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Young Activists.
Part One:
We speak with Catie McCauley, a very impressive high school sophomore from Portland, Oregon, about the many good causes that she is active in. Catie’s introduction to activism came at the age of 12, at the Kids4Peace camp in Vermont/New Hampshire. There she met other young people — Muslims, Jews, and Christians, from Israel, Palestine and the United States — who overcame their societies’ prejudices to learn about each other, engage in respectful dialogues, and become friends. Catie’s heart and mind were instantly engaged, and she has gone on to work on building peace, interracial and intercultural understanding, and amplifying the voices of marginalized people.
Catie has organized and led a mental health initiative (called the Pamphlet Project) which provides information to high school students about people with mental illnesses; the goal is to destigmatize mental illness, to sensitize peers to how their actions might cause pain to their fellow students, and to build a sense of “allyship” enabling affected students to feel comfortable reaching out to their peers and encouraging more mentally healthy students to provide support to their friends.
Catie has also been active in building Oregon Youth for Gun Reform. In addition to addressing gun violence generally, the group focuses on aspects of gun violence that receive much less attention than school shootings have received: for example, the weaponization of police forces, and the impact of gun violence on people of color, the LBGTQ+ community, and others whose experiences have not been reported enough in the mainstream media) (or, as with Black Lives Matter, when their stories are covered, have not been glorified or respected in the media the way middle class white school students are).
Part Two:
We speak with Lila Kohrman-Glaser, a leader of 350NH, and Jordan Dickenson who is active in the group. Jordan studied sustainable agriculture and became an organic farmer because he saw the health problems and climate crisis that was being created by our agribusinesses and their practices. Then Jordan found that his own small farm was threatened with ruin because of water contamination, toxic waste, and a fracked gas pipeline that is proposed for his own community. He became an active opponent of the pipeline, got involved in community discussions of this and other environmental issues, and eventually ran for his Town’s selectboard.
Lila was traveling in Argentina after college, when she learned that Donald Trump had been elected president. She decided she had to return home and get active. Lila is passionate about climate change. She leads grassroots actions to save the planet within the next 11 years (when scientists predict that the crisis will be unstoppable).
Lila led her group in persuading the State of New Hampshire (and its Republican governor) to bring offshore wind power to our state. She is leading the fight to stop the fracking gas pipeline, which she sees as the equivalent of investing in gas production (rather than alternative energy sources) for decades.
On a broader level, she is actively working to frame the conversation on this and other issues, so that our leaders are no longer accepted as “good enough” unless they take a stand — including risking their elected positions – based on a strong moral code of values. It is not enough for leaders to advocate some incremental changes that won’t fundamentally improve our situation. Lila and other young activist voters will be looking for leaders with moral courage, leaders who will stand for policies that will actually solve the serious problems we face, leaders who will refuse to accept incremental changes that won’t provide real solutions.
