young
people to vote in the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election and Georgia Senate
Runoff Election, in the midst of the COVID-19 Pandemic. The second
most significant, and, in some’s mind, the most significant victory thus
far, came on Tuesday, April 20, 2021 when former Minneapolis Police
Officer Derek Chauvin, who murdered George Floyd, was found guilty
on all three charges of second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and
second-degree manslaughter. It is worth noting that while the global
BLM movement has been focused on eradicating systemic racism and
White Supremacy, like with the Civil Rights Movement, there has simul-
taneously been a local component to BLM focused on youth activism in
local communities.
The Origins of American Public

Education and the Role of Schools
in Reproducing Inequity and Injustice
Black and other students of color’s long struggle to gain equal access to
public education has yet to be achieved, is also often distorted, and not
presented in its proper historical context. To address this shortcoming,
we will provide a historical overview of Black students and their quest for
educational access and equity in the American public education system.
As Blanchett (2013) noted previously, the American public education
system in its original conceptualization was never designed or intended
to serve ALL students, and certainly not, Black and other students of
color. Consequently, it does not surprise some of us that a system that
was designed from its very conception to be exclusionary and discrimi-
natory would, in fact, do just that, exclude Black and other students of
color, women, and students with disabilities (Blanchett, 2006). Afterall,
the American public education system was conceived and designed to
educate White men to become better citizens. Not only was our American
public education system designed to be exclusionary and discriminatory,
but our laws protected this system of privilege and access for a few. This
resulted in two American public education systems: (a) a public education
system for White students and (b) a public education system for Black and
other students of color (Blanchett, 2006, 2009, 2010).
To start to understand why the American public educational system
seems to only work well for a few privileged children and families, we must
more fully understand its original purpose and intent (Zion & Blanchett,
2011). American public schools historically were designed to control

and sort children deemed problematic or undesirable by society (Applied
Research Center, 2006). In Thomas Jefferson’s words, by “raking a few
geniuses from the rubbish,” this system allowed a very small number to
advance from lower to upper classes (Applied Research Center, 2006).
In 1851, the first compulsory education law was passed, with the goal of
“ensuring that the children of poor immigrants get ‘civilized’ and learn
obedience and restraint, so they make good workers and don’t contribute
to social upheaval” (Applied Research Center, 2006). Our public schools
have long been used as an instrument of segregation and forced assimi-
lation, beginning with laws that forbade slaves to learn to read, removed
Native American students from their homes and placed them in boarding
schools, outlawed the use of languages other than English in public school
classrooms, and criminalized children who did not attend school (Gatto,
2005). It is possible to argue that schools have come a long way since
their initial establishment. For example, Brown v. Board of Education elim-
inated segregation based on race; the school choice movement created
an array of charter school choices for families who have access to them;
and the disability rights movement, which ensured a free and appro-
priate education for students with disabilities in American public school
settings—and yet, we seem to be no closer to closing the racial equity gaps
in our education system (Berlak, 2007). Our American public education
system was developed with a set of purposes, explicitly stated in law and
public policy, to control and sort students according to the needs of the
state (Zion & Blanchett, 2011). Although current policies have moved
from the notion of control and sorting into rhetoric about the provi-
sion of equitable opportunities and outcomes for all, as these students in
South Jersey’s experiences illustrate, our schools are not working well for
many Black and students of color, poor children, students with disabili-
ties, and students in urban settings. We contend that the BLM Movement
has inspired former and current student activism that is playing a critically
important role in forcing American public schools to reckon with the
institutionalized racism, marginalization, and oppression experienced by
Black and other students of color in their quest for an equitable education.
While the student body in American public schools is more diverse
today than at any other point in American history, 41% of Black and
Hispanic, and 41% American Indian/Alaska Native students attended
high poverty schools compared to 15% Asian and only 8% of White
students (Institute of Education Sciences, 2020). The Condition of
Education Report also illustrated that Black and other students of color
largely attend segregated schools where the school enrollment is 75% or
more students of color, who are still labeled as “minority” students by
the U.S. Department of Education (n.d.). For example, in 2017, 60%
of Hispanic, 58% Black/African American, 53% Pacific Islander, and 39%
each American Indian/Alaska Native and Asian, compared to only 6% of
White, students were attending schools with at least 75% students of color
(Condition of Education, 2020).
We find ourselves in a despicable education dilemma where many
Black and other students of color are still being denied the promise
of Brown. Although we no longer have “Jim Crow Laws” and White
Only signs blocking Black and other students of color from attending
schools attended by their White peers, we still have unexplained educa-
tional disparities, on the basis of race, social class, and perceived ability and
segregated schools in twenty-first-century America (Blanchett, 2013). In
many respects, today’s American public schools are remarkably different
in terms of the student demographics from Jim Crow and court-ordered
desegregation era schools, but, yet they still bear some undeniable simi-
larities in terms of equity and access. For example, in stark contrast to
American public school data trends where White students have historically
comprised the overwhelming majority of U.S. public school students, in
2017 White students comprised only 48% of enrollment compared to 61%
in 2000 (Condition of Education, 2020). Most importantly, during this
period of time, Latinx students’ enrollment in American public schools
increased from 16 to 27% and Black student enrollment declined from
17 to 15% (Condition of Education, 2020). Additionally, in 10 states
(i.e., AK, CA, CO, FL, IL, KS, NV, NM, TX, and WA) and the District
of Columbia, English Language Learners comprised 10% or greater of
the student enrollment with the largest percentage in urban schools (The
Condition of Education Report, 2020).
Despite enrollment of students of color at an all-time high, the
teaching force is still overwhelmingly White and female. Specifically, 76%
and 24%, respectively, of U.S. teachers are female and male (Condition
of Education, 2020). White teachers comprise 79% of the teaching force,
followed by 9% Hispanic, 7% Black, 2% Asian, 2% two or more races, 1%
American Indian/Alaska Native and Pacific Islander was less than 1% (The
Condition of Education Report, 2020). More importantly, the American
educational system seems to lack the will and courage to appropriately
educate these diverse students. Failure to design and deliver instruction
that meets the educational needs of students of color in general educa-

tion is directly related to the problem of disproportionate representation
of students of color in special education. Research has shown that when
students do not perform well academically, do not behave according to
teachers’ cultural expectations, when teachers do not know what to do
with students due to cultural mismatch, and if they are Black students,
teachers are more likely to refer them for special education (Williams,
2008). Some Black students and other students of color also graduate
from high school unprepared to be successful in postsecondary education,
have meaningful employment, and prosper in life, not because of their
ability, but due to the poor-quality education they received (Blanchett,
2013). As a result of not preparing an overwhelmingly White teaching
force to serve all children well and, especially, Black students and other
students of color, the American public education system, and its schools,
perpetuates racial and social inequities. Also, as the student activists will
share in their own words in this chapter, the lack of careful and inten-
tional attention given to teaching ALL educators and students, especially
White educators and students, the truth about American History, Black
History, racism, White privilege, and White Supremacy and how it has
seeped into all American systems, structures, and policies, is still, to this
day, causing great injury to Black students and other students of color in
our schools. Just like with the Civil Rights Movement, change will likely
only come through student activism and resistance.
A Brief Historical Overview of Student

Activism and Resistance in the United States
As mentioned earlier, young people have held key roles in pushing social
change in our society. In this section, we will provide a brief overview of
some of the ways in which young people have stepped up and shown us
our failings. Beginning in the 1950s, young people were instrumental in
the various actions of desegregation, even as their participation has been
neglected in our national dialogue. Let us take for example, Claudette
Colvin, who at 15 refused to move to the back of the bus, 9 months
before Rosa Parks, in 1955, or the Little Rock Nine, who in 1957 were
barred by the national guard from entering a segregated high school,
or Ruby Bridges, who at 6 years old was the first Black child to inte-
grate a previously segregated southern school (Women in the Modern
Civil Rights Movement, 2021). Youth were the “backbone of the civil
rights movement” leading sit-ins, protests, marches, and voter registra-

tion drives. This tradition of youth activism continues today, as young
people lead the BLM protests and marches, turn out in high numbers to
vote, and engage in their local communities as activists and organizers to
end harmful practices.
Building on the history of youth activism for civil rights in the 50s
and 60s, young people on college campuses made explicit demands for
ethnic studies to see themselves and their peers represented in college
curriculums, to have the opportunity to study the works of people who
looked like them, and to see their histories represented. In recent years,
the ethnic studies movement has found a foothold in middle and high
schools, where young people, often in partnership with their teachers,
demand that the curriculum be both a window and a mirror to see them-
selves, and to see the breadth of diversity in the world around them.
The actions of young people have led to the creation of ethnic studies
programs and departments at colleges and universities, and of topically
focused courses at high schools. It has not yet resulted in large-scale
changes to the curriculum of the P-12 school system, nor of college
curriculum writ large.
In the 80s, zero tolerance policies became common practices in K-
12 schools and created an atmosphere of policing in schools which
predictably targeted Black and Brown children and created the school
to prison pipeline. Young people, often in conjunction with educators
and community organizers, have challenged these policies, and been part
of the shift away from zero tolerance toward a restorative approach in
some schools and communities. These changes, however, are contested
and dependent on the parties in power, at any given moment, to be
maintained. In 2014, the Department of Education released a new set of
policy and practice guidelines aimed explicitly at reducing the school to
prison pipeline, but following the 2016 Presidential election, new leader-
ship in the Department of Education rolled back previous guidelines and
endorsed a return to more stringent enforcement, including more police
in schools (Advancement Project, 2018).
More recently, youth have been central in organizing and campaigning
to address issues of gun violence and school shootings, following the
Parkland shooting in 2018. Young people at schools across the nation
organized walkouts at their own schools, and the Parkland students influ-
enced legislation and increased funding at local, state, and national levels
(Belle, 2020). This movement has evolved and expanded to address the
disproportionate impact of gun violence on Black and Brown commu-

