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We Fight To Win: Inequality and the Politics of Youth Activism (Rutgers Series in Childhood Studies)

We Fight To Win: Inequality and the Politics of Youth Activism (Rutgers Series in Childhood Studies)

Current price: $187.50
Publication Date: October 9th, 2009
Publisher:
Rutgers University Press
ISBN:
9780813546698
Pages:
248
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Description

In an adult-dominated society, teenagers are often shut out of participation in politics. We Fight to Win offers a compelling account of young people's attempts to get involved in community politics, and documents the battles waged to form youth movements and create social change in schools and neighborhoods.

Hava Rachel Gordon compares the struggles and successes of two very different youth movements: a mostly white, middle-class youth activist network in Portland, Oregon, and a working-class network of minority youth in Oakland, California. She examines how these young activists navigate schools, families, community organizations, and the mainstream media, and employ a variety of strategies to make their voices heard on some of today's most pressing issuesùwar, school funding, the environmental crisis, the prison industrial complex, standardized testing, corporate accountability, and educational reform. We Fight to Win is one of the first books to focus on adolescence and political action and deftly explore the ways that the politics of youth activism are structured by age inequality as well as race, class, and gender.

About the Author

HAVA RACHAEL GORDON is an assistant professor in the department of sociology and criminology at the University of Denver.

Praise for We Fight To Win: Inequality and the Politics of Youth Activism (Rutgers Series in Childhood Studies)

"This book provides much insight into youth activism. We Fight to Win is written in lively prose and demonstrates that many youth are determined to engage inactivism to live out their convictions, even when adults attempt to stand in their way. I highly recommend it."

— Kraig Beyerlein

"Gordon successfully broadens our understanding of the salience of age as it is ordered by race, class, and gender to the formation of political consciousness, political action, civic engagement and participation in social movements. She makes visible the rich dimensions involved in understanding how youth come to participate in the public sphere and in social movement, but also how forces conspire to preclude such participation."

— Amy L. Best

"Well researched, the book challenges readers to rethink the involvement and engagement of youth in society. Highly recommended."

— Choice