nities and to highlight its connection to other forms of violence. Youth
have also, both globally and locally, led the conversation on the impact of
climate change. Young people, from elementary through college, can rely
on their “moral authority” as children, and on their social media skills,
to focus adult attention on issues that matter to them (thinking, doing,
changing, 2020).
The focus on drawing attention to youth activism is not only visible
in the media but has increasingly become the focus of researchers who
seek to understand its origins and impacts, and to further our under-
standing of how to build the capacity of young people to do this work.
These researchers focus on the development of critical consciousness
across different settings based on the understanding of youth as poten-
tial change agents in their schools and communities (Caraballo et al.,
2017; Kirshner et al., 2015; Lac & Baxley, 2019; Sung, 2015). Much
of this research occurs in out of school settings in urban communities
including in youth and community organizing groups that “push in” to
the conversations about public education (Allen-Handy & Thomas-EL,
2018; Rosen, 2019). This work takes many forms, but one key move-
ment is toward the idea of transformative student voice (Zion, 2020).
In the following section, we will transition to a discussion of some local
outcomes of transformative student voices from South Jersey, United
States.
What’s Happening in an Eastern Seaboard State

and What Is Transformative Student Voice?
As mentioned in the opening, we are focusing on some unique oppor-
tunities for youth activism connected to BLM movements in an eastern
seaboard state and a region of the country that includes over 200 school
districts. Many of these districts consist of only one or two schools, espe-
cially at the elementary and middle school level with students in these
communities attending larger regional high schools that support multiple
smaller districts. This results in a setting in which students attend schools
that are highly segregated, and schools only become more racially diverse
as students progress into high school. Local news outlets frequently
cover overt instances of racism, often when competing athletic teams
and racialized language is used by White students to taunt Black and
Brown players. Black students, and recent alumni, in these communities
are coming together to raise their concerns, hold their districts account-
able, and advocate for change. Students have organized marches and
protests, circulated petitions, and participated in town hall meetings to
share their experiences and expectations. The power of their words and
testimonies is palpable, as the adults who listen to their stories, many for
the first time, are forced to grapple with a reality that is very different
than they had previously perceived. In the words of the young people,
they convey the complexity of navigating their identities, of balancing
who they are against the majority, of dealing with daily microaggressions,
biases, and assumptions. They name their emerging awareness of these
tensions, often through experiences in college, but they also name the
potential and possibility they see, in the allies, friends, and teachers with
whom they interacted.
To be a person of color in this township is to be an anomaly at its finest.

When I walk through the halls of my school, I see zero teachers who bear
the same skin complexion as me. I see very few students who look the
same as me and even fewer who embrace their beauty for what it is. They
ignore and degrade themselves to fit in with their White counterparts or
they swing the other way and are then ostracized by their peers. To be a
student of color in this township is to walk a fine line of being too Black
or not Black enough.
Harmony, 19, alumnae
To be a Black middle schooler in this township is to be told that you

should be good at dancing and basketball because it’s in your genes.
Latriece, 17, Junior
To be a Black child in this township is to never have any books in your

5th grade classroom that resemble you. Overall, to be a person of color in
this township is to want to dilute your culture and heritage to a tolerable
amount so you don’t further give into the already negative narrative that
most students and staff have already embedded in their minds. But just
like I learned in physics class there’s always an equal opposite reaction, so
to be a person of color in this township is to live in two worlds at once.
To have genuine friendships and peers who want to be allies, in spite of
generational biases, and to attend safe schools with rigorous curriculum
despite microaggressions. To be a Black student in this township is to be
able to talk and have your peers listen while slowly dismantling classmates
already preconceived notions about Black people.
Shanae, 17, Senior
You wouldn’t have known it if you knew me back then, but growing up
in this town with the skin, this hair taught me to hate my Blackness. I
was taught that my Blackness was less than and I had to actively fight that
narrative every day. When I went to college and I was exposed to a couple
of people who looked like me only, then, was I able to embrace the beauty
that was the skin and this hair and this body as a whole.
Brittany, 23, alumnae
I wish you knew that I laughed at the racial jokes to make you feel comfort-
able. I wish you knew that I devalue who I am in every situation to make
it more comfortable for you. I wish you know how disrespectful it is when
you use the n-word with the hard “R”. I wish you knew that because I was
trying so hard to make you comfortable, I lost myself. I wish you knew
that my skin color is not going to hurt you. I wish you knew what it feels
like to wear a skin color that in one glance identifies you as other to many
and less than to some, without any way of knowing who thinks what. I
wish you knew the pain behind my smile. I wish you knew how you taught
me to hate my curls, my hips, my melanin skin, that I was born in. I wish
you knew how hard it was to get up every day in a place that hated, or
simply tolerated my existence, strictly based on the color of my skin. Oh,
how I wish you knew the pain behind my smile.
Harmony, 19, alumnae
Transformative student voice (Zion, 2020) is the creation of sustained

and systemic opportunities for minoritized students to (1) inquire about
the root causes of problems in their schools and communities, (2) take
action to address them by working with adult allies to develop and imple-
ment better policies and practices that redesign/transform systems. It is
built on key concepts from community organizing and social movements,
learning sciences and youth development, identity and empowerment,
and critical pedagogies that center the development of critical conscious-
ness in youth and adults. The development of critical consciousness
requires an intersectional approach to both adult and youth develop-
ment to start with an understanding of our own social identities, and how
those privilege or marginalize us, then to explore the ways that systems
(legal, educational, social) institutionalize and reinforce that privilege and
marginality. Further, we ground our work in frameworks developed by
the Combahee River Collective, and by Kimberley Crenshaw (2017),
that explicate the importance of working at the intersections-where race
and gender, class and sexuality, and all other social positioning inform
who we are and how we experience the world. This requires an under-
standing and acknowledgment of the complexity of identity and systems,
and a commitment to eradicating all the forms of oppression that exist in
our social systems. This approach is designed to address marginalization
by centering the life experiences, funds of knowledge, and aspirations of
youth of color from low-income communities, while also creating oppor-
tunities that expand their knowledge and skills as leaders and change
agents of change (Paris & Alim, 2014).
Transformative student voice work is built on four core values:
1. A conception of communication as dialogue (in which a climate

of trust and openness exists and is characterized by all participants
working with each other).
2. The requirement for participation and democratic inclusivity (as
such that no voice is excluded—particularly those who have been
silenced, are critical or conflicting, or speak in ways outside of the
dominant forms of conversation).
3. The recognition that power relations are unequal and problem-
atic (requires that not only are we aware of who we listen to, but
how and what we listen about, and the relative power and privilege
accorded to particular experiences).
4. The possibility for change and transformation (must act upon the
input of students, and ongoing engagement of students as agents of
change) (Robinson & Taylor, 2007, p. 8).
In our research, since 2007, we have seen young people in middle

school take up questions of property tax allocation, immigrant rights,
school climate, and curriculum (Zion et al., 2015, 2017). We have worked
with high school aged youth-based community organizing groups in
Denver and Philadelphia to take on issues of gentrification and school
policing. We have engaged high school students in New Jersey in a focus
on school climate, resulting in an ongoing youth-adult partnership to
expand social studies and language arts curriculum to be more inclusive of
the history of all demographic groups, and to present training on implicit
bias and microaggressions to teachers and students (Zion, 2020). We have
shown the potential of engaging the power of young people, in and out
of school, to make change toward goals of equity and justice, and now
call on educators to engage youth in re-imagining the purpose of public

schools (Zion et al., 2021).
These examples show a small segment of the long history of youth
activism in civil rights issues, in community and school reform, and the
transformative student voice framework, and suggest the potential for
adults to create contexts in which young people build the skills to engage
even more purposefully in their local, national, and global communities.
In the following sections, we will discuss youth leadership in the BLM
movement, and then transition to a discussion of some local outcomes of
that work.
Pedagogical Feature
In all of this work is the hope that young people, who have their words
and work, will make a difference in their communities, for their friends
and siblings, and most of all, for themselves. What follows is a listing
of the recommendations and actions they identify as necessary to get us
to some sort of reconciliation and repair. What they want most is to be
heard, to be seen, to be valued, and they have clear expectations for what
schools, communities, and adults can do to make that happen. Young
people are clear that:
Once we create the educated and accepting environment within our

schools, it will then work its way outwards to the parents and families, thus
creating an educated and accepting community. That is why the township
needs to teach kids about the true history of America and give kids [all
students, and especially, White students] teachers to learn from that aren’t
exactly like them.
Brittany, 23, alumane
During a period of national and global racial reckoning, what are

local education activists asking of their schools and communities to create
more inclusive and equitable schools and learning environments?
The young education activists, who were participants in the focus
group discussions in an Eastern Seaboard state, ask that their schools and
communities do the following:
1. Talk and teach about race and racism from an early age. Teach
tolerance, acceptance, learn about other cultures, learn about the
injustices of our country, “dive into the touchy subjects until they
are no longer touchy.” It’s not enough to frown on racist behaviors,
students must be taught what is right and wrong.
2. Combat internal biases by expecting adults, and students, to actively
learn, listen, and evolve.
3. Hire more diverse teachers, so that students see themselves, and see
a representation of teachers who are not like them.
4. Change the curriculum at the township high school to make our
schools more inclusive.
5. Teach students how to not be racist, why they should not be racist,
and help them to learn the appropriate language to use.
6. Develop protocols for racist acts, with clear consequences, and repair
for harm caused and ensure that victims of racism have resources.
Use these incidents as teaching opportunities.
What areas of improvement did community members identify after

hearing the lived experiences of student activists?
Though these student activists spoke with incredible clarity and convic-
tion as they spoke their truth and lived experiences to “power,” hearing
the reactions of the community members, in response to these young
people and the panels, as the community members identified areas they
wanted to work on was also powerful.
The areas of improvement they cited included the following:
1. Expand the curriculum to make sure that our children in the town-
ship are exposed to a wide range of viewpoints to the hard history,
to the facing history, to broader literature bases, and to multiple
perspectives.
2. Diversify the faculty in such a way to be representative of the various
groups of people in the United States.
3. Question police presence in schools.
4. Develop mentoring and support for students, faculty, community
members, and families who are Black or people of color—to create
spaces for people to support each other.
5. Hold students and each other accountable for any kind of hateful or
divisive or oppressive rhetoric or actions.
6. Understand the history of the township both from the perspective of

the historical pieces that were about segregation and racism and anti-
Black violence, but also, about abolition and the history of smaller
or small portions of the community that were really integral to that
kind of work.
7. Take on White privilege and determine how does this become a
long-term change and not just little curricular bits or little add-
ons or little one-time things, but really, fundamentally, changing the
direction that the district is oriented to.
We conclude our chapter with the final thoughts and charge of the
facilitator of the session that generated the response above and the second
author of this chapter, Professor Shelley Zion. Realizing that the hard
work of dismantling racism, White Privilege, and White Supremacy in
American public education will only get done when those who benefit
from it work diligently every day to become anti-racist and to eradicate
it:
There aren’t any easy answers to any of this. We have spent 400 years in
this country, screwing it up, so we are not going to fix it based on one
phone call, one curricular change, or one series of meetings. What I’m
challenging you to do, as we end, this conversation tonight, is to each,
individually, think about your personal role in it. In my view, the only way
we affect these changes is, when individual people, choose to take up their
privilege, and use it, to dismantle oppressive systems. Use it, to become
actively anti-racist. Make that long-term commitment to not stepping away
from and turn away from the challenges because, there will be challenges.
Because it will be difficult and it will make some people mad, and they
will be mean to you, and they will cut you out, and they will say all kinds
of things. There will be drama and trauma and problems. Welcome to the
America that black and people of color live in every day! So, my challenge
is, there are a hundred and sixty plus people in this conversation today,
what are you all going to do? That’s my question.
References
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sion-of-obama-era-school-discipline-guidance-is-an-attack-on-youth-of-color/
Allen-Handy, A., & Thomas-EL, S. L. (2018). Be(com)ing critical scholars: The
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CHAPTER 3
Political Participation of Young People

in Serbia: Activities, Values, and Capability
Dragan Stanojević, Jelisaveta Vukelić,

and Aleksandar Tomašević
Key Terms
Authoritarianism—represents an ideological construct of social cogni-
tion which views the world as inherently dangerous, and that person’s
social group (nation, ethnicity, race) is in need of protection. In that case,
protection requires conformity to different forms of political authority
and submission to existing social hierarchies.
D. Stanojević (B) · J. Vukelić

University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia
e-mail: dstanoje@f.bg.ac.rs
A. Tomašević
University of Novi Sad, Novi Sad, Serbia
e-mail: atomashevic@ff.uns.ac.rs

Switzerland AG 2023
32 D. STANOJEVIć ET AL.
Stabilitocracy—represents a political regime that, despite undemo-

cratic characteristics, enjoys external legitimacy (e.g., from the EU) by
promising political stability. The paradox is that while those regimes
pretend to offer stability by regulating certain regional issues (e.g., bilat-
eral relations, migration flows) the very lack of democracy is a main source
of instability.
Political atomization—refers to a situation in which citizens are alien-
ated from both political processes and each other, which creates fertile
ground for the growth of authoritarian and anti-democratic tendencies.
Introduction
Focusing on the case of Serbia, in this chapter we explore conventional
and unconventional political participation of young people, and point
out several factors (values, socio-economic status, age, gender, interest in
politics, sense of political efficiency) that shape their formation. Political
circumstances in post-socialist Serbia are fertile ground for very diverse
forms of political participation driven by various motives, and therefore a
good place to start exploring the impact of this particular context (lega-
cies of state socialism and post-socialism) on youth political engagement.
As we shall demonstrate, conventional politics, with its informal rules of
the game, developed clientelism, the still traditional structure of political
parties, mobilizes a relatively large number of young people compared
to other European countries. However, this type of political engage-
ment is only partly motivated by political and/or ideological goals. The
prevailing motivation stems from job opportunities available in the public
sector and social promotion through political parties. On the other hand,
semi-authoritarian regimes (such is the case with Serbia) can induce self-
organizing and various alternative forms of youth engagement, which
are grounded in the traditions of the 1990s and the opposition to the
Milosevic regime.
Besides a close look at the Serbian case, this chapter provides an
overview of the current debate on the transformation of political activism
in the twenty-first century, with special emphasis on the practices of young
people in the post-socialist context. Political participation is considered
one of the basic preconditions for the development of modern democratic
institutions. However, in the past few decades, there has been a notice-
able trend of declining participation in most developed countries. Along
3 POLITICAL PARTICIPATION OF YOUNG PEOPLE IN SERBIA: … 33
with the decline in trust in political institutions, these processes have

resulted in the creation of a “democratic deficit” (Norris, 2011; Putnam,
2000; Stoker, 2006). In this regard, young people are particularly disad-
vantaged, with research showing that they are least involved through
conventional channels of political participation (Grasso, 2014; Kimberlee,
2002; Sloam & Henn, 2019; Wattenberg, 2006). However, research also
indicates that this does not necessarily mean that young people are disen-
gaged and apathetic but that they choose alternative forms of political
engagement such as protest, membership in civil society organizations,
online activism, political spending, etc., mainly because they feel excluded
from formal policies governed by “old people” (Norris, 2002; Sloam,
2013, 2016; Stockemer, 2014). Such observed trends of political partic-
ipation of young people, their disengagement from conventional forms
of politics, and the growing democratic deficit open the question of the
future of democracy and thus represent one of the most important topics
in contemporary political sociology (Elison et al., 2020; Kitanova, 2020;
Pilkington & Pollock, 2015).
The situation is particularly unfavorable in young European democra-
cies, where the building of democratic institutions and practices is slow
and difficult. Namely, research indicates generally lower levels of political
participation in post-socialist countries (Howard, 2003; Rose & Munro,
2003) and a relatively low engagement of youth in politics (Haerpfer
et al., 2002; Vukelić & Stanojević, 2012). Another question is who are the
young people who are engaged, what are their sociological profiles, with
what ideas and motives do they enter the political field? Several studies
have already detected some authoritarian diversions of young people in
Southeast Europe (Lavrič et al., 2019). Thus, it would be interesting
to check whether there are consequences for political engagement, i.e.,
whether, in addition to young people being more authoritarian, those
among them who are more authoritarian are also more active.
This chapter is structured as follows. First, we start with presentations
of the conceptual and contextual frameworks of the research, followed by
a note on the data and methods used in our analysis. Our methodological
approach is based on the use of logistic regression, a subtype of regression
in which the outcome (dependent) variable is a binary event. We then
transition to the presentation and discussion of the result, then conclude
with final remarks.
34 D. STANOJEVIć ET AL.
Conceptual Framework: Conventional

and Unconventional Forms of Young People’s
Political Participation and Determining Factors
Political participation is defined in the literature in different ways (van
Deth, 2001, 2014; Verba & Nie, 1972; Vromen, 2003), but in the
broadest sense, it can be understood as a series of activities that seek to
influence decision makers. Vromen (2003, p. 82) sees participation as
“acts that can occur, either individually or collectively, that are intrinsi-
cally concerned with shaping the society that we want to live in”, while
Kitanova (2020, p. 820) emphasizes the importance of respecting the
existing legal framework and conceptualizes political participation “as any
lawful activities undertaken by citizens that will or aim at influencing,
changing or affecting the government, public policies, or how institutions
are run”.
The division into conventional and unconventional forms of political
participation has become common in the literature (Ekman & Amna˚,
2012; Pilkington & Pollock, 2015; Stockemer, 2014; Teorell et al., 2007;
van Deth, 2014). This distinction, nowadays somewhat outdated, stems
from the historical development of political activism in the West. Today
the political space has expanded significantly compared to the middle
of the twentieth century and includes areas far beyond institutional-
ized politics (van Deth, 2001, 2014). In addition, there is a division
into citizen-oriented actions, which somewhat coincide with traditional
forms of participation in elections and membership in political parties,
and cause-oriented repertoires, which focus on individual political issues
and are closely related to “lifestyle” politics (Norris, 2002). As already
mentioned in the introduction, research shows that young people in
developed democracies most often choose to express themselves polit-
ically through the mechanisms of unconventional participation, in part
because it allows them to maintain some independence from the ruling
system and still influence it indirectly (Marien et al., 2010; Norris, 2002;
Stolle et al., 2005). These forms of participation imply less commitment,
are mostly individual in nature, and are easier to get out of than tradi-
tional forms such as membership in political parties (Bennett, 2012; Li &
Marsh, 2008).
The research questions we want to answer with this paper are: How are
the values of young people related to the types of political engagement?
How does trust in institutions and political actors affect involvement in
3 POLITICAL PARTICIPATION OF YOUNG PEOPLE IN SERBIA: … 35
the political field? Does a sense of capability to participate in political life

also lead to real involvement? Is socio-economic status related, and in
what way, to the forms of participation?
Factors of Youth Political Participation

Values are considered to be one of the factors significantly shaping
political activism. Previous studies have shown that citizens holding
authoritarian values favor orderly or conventional political action, while
those holding libertarian values have preference toward unconventional
and protest activities (Pirro & Portos, 2021). For citizens holding author-
itarian values, this is sometimes expressed through the “paradox of the
populist right” which tends to be critical of mechanisms of representative
democracy, while at the same time relying on the electoral competi-
tion and party organization for mobilization of citizens for conventional
political participation (Hutter & Borbáth, 2019).
Similarly, social libertarian values, often coupled with postmaterialist
values, have demonstrated a positive effect on both frequency and the
intensity of extra-institutional political participation (Grasso & Giugni,
2019) which also manifests as a predisposition toward unconventional
protest politics (Hutter & Borbáth, 2019). Therefore, authoritarian-
libertarian dimension of social values emerges in cross-national studies as a
predictor of both unconventional and non-electoral political participation.
The socio-economic status of an individual is considered to be one of
the key factors influencing their chances of getting involved in political life
(Verba & Nie, 1972; Verba et al., 1995). Namely, individuals who have a
higher income and a higher level of education will more often participate
in the political life of the community. Better education provides oppor-
tunities to understand more complex aspects of the political process and
the political system rules, while economic resources provide opportunities
to engage in politics in the long run (Burns et al., 2001; Marien et al.,
2010; Sloam, 2012; Verba et al., 1995; Touchton & Wampler, 2014).
In addition to socio-economic status, in research on political participa-
tion, age has stood out as a significant demographic factor, in the sense
that certain political practices are characteristic of a certain age. Young
people are less involved in the activities of trade unions, political parties
and go to the polls less often, while older people are less involved in
informal political activities (Dalton, 2008; Ellison et al., 2020; Marsh
et al., 2007). At the same time, age also appears as a barrier to formal
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pflegte seinen Untertanen Empfehlungsbriefe an den Erzengel
Gabriel mitzugeben, um ihnen einen guten Platz im Paradies zu
sichern, und wenn auch der Sohn, dank seiner englischen Erziehung
und seiner Bekanntschaft mit englischer Denkungsart, sich dieses
Vorrechtes nicht mehr bedient, so ist er doch in der Meinung seiner
Anhänger noch immer der Hüter der Schlüssel zum Himmelreich. Ihr
Glaube an ihn findet seinen sehr konkreten Ausdruck in dem
Einkommen, das sie durch Subskription für ihn in Asien und Afrika
aufbringen, und das jährlich in die Zehntausende geht.
Ungefähr eine Stunde ritten wir durch Gärten dahin. Scharen von
Arabern der niedersten Klasse begegneten uns. Auf ihren mit Milch
und Quark beladenen Eseln trotteten sie zum Markt nach Homs.
Endlich gelangten wir in die jenseits des Orontes liegende Ebene,
wo diese Araber zu Hause sind. Diese Steppe bot einen vertrauten
Anblick: sie ähnelte der Landschaft im Drusengebirge und war gleich
dem Haurān mit schwarzem, vulkanischem Gestein bedeckt. Sie ist
der Steinlieferant für die Stadt Homs. Alle zum Bauen benötigten
Steine werden auf Eseln jenseits vom Flusse hereingebracht. Sie
gelten in der Stadt einen Metallik (es ist eine so kleine Münze, daß
sie kein europäisches Gegenstück besitzt), und ein Mann mit einem
guten Gespann kann bis zu 10 Piaster pro Tag verdienen. Im
Frühjahr ist Wa'r Homs, die steinige Steppe von Homs, nur von den
verachtetsten Arabern bewohnt, die die Stadt mit Lebensmitteln
versorgen, — wohlgemerkt, kein Beduine würde seinen
Lebensunterhalt durch Quarkhandel oder durch irgend etwas
anderes als durch Kampf erwerben — im Sommer aber lassen sich
große Stämme, wie z. B. die Haseneh, auf einige Monate hier
nieder, und nach der Ernte folgen ihnen gewisse Familien der
'Anazeh, die ihre Kamele die Stoppeln abweiden lassen. Diese
großen Völkerschaften sind dem Lachs zu vergleichen, der aus dem
offenen Meere in den Forellenbach eindringt und die kleineren
Fische in Angst und Schrecken versetzt. Jetzt, im März, stand die
Steppe zum Teil unter Wasser, und zwischen den Steinen sproßten
Gras und Blumen; als wir aber, weiter westwärts ziehend, ein
allmählich ansteigendes Terrain erreichten, bot die Landschaft das
Bild eines wahren Blumengartens. Lichtblaue Hyazinthen erhoben
ihre dichtgedrängten Glöckchen über die Lavablöcke, Schwertlilien,
rote Anemonen, gelbes Habichtskraut und die prächtige
purpurfarbene Nieswurz schmückten das Gras — kurz, die ganze
Fülle des syrischen Frühlings lag an diesem glücklichen Tage unter
unseren Füßen ausgebreitet. Während der ersten fünf Stunden
folgten wir der Fahrstraße nach Tripoli, passierten die die letzte
Station vor Homs bildende Karawanserei und überschritten die
Grenzlinie zwischen Damaskus und Beirut. Dann wandten wir uns
zur Rechten und betraten einen Saumpfad, der eine wellige
Grasfläche durchschnitt, die zum Teil angebaut war und einen noch
reicheren Blumenflor zeigte als die Ränder der Fahrstraße.
Anemonen vom lichtesten Weiß bis zum dunkelsten Purpur und
kleine blaue Iris säumten den Pfad, gelbe Krokus drängten einander
an den Ufern des Stromes. Für uns aber, die wir vor kurzem
Südsyrien durchzogen, bot das Gras eine noch größere Augenweide
als die Blumen. Tragen doch selbst die höchsten Gipfel des Djebel
Nosairijjeh ein so saftiggrünes Gewand, daß sich sogar die
fruchtbarsten Hänge Judäas und Samarias keines solchen rühmen
können. Nachdem wir einen niederen Höhenzug überschritten,
senkte sich der Pfad nach einem kurdischen Dorfe, dessen
Wohnungen teils aus Zelten, teils aus Erdhütten bestanden. Sicher
lebten die Einwohner schon lange in Syrien, denn sie hatten ihre
heimische Sprache vergessen und konnten nur Arabisch, das sie,
ebenso wie unsre beiden Zaptiehs, mit dem abgehackten Akzent der
Kurden aussprachen. Über dem Dorfe drüben erstreckte sich eine
ungefähr drei Meilen breite Steppe, die Bkei'a, bis an den Fuß des
steilen Abfalls des Nosairijjehgebirges, von dessen höchstem Gipfel
die große Festung aus der Zeit der Kreuzzüge herniederdräute, die
unser nächstes Ziel war. Noch lag sie von der Sonne beschienen da,
hinter ihren Türmen aber kroch bereits ein schwarzes Wetter empor;
schon hörten wir den Donner in den Bergen grollen, und zackige
Blitze durchzuckten den schwarzen Hintergrund der Burg. Leider war
der direkte Weg durch die Bkei'a dem Berittenen unzugänglich dank
der schwammigen Sümpfe, die nach Aussage der Dörfler tief genug
waren, um ein Maultier samt seiner Ladung zu verschlingen; wir
wandten uns deshalb, zwar widerwillig nur, nach rechts und umritten
den Fuß des Gebirges. Noch waren wir nicht weit gekommen, als
uns zwei Reiter begegneten, die der Kāimakām von Kal'at el Husn
zu unsrer Begrüßung ausgeschickt; kaum hatten sie sich uns
zugesellt, als das Wetter losbrach und uns in Ströme von Regen
hüllte. Durch Pfützen und Schlamm plätschernd, gelangten wir
gegen 5 Uhr vom Regen durchweicht an den Fuß des Berges. Hier
ließ ich meine Karawane die Hauptstraße weiter verfolgen und
erklomm mit einem von des Kāimakāms Reitern den Gipfel auf
einem steilen, schmalen, gerade hinaufführenden Pfade.
Sonnenuntergang brachte uns an den »Schwarzen Turm«. Durch
ein prächtiges arabisches Tor ritten wir in einen gewölbten Gang,
durch den eine Wendeltreppe aufwärtsführte. Es war fast Nacht
darin; einige Schießscharten gewährten der grauen Dämmerung von
draußen Eingang und verbreiteten kaum einen Schimmer von
Tageslicht. Hin und wieder ritten wir an Türen vorüber, hinter denen
tiefste Finsternis lag. Die Steinstufen waren flach und breit, aber
vielfach zerbrochen; unsre Pferde stolperten und klapperten höher
und höher hinauf, bogen um eine Ecke nach der anderen, ritten
durch Tor um Tor, bis das letzte uns endlich in den innern Hof der
Festung brachte. Mir war, als ritt ich an der Seite eines Ritters aus
dem Feenreich, und ich wäre nicht überrascht gewesen, wenn mir
wie in Spencers Dichtung von dem Torbogen Worte wie »Sei kühn!«
»Sei kühn!« »Sei nicht zu kühn!« entgegengeleuchtet hätten. Es
befand sich jedoch kein Zauberer im Innern der Burg — nichts als
eine Schar Dörfler reckten ihre Hälse, um uns zu sehen, und der
Kāimakām versicherte mir lächelnd und freundlich, daß er nicht
daran denken könnte, mich in dieser nassen, stürmischen Nacht ein
Lager aufschlagen zu lassen. Er hatte bereits für ein Nachtquartier in
der Burg gesorgt.
Kaffee am Wegrande.
Der Kāimakām von Kal'at el Husn ist ein ganz hervorragender

Gelehrter. Sein Name ist 'Abd ul Hamid Beg Rāfi'a Zādeh; seine
Familie stammt aus Ägypten, wo noch jetzt viele Verwandte von ihm
leben. Er wohnt im höchsten Turme der Festung, und hier lag auch
mein Gastzimmer, bequem ausgestattet mit Teppichen, einem
Diwan, einer viersäuligen Bettstelle und einem Mahagonischrank mit
Spiegeltüren, deren Glas jedoch während des Transportes von
Tripoli auf dem Rücken des Kameles so zersplittert worden war, daß
ich auch nicht das kleinste Fleckchen meines Antlitzes darin
erblicken konnte. Obgleich ich bis auf die Haut naß war, mußte ich
doch den Forderungen des guten Tones nachkommen, und der
schrieb vor, daß wir uns zunächst auf den Diwan niederlassen und
Höflichkeiten austauschen mußten, während ich mehrere Gläser
schwachen Tees zu mir nahm. Mein Wirt schien nachdenklich und
augenscheinlich nicht zu lebhafter Konversation aufgelegt — aus
einem guten Grund, wie mir später klar wurde, — aber schon bei
meiner Antwort auf seine erste Begrüßung löste sich ein Seufzer der
Erleichterung aus seiner Brust.
Kal'at el Husn.
»Gottlob! Ew. Exzellenz sprechen Arabisch. Wir fürchteten

schon, uns nicht mit Ihnen unterhalten zu können, und ich habe
deshalb eine syrische Dame, die der englischen Sprache mächtig
ist, gebeten, den Abend hier zu verbringen und als Dolmetscherin zu
dienen.«
Kal'at el Husn, Inneres der Festung.
Etwa eine Stunde lang hielten wir eine zusammenhangslose

Plauderei aufrecht, während welcher die Nässe meine Kleider immer
gründlicher durchdrang. Erst nachdem auch meine Maultiere
angekommen und abgeladen worden waren, erhob sich der
Kāimakām und entfernte sich, um mich, wie er sagte, der Ruhe zu
überlassen. Wir hatten in der Tat eine lange Tagereise hinter uns,
hatten die Maultiertreiber doch 11 Stunden zugebracht, um Kal'at el
Husn zu erreichen. Kaum aber hatte ich Zeit gehabt, meine feuchten
Sachen zu wechseln, als auch schon ein leises Klopfen an der Tür
mir die Anwesenheit der Frauen verriet. Ich öffnete sofort und ließ
eine Dienerin ein sowie die Frau des Kāimakāms und eine nette
Dame, die mich in einem Englisch blumenreichster Art begrüßte. Es
war Sitt Ferīdeh, die Frau des Regierungsfeldmessers, der gleich ihr
Christ war. Sie war in einer Missionsschule in Tripoli erzogen und
ließ mich nicht lange in Unwissenheit der Tatsache, daß sie
Schriftstellerin und ihr größtes Werk die Übersetzung der »Letzten
Tage von Pompeji« ins Arabische war. Des Kāimakāms Frau, ein
junges Geschöpf mit Apfelbäckchen, hätte für hübsch gelten können,
wenn sie nicht so außergewöhnlich stark gewesen wäre. Sie war die
zweite Frau und erst seit wenigen Monaten verheiratet, der
Kāimakām hatte sie nach dem Tode seiner ersten Gemahlin, der
Mutter seiner Kinder, genommen. Geraume Zeit wagte sie vor
Schüchternheit in meiner Gegenwart den Mund kaum zu öffnen; Sitt
Ferīdeh aber war ganz Herrin der Situation, schwatzte bald auf
Englisch, bald auf Arabisch munter darauf los und suchte durch ein
völlig korrektes Betragen die Tiefe ihres Christentums nachdrücklich
zu beweisen. Die Gesellschaft dieser angenehmen und klugen Frau
bereitete mir unendlich mehr Vergnügen als die meiner Wirtin. Das
erste Wort, das die letztere zu äußern wagte, war mir jedoch ein
höchst willkommenes, denn sie fragte mich, wann ich zu speisen
wünschte. Voll Eifer erwiderte ich, daß mir keine Stunde zu früh
wäre. Darauf begaben wir uns über einen schmutzigen Hof nach
einem Gemach, in welchem ein reiches Mahl aufgetragen war. Hier
gesellte sich eine alte Dame zu uns, die mir als »eine Freundin, die
einen Blick auf Ew. Exzellenz werfen möchte«, vorgestellt wurde.
Dann ließen wir uns zu dem besten Mahle und zu den besten
Saucen nieder, die wenigstens von einem Gliede der Gesellschaft je
gegessen worden sind. Eine dickliche Suppe, vier riesige Schüsseln
mit Fleisch und Gemüse und ein Reispudding als Krone des Ganzen
machten das Diner aus. Nach Beendigung desselben kehrten wir in
mein Zimmer zurück, wo wir uns, nachdem ein Becken voll
Holzkohlen und Wasserpfeifen für die Damen hereingebracht
worden waren, zu einem abendlichen Plauderstündchen
niederließen. Die alte Frau weigerte sich, auf dem Diwan zu sitzen,
da sie, wie sie sagte, mehr an den Fußboden gewöhnt war; sie ließ
sich so nahe als möglich am Kohlenbecken nieder und streckte ihre
runzeligen Hände über die Glut. Sie trug ein schwarzes Kleid und
über dem Kopf ein dickes weißes Leinentuch, das die Stirn fest
umspannte und auch das Kinn verhüllte, wodurch sie das Aussehen
einer alten Priorin irgend eines religiösen Ordens erhielt. Draußen
heulte der Wind um das Turmzimmer, der Regen schlug gegen das
einzige Fenster, und ganz natürlich kam das Gespräch auf allerlei
Schreckenstaten, auf Geschichten von Mord und Totschlag, die eins
dem anderen zuraunt, und für welche die tiefen Schatten dieses
Zimmers gewiß schon seit Jahrhunderten ein fruchtbarer Boden
gewesen sein mochten.
Vor zehn Tagen erst hatte den Kāimakām ein schreckliches
Unglück in seiner Familie betroffen: sein Sohn war in Tripoli von
einem Schulkameraden in kindischem Streit erschossen worden —
den Frauen schien es gar nicht so ungewöhnlich vorzukommen, daß
eines Knaben schnell aufwallender Zorn von so verhängnisvollen
Folgen begleitet war. Eine Depesche hatte den Kāimakām gerufen;
qualvolle Furcht im Herzen, war er die lange Gebirgsstraße
hinabgeritten, nur um seinen Sohn tot zu finden. Fast war der
Kummer größer gewesen, als er ertragen konnte. So berichtete Sitt
Ferīdeh.
Die Alte wiegte sich über dem Kohlenbecken hin und her und
murmelte:
»Mord ist hier so gewöhnlich wie Milchtrinken! Herr, es ist kein
andrer Gott als Du!«
Mit frischen Kräften umfegte der Sturm das Gemäuer, als die
Christenfrau das Wort nahm:
»Diese Frau,« begann sie, mit dem Kopf auf die Gestalt an der
Glut deutend, »weiß auch, was Tränen sind. Erst kürzlich fiel ihr
Sohn im Gebirge von der Hand eines Räubers, der ihn mit seinem
Messer erstach. Sein ausgeplünderter Leichnam wurde am Wegrand
gefunden.«
Wieder beugte sich die beraubte Mutter über die Kohlen, deren
heller Schein ihr vergrämtes, altes Gesicht überflutete.
»Mord ist wie das Ausgießen von Wasser,« stöhnte sie, »oh
Allerbarmer!«
Spät erst verließen mich die Frauen. Eine erbot sich, die Nacht in
meinem Zimmer zuzubringen, aber ich lehnte höflich und
entschieden ab.
Am nächsten Morgen weckte mich der Donner, und Hagelkörner
prasselten gegen meine Läden. Mir blieb nichts übrig, als weitere 24
Stunden bei dem Kāimakām zu verbringen und dankbar zu sein, daß
wir ein schützendes Dach über unsern Häuptern hatten. Ich
erforschte die Burg von einem Ende zum andern; glücklicherweise
lebt in jedem von uns das ewige Kind, das mehr Vergnügen an den
unterirdischen Kerkern und den Befestigungen einer Burg findet als
an irgend einem anderen Zeugen der Vergangenheit. Kal'at el Husn
ist so groß, daß die halbe Bevölkerung des Dorfes Wohnung in den
gewölbten Unterbauen der Festung gefunden hat, während die
Besatzung die oberen Türme innehat. Die Mauern des inneren
Festungsbaues erheben sich aus einem hinter dem äußeren
Befestigungsgürtel liegenden Graben. Durch diese Befestigungen
hatte uns gestern abend der gewölbte Gang geführt. Am Tore der
inneren Mauer wohnte der Burgfleischer, der jeden Morgen ein
Schaf auf der Schwelle schlachtete. Wer sie überschritt, watete
durch einen Bluttümpel und mußte meinen, irgend ein barbarisches
Opfer würde alltäglich am Tore vollzogen. Das Hauptgebäude
enthielt die jetzt in eine Moschee verwandelte Kapelle und einen
Bankettsaal mit gotischen Fenstern, deren Öffnungen man mit
Steinen ausgesetzt hatte, um die Inwohner vor der Kälte zu
schützen. Der Turm, in den ich einquartiert war, gehörte zu den
oberen Befestigungswerken und erhob sich auf den zu drei
Stockwerken übereinandergesetzten Gewölben. Von diesem Turme
aus führte ein schmaler Gang auf der Mauer hin in einen großen,
prachtvollen Raum, unter dem sich ein runder Turm mit einem
kreisrunden Gemach befand, dessen Decke aus einem vierteiligen
Gewölbe bestand, und dessen spitze Fenster Rosetten und mit
Friesen geschmückte Bogen aufwiesen. Die Burg wird in den
Chroniken der Kreuzzüge »Kerak der Ritter« genannt. Sie gehörte
den Hospitalrittern, und der Großmeister des Ordens machte sie zu
seiner Residenz. Der ägyptische Sultan Malek ed Dahēr eroberte
sie, stellte sie wieder her und setzte seine prahlerische Inschrift über
das Haupttor. Die Burg ist eine der besterhaltenen vielen Festungen,
die Zeugnis ablegen von dem wunderlichen Gemisch von edlem
Eifer, Fanatismus, Ehrgeiz und Verbrechen, aus denen die
Geschichte der Kreuzzüge zusammengesetzt ist — eine Seite ihrer
Geschichte, auf welche die christlichen Nationen nicht ohne Erröten
blicken und die sie nicht lesen können, ohne so viel vergeblichem
Heldenmut ein unwillkürliches Mitleid zu zollen. Denn für eine
unwürdige Sache zu sterben, ist die schwerste Niederlage.
Fenster des Bankettsaales.
Kerak lehnt sich eng an die militärische Architektur des südlichen

Frankreichs an, wenn es auch Spuren des orientalischen Einflusses
aufweist, von dem sich die großen Ritterorden überhaupt ja nicht
ganz freimachen konnten. Viel mehr als die Hospitalritter unterlagen
ihm freilich die Tempelherren. Wie bei den zeitgenössischen
arabischen Festungen gewannen auch hier die Mauern nach ihrem
Fuße zu immer mehr an Stärke und endigten in schräg abfallenden
Bastionen aus solidem Mauerwerk, die den Angriffen der Sappeure
Trotz boten; die gerundeten Türme aber, die so weit aus der
Mauerlinie vorsprangen, zeigten durchaus französischen Charakter.
Der Überlieferung nach haben die Kreuzfahrer bereits eine Burg auf
dem Berggipfel vorgefunden und sie den Arabern genommen; ich
konnte jedoch keine Spur noch früherer Bauten finden. Wohl aber
stammen Teile der jetzt vorhandenen Festung aus einer späteren
Zeit, so z. B. ein großes Gebäude am inneren Graben, dessen
Mauern erhabene Löwen zeigten, die den Seldschukischen Löwen
nicht unähnlich waren.
Kal'at el Husn, innerer Festungsgürtel.
Nach dem Frühstück stieg ich den schlüpfrigen Berg hinab in das
Dorf und stattete der Sitt Ferīdeh und ihrem Manne einen Besuch
ab. Ich fand ein zweites christliches Paar dort; der Mann war der
Sāhib es Sanduk, wohl eine Art Schatzmeister. Die beiden Männer
sprachen über die Lage der syrischen Armen. Nach der Meinung
des Feldmessers brauchte keiner Hungers zu sterben, wie das von
ihm aufgestellte Budget des Durchschnittsbauern bestätigte. Selbst
der ärmste Fellahīn kann im Jahre 1000–1500 Piaster verdienen
(140–220 Mark), hat aber außer der Kopfsteuer und der
Entschädigungssumme für seinen militärischen Ersatzmann keinen
Pfennig Geld auszugeben. Fleisch ist ein unbekannter Luxus; ein
Faß Semen (ranzige Butter) kostet höchstens 8–10 Mark und genügt
auf Monate hinaus, um den Burghul und andre Mehlgerichte
schmackhaft zu machen. Werden die Körnerfrüchte und der Semen
knapp beim Bauer, so braucht er nur in das Gebirge oder in das
flache Land hinabzugehen, das noch herrenloses Gebiet ist, und
sich eßbare Kräuter zu sammeln oder nach Wurzeln zu graben. Sein
Haus baut er sich eigenhändig, den Platz, auf dem es steht, hat er
umsonst, Geräte und Möbel braucht er nicht hinein. Und Kleidung?
Da ist ihm wenig genug vonnöten: einige Leinenhemden, alle 2–3
Jahre ein wollenes Gewand und ein Baumwollentuch um den Kopf.
Selten nur bleiben die Alten und Kranken ohne Pflege; haben sie
noch eine Familie, so sorgt diese für sie, sind sie aber ganz ohne
Angehörige, so können sie ihr Leben leicht durch Betteln fristen,
denn kein Orientale weist die Bitte um eine kleine Gabe zurück,
wenn der Arme auch nur selten Geld geben kann. Wenige Fellahīn
besitzen eigenes Land, sondern sie arbeiten um Tagelohn auf den
Gütern der Reicheren. Die Hauptgrundbesitzer um Kal'at el Husn
gehören der aus Tripoli stammenden Familie der Danādischeh an.
Noch bis vor kurzem war die Burg nicht Eigentum der Regierung,
sondern gehörte dem Geschlecht der Zabieh, in deren Besitz sie
zwei Jahrhunderte gewesen, und deren Nachkommen noch jetzt
eine Wohnung am äußeren Wall innehaben. Hier fiel der
Schatzmeister mit der Bemerkung ein, daß selbst der
mohammedanischen Bevölkerung die ottomanische Herrschaft
verhaßt wäre, und daß sie sich viel lieber von einem Fremden
regieren lassen würden — möge er immerhin ein Ungläubiger sein
— am liebsten von den Engländern, denn Ägyptens Wohlfahrt hätte
einen tiefen Eindruck auf die Syrer gemacht.
An diesem Abend ließ mich der Kāimakām fragen, ob ich allein
zu speisen wünschte, oder ob ich ihm und seiner Frau die Ehre
geben wollte. Ich bat um den letzteren Vorzug. Trotz seines wahrhaft
rührenden Bemühens, mir ein guter Wirt zu sein, war er doch still
und traurig zu Beginn des Diners, bis wir endlich ein Thema
anschnitten, das ihn seinem Kummer einigermaßen entzog. Die
großen Toten kamen uns zu Hilfe und trugen Worte auf ihren Lippen,
die schon Menschengeschlecht um Menschengeschlecht Balsam ins
sinkende Herz geträufelt haben. Der Kāimakām war wohlvertraut mit
der arabischen Literatur; er kannte die Meister der Wüstendichtung
auswendig und trug Lied um Lied vor, sobald er erfahren, daß ich sie
zwar hochschätzte, aber nur wenig von ihnen kannte. Sein eigner
Geschmack freilich neigte sich mehr modernerer Dichtung zu; einer
seiner Lieblingsdichter schien der dem zehnten Jahrhundert
angehörende Mutanabbi zu sein. Noch glüht etwas vom Feuer der
Alten in Mutanabbis Zeilen, und hell lohte es wieder auf, als der
Kāimakām die berühmte Ode zitierte, in der der Dichter Abschied
von den Freuden der Jugend nimmt:
»Wie oft hab ich das Alter hergesehnt, den Sturm im

Herzen mir zu stillen!
und sollte ich nun klagen, da mein Bitten mir erfüllt?
Alles Wünschen ist erstorben, nur dem Speer noch gilt
mein Lieben,
Ihm allein sei Spiel und Scherz geweiht.
Gibt's einen schön'ren Sitz im Leben als den Sattel des
flücht'gen Renners?
Einen bessren Gefährten für die Muße als ein Buch?«
»Diese Zeilen,« schloß der Kāimakām, »müssen Ew. Exzellenz

doch gefallen!«
Als er mich in das Gastgemach zurückbrachte, fragte er, ob er
mir nicht sein letztes Gedicht vorlesen dürfte, das er auf Bitten der
Studenten der amerikanischen Universität zu Beirut (der
berühmtesten derartigen Anstalt Syriens) zur Feier eines
Jahrestages verfaßt, den sie binnen kurzem festlich begehen
wollten. Zunächst brachte er den in den schmeichelhaftesten
Ausdrücken abgefaßten Brief der Studenten zum Vorschein, dann
sein Manuskript und las mir seine Verse mit der trefflichen Betonung
des orientalischen Rezitators vor. Von Zeit zu Zeit hielt er inne, um
die Bedeutung einer Metapher zu erklären oder eine Erläuterung zu
einer schwierigen Strophe zu geben. Er sang das Lob der Bildung,
endete aber höchst inkonsequenterweise mit einem
liebedienerischen Hymnus auf den Sultan, eine Stelle, die ihn noch
dazu mit großem Stolz erfüllte. Soweit ich es beurteilen konnte, war
es keine besonders hervorragende Poesie; aber was schadet das?
Es gibt keinen besseren Trost im Kummer als das Bewußtsein,
Schöpfer irgend eines Werkes zu sein, und für eine kurze Stunde
vergaß der Kāimakām seinen Schmerz und lebte in einer Welt, wo
kein Leid ist, noch Geschrei. An passenden Stellen drückte ich
meine Billigung und mein Lob aus und mußte innerlich darüber
lachen, daß ich hier denselben liebenswürdigen Unsinn auf Arabisch
redete, den man so oft auf Englisch sagt.
Statt zwischen den kahlen Wänden einer Kreuzfahrerfestung
hätte ich ebenso gut in einem Londoner Salon sitzen können. Ist
doch die Welt allüberall aus demselben Stoff gemacht!
Am nächsten Morgen regnete es noch immer; in mißlichster
Laune kleidete ich mich an und frühstückte, als die Wolken plötzlich
wie von Zauberhand weggeschoben wurden, und 7½ Uhr brachen
wir beim herrlichsten Sonnenschein auf. Am Fuße des steilen
Hügels, der das Kastell trägt, liegt inmitten eines Olivenhains ein
griechisches Kloster. Als wir es erreichten, stieg ich ab, um den Abt
zu begrüßen, aber siehe da! er war ein alter Bekannter von mir, dem
ich bereits vor fünf Jahren bei meiner Rückkehr von Palmyra im
Kloster Ma'alūla begegnet war. Große Freude herrschte über dieses
glückliche Zusammentreffen, zu dessen Feier viel Marmelade,
Kaffee und Wasser vertilgt wurde. Mit Ausnahme einer
kryptaähnlichen Kapelle, die 1200 Jahre alt sein soll, ist das Kloster
wieder aufgebaut worden. Das Gewölbe der alten Kapelle wird von
zwei Marmorsäulen getragen, die unterhalb des Kapitäls
abgebrochen und in die Wand eingefügt sind, ein Verfahren, das
mehr seltsam als schön zu nennen ist. Die Kapitäle zeigen die Form
von Lilienblüten im byzantinischen Stil. Am Altar, der ein schönes
Muster moderner Holzschnitzerei ist, befinden sich einige prächtige
persische Kacheln in der Wand. In der Westmauer des Klosters
zeigte man mir eine so schmale Pforte, daß es kaum möglich war,
sich hindurchzuzwängen, — unmöglich, wie die Mönche sagten,
jedenfalls für den, der nicht reines Herzens ist. Ich wagte nicht,
meinen Ruf durch einen Versuch, mich hindurchzudrängen, aufs
Spiel zu setzen.
Wir ritten weiter durch dünnbewaldete aber desto dichter mit
Blumen besetzte Täler; die Obstbäume begannen zu blühen, das
Geißblatt grünte, und bei einem winzigen Friedhof ließen wir uns
unter knospenden Eichen zum Frühstück nieder. Vor uns lag der
kritische Punkt unsrer Tagereise. Schon sahen wir die Mauern der
Burg Sāfita auf dem gegenüberliegenden Hügel, aber noch trennte
uns ein angeschwollener Strom, dessen Brücke weggerissen, und
dessen Furt, einem Gerücht zufolge, unpassierbar war. Als wir die
Ufer des Abrasch erreichten, sahen wir durch das weite Bett eine
einzige wirbelnde und schäumende Wassermasse hinabtosen, die
kein beladenes Maultier durchwaten konnte. Zwei Stunden ritten wir
stromabwärts und gelangten gerade noch zur rechten Zeit an die
zweite Brücke, die Djisr el Wād, die sich im letzten Stadium des
Verfalls befand, da nur noch die mittleren Bogen zusammenhielten.
Die Hügel auf dem gegenüberliegenden Ufer waren mit niederem
Buschwerk besetzt, aus dem die liebliche Iris stylosa ihre blauen
Staubgefäße erhob. Zur weiteren Belebung der Szenerie trug ferner
ein ununterbrochener Zug weißgekleideter Nosairijjeh bei, die der
Brücke zustrebten. In meiner Gesellschaft befand sich 'Abd ul
Medjid, ein kurdischer Zaptieh, der das Gebirge und all seine
Bewohner gut kannte. Obgleich Mohammedaner, hegte er keinen
Groll gegen die Nosairijjeh, die ihm immer als harmlose Leute
erschienen waren, und ein jeder grüßte ihn freundlich im
Vorübergehen. Er erzählte mir auch, daß die weiße Gesellschaft sich
zu den Beerdigungsfeierlichkeiten eines großen, seiner Frömmigkeit
wegen wohlbekannten Scheichs begab, der vor einer Woche
gestorben war. Das Fest selbst wird gewöhnlich zwei Tage nach der
Beerdigung abgehalten, und wenn die Gäste gespeist haben, bringt
jeder nach seinen Kräften der Familie des Toten seinen Tribut dar,
der zwischen einem und fünf, ja sechs Piaster schwankt. Im Djebel
Nosairijjeh im Geruch der Heiligkeit zu stehen, ist gleichwertig mit
einer Lebensversicherung bei uns zu Lande.
Arabische Bauern.
Dank dem großen Umwege erreichten wir Sāfita erst um 4 Uhr.

Ich lehnte die Gastfreundschaft des Kommandanten ab und schlug
meine Zelte außerhalb des Dorfes an einem Waldrande auf. Das
innere Festungsgebäude, welches wir von ferne gesehen hatten, ist
alles, was von der Weißen Burg der Tempelherren übriggeblieben
ist. Es steht auf dem Gipfel des Hügels, um dessen Fuß sich das
Dörflein gruppiert, und von dem aus man das Mittelmeer und den
nördlichen Teil der phönizischen Küste erblickt. Unter den mir zum
Verkauf angebotenen Antiquitäten bemerkte ich eine phönizische
Münze und die kleine Bronzestatue eines phönizischen Gottes —
wahrscheinlich war Sāfita für jenes Handelsvolk ein Stützpunkt im
Binnenlande. Die Feste selbst war eine geschickte architektonische
Überraschung. Sie enthielt nicht, wie zu erwarten stand, eine
gewölbte Halle oder ein Refektorium, sondern eine große Kirche, die
also sozusagen das Herz der Festung ausmachte. Als wir eintraten,
wurde gerade ein Gottesdienst abgehalten; durch die Westtüren
ergoß sich die Abendröte und hüllte die in Anbetung auf ihren
Knieen liegende Gemeinde in purpurne Glut. Die meisten Bewohner
von Sāfita sind Christen und sprechen Englisch mit dem
ausgesprochen amerikanischen Akzent, den sie sich angeeignet
haben, während sie in den Vereinigten Staaten ihr kleines Vermögen
erwarben. Außer dem Akzent aber hatten sie auch eine mir nicht
angenehme Vertraulichkeit in der Redeweise mitgebracht und ein
Teil der ihnen angeborenen guten Manieren verloren. 'Abd ul Medjid,
der fesche Unteroffizier, begleitete mich durch die Stadt, rettete mich
aus den Klauen der amerikanisierten Christen, zwirbelte seinen
kühnen, militärischen Schnurrbart gegen die kleinen Jungen, die uns
nachlaufen wollten, und schickte hinter ihrem Rückzug Proben aus
dem elegantesten Schimpfwörterschatz her, den mein Ohr je den
Vorzug hatte zu hören.
Spät am Abend wurden zwei Besucher angekündigt. Es war der
Zābit (Kommandant) und ein andrer Beamter, durch die der
Kāimakām von Drekisch mich bewillkommnen und in sein Dorf
einladen ließ. Wir drei ritten in der Frühe des nächsten Morgens mit
einigen Soldaten hinter uns auf einem gewundenen Pfad durch die
Berge und gelangten nach zwei Stunden in ein Tal voller
Olivenhaine, an dessen Hängen das Dorf Drekisch lag. Bei der
ersten Olivengruppe fanden wir drei Biedermänner in langem Rock
und Tarbusch unser harrend; bei unsrer Annäherung bestiegen sie
ihre Pferde und schlossen sich dem Zuge an, der, während wir die
Dorfstraße hinaufritten, durch andere Honoratioren zu Pferde immer
mehr anschwoll, bis wir schließlich die Gesamtsumme von 13
erreicht hatten. Der Kāimakām erwartete uns in Gala und allen
Zeremoniells voll an der Tür seines Hauses und geleitete mich in
sein Besuchszimmer, wo wir Kaffee tranken. Die Gesellschaft
bestand nun aus 30 Personen von Rang und Ansehen. Nach dem
offiziellen Empfang brachte mich mein Wirt in seine Privatwohnung
und stellte mich seiner Frau, einer liebenswürdigen Damaszenerin,
vor. Während der nun folgenden kurzen Unterhaltung lernte ich ihn
genauer kennen. Riza Beg el 'Abid verdankt seine gegenwärtige
Stellung dem Umstand, daß er ein Vetter 'Isset Paschas ist, denn es
gibt in der Familie dieses großen Mannes kein Glied, das nicht
wenigstens Kāimakām ist. Aber Riza Beg hätte die soziale Leiter
auch ohne Unterstützung erklimmen können; er ist ein Mann von
außergewöhnlich gewinnendem Wesen und verfügt in reichem Maße
über den scharfen Verstand der Syrer. Das Geschlecht, zu dem er
und 'Isset gehören, ist arabischen Ursprungs. Die Glieder der
Familie leiten ihre Abstammung von dem edlen Stamm der Muwāli
her, die Harūn er Raschid verwandt sind, und wenn du 'Isset Pascha
begegnest, so wirst du wohl tun, ihn zu seiner Verwandtschaft mit
jenem Kalifen zu beglückwünschen, obgleich er weiß, (auch weiß,
daß du es weißt), daß die Muwāli seinen Anspruch mit Verachtung
zurückweisen und ihn unter die Abkömmlinge ihrer Sklaven zählen,
worauf auch sein Name 'Abid (Sklave) hinweist. Gleichviel, ob
Sklaven oder Freie — die Söhne des Hauses 'Abid sind so geschickt
emporgestiegen, daß sie der Türkei den Fuß auf den Nacken
gesetzt haben und in dieser gewagten Stellung auch verbleiben
werden, bis 'Isset die Gunst des Sultans verliert. Riza Beg machte
ein ernstes Gesicht, als ich auf seine hohen Verbindungen anspielte,
und bemerkte, daß die Machtstellung, deren er sich als Glied seiner
Familie erfreute, keine leichte Sache sei, und daß er mit Freuden ein
weniger hervorragendes Amt als das eines Kāimakāms ausfüllen
würde. Vielleicht würde auch der Pascha die Freuden
Konstantinopels nur allzugern gegen einen bescheideneren aber
sicheren Wirkungskreis austauschen — eine Vermutung, der ich um
so lieber Glauben schenke, als 'Isset, wenn das Gerücht wahr
spricht, in den Jahren, da er sich der höchsten Gunst erfreute, aus
seiner Stellung so viel Nutzen gezogen hat, wie er nur irgend
erwarten konnte. Ich versicherte dem Kāimakām, daß ich mir ein
Vergnügen daraus machen würde, dem Pascha bei meinem
demnächstigen Aufenthalt in Konstantinopel einen Besuch
abzustatten, und ich führte dieses Projekt auch mit so gutem Erfolg
aus, daß ich nach 'Issets eigner Aussage mich künftighin zu den
Personen rechnen muß, die seiner lebenslänglichen Freundschaft
versichert sein können.
Inzwischen war das Frühstück fertig geworden. Nachdem sich
die Hausfrau zurückgezogen, fanden die übrigen Gäste Einlaß. Es
waren vier an der Zahl: der Zābit, der Kadi und zwei andere. Wir
hielten ein reichliches, vortreffliches und unterhaltendes Mahl. Es
wurde von munterem Gespräch belebt, das der Kāimakām anregte
und aufrechterhielt, der jedes Thema mit der gewandten Leichtigkeit
eines Mannes von Welt behandelte. Während er sprach, kam mir
immer wieder von neuem zum Bewußtsein, was für eine schöne,
elegante Sprache das Syrisch-Arabisch im Munde des Gebildeten
ist. Bei meinem Abschied eröffnete mir der Kāimakām, daß ich noch
während der ganzen folgenden Nacht sein Gast sein würde. Er hatte
nämlich, wie er sagte, von meiner Absicht erfahren, mein Lager am
verfallnen Tempel von Husn es Suleimān aufzuschlagen, und meine
Karawane unter dem Schutze eines Zaptiehs bereits dahin gesandt.
Einer seiner Vettern, der für meine Bedürfnisse Sorge tragen sollte,
war mit Dienern und Vorräten ebenfalls schon vorausgegangen. Der
Zābit und Rā'ib Effendi el Helu, ein andrer Teilnehmer an der
Frühstücksgesellschaft, sollten mich begleiten. Hoffentlich war das
alles zu meiner Zufriedenheit. Ich dankte dem Kāimakām herzlich für
seine Güte und versicherte, ihn schon an seiner großmütigen
Gastfreundschaft als Araber von edler Geburt erkannt zu haben.
Unser Pfad führte uns bis zur Höhe des Nosairischen Gebirges,
wo wir, auf dem Kamme hinreitend, eine felsige, romantische
Wegspur verfolgten. Die Abhänge waren außerordentlich steil und
zeigten außer Gras und Blumen keinen Pflanzenwuchs. Nur hier und
da waren die höchsten Gipfel von einer Eichengruppe gekrönt, durch
deren kahles Gezweig die weiße Kuppel einer nosairischen Mazār
leuchtete. Die Nosairijjeh haben weder Kirchen noch Moscheen,
aber auf jedem Berggipfel errichten sie eine Kapelle, das Zeichen
einer Begräbnisstätte. Diese hochgebetteten Toten haben zwar die
Erdenwelt verlassen, fahren aber noch fort, sie mit ihren Segnungen
zu beglücken, denn sie sind die Beschützer der Bäume, deren
Wurzeln ihre Gebeine umschlingen, und die deshalb als die einzigen
ihrer Art ungehindert wachsen dürfen.

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Young People Shaping Democratic

Politics: Interrogating Inclusion,

Young People Shaping

Dr C. Laura Lovin’s work on this volume was funded by a Leverhulme Trust

ISBN 978-3-031-29377-1 ISBN 978-3-031-29378-8 (eBook)

We are grateful to all the contributors of this collection of works who

6 When David Defeats Goliath. The Case of MeToo

Angie Abdelmonem Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

Dragan Stanojević University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia

Fig. 3.1 Conventional and unconventional participation for two

Table 3.1 Theoretical scales—Descriptive statistics 42

Ian Rivers and C. Laura Lovin

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

diverse scope is intentional and necessary. Through innovative analyt-

messages in meaningful ways, but they also suggested that a corollary of

still mobilizes a relatively large number of young people in Serbia, this

surrounding GBV has been a feature of Spanish university campuses

Black Youth Activism Was Pivotal to the Civil

Wanda J. Blanchett and Shelley D. Zion

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 9

Youth Activism—is used to describe formal and informal social, polit-

It is the summer of 2020, halfway through a year that, through the

Racism is present and prevalent to those it effects… the worst form of

To fully grasp the significance of the events described above, and

significant victories and achievements coupled with tremendous pain and

segregation and discrimination, while the primary purpose of BLM was to

Black Lives Matter Movement as a Current

…17-year-old Trayvon Martin was walking through a Florida neighbor-

power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state

The Origins of American Public

2011). American public schools historically were designed to control

that meets the educational needs of students of color in general educa-

A Brief Historical Overview of Student

rights movement” leading sit-ins, protests, marches, and voter registra-

disproportionate impact of gun violence on Black and Brown commu-

What’s Happening in an Eastern Seaboard State

To be a person of color in this township is to be an anomaly at its finest.

To be a Black middle schooler in this township is to be told that you

To be a Black child in this township is to never have any books in your

Transformative student voice (Zion, 2020) is the creation of sustained

1. A conception of communication as dialogue (in which a climate

In our research, since 2007, we have seen young people in middle

call on educators to engage youth in re-imagining the purpose of public

Once we create the educated and accepting environment within our

During a period of national and global racial reckoning, what are

What areas of improvement did community members identify after

6. Understand the history of the township both from the perspective of

Gatto, J. (2005). Dumbing us down: The hidden curriculum of compulsory

Political Participation of Young People

Dragan Stanojević, Jelisaveta Vukelić,

D. Stanojević (B) · J. Vukelić

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 31

Stabilitocracy—represents a political regime that, despite undemo-

with the decline in trust in political institutions, these processes have

Conceptual Framework: Conventional

the political field? Does a sense of capability to participate in political life

Factors of Youth Political Participation

Der Kāimakām von Kal'at el Husn ist ein ganz hervorragender

»Gottlob! Ew. Exzellenz sprechen Arabisch. Wir fürchteten

Etwa eine Stunde lang hielten wir eine zusammenhangslose

Fenster des Bankettsaales.

Kerak lehnt sich eng an die militärische Architektur des südlichen

»Wie oft hab ich das Alter hergesehnt, den Sturm im