Hub youth activists head south for social justice forum

Toussaint Losier

Local youth workers and their supporters packed the 711 Bistro & Sushi Bar last Friday, partying until the early morning and transforming one of Copley Square’s trendier nightspots into a community space.

While dancing to the latest hip-hop and reggae music, these activists also helped to raise over $1,000 to send more than 100 Boston-area youth to the first-ever United States Social Forum.

The forum, which started yesterday in Atlanta, and runs through July 1, brings together grassroots social justice organizations. Over the long weekend, groups working on a broad range of issues — from immigrants’ rights to women’s reproductive rights, environmental racism to anti-war activism, and tenant organizing to criminal justice reform — will all come together.

The event gets its mandate from the World Social Forum (WSF), an international gathering of community organizers, trade unionists, students, elected officials, nonprofit organizations and social movements. Since its inception in Brazil six years ago, the annual meeting has brought together hundreds of thousands of people to discuss and debate alternatives to the economic plans implemented by the richest governments and corporations. Across the world, activists have looked to the WSF as a space in which to learn about each other’s issues, refine their organizing skills and coordinate global campaigns.

Though the social forum process was first introduced to the U.S. with the 2004 Boston Social Forum, there has not yet been a similar national gathering of grassroots organizations. Four years ago, several U.S. social justice organizations began planning a national forum, and over the past year their efforts have come together under the banner of “Another World is Possible, Another U.S. is Necessary.”

For the past several months, groups across the country have been mobilizing to go to Atlanta, many traveling by bus for the five-day gathering. For instance, the South by Southwest Freedom Caravan brought nearly 1,000 people from five states to Atlanta, with stops along the way to mark issues of racial injustice and build black and brown unity. Hundreds of buses departed from other regions of the country, with more than 10,000 people registered to attend.

Local activists began making transportation plans months ago following a visit by members of the social forum’s national planning committee. Titled “Mobilize the Bean” and led largely by youth workers at organizations like the Boston Youth Organizing Project and Reflect & Strengthen, these efforts have focused on fundraising to bring local teen activists to Atlanta. Other groups that have been involved include Alternatives for Communities and Environment (ACE), Beantown Society, Boston Mobilization, and the local hip-hop group The Foundation Movement.

“This has been a way to show Boston solidarity, mobilizing young people from across the city and working together to create a safe space for youth,” said Reflect & Strengthen’s Jessica Tang. “It’s movement-building in action.”

“We are bringing [together] young people who are leaders and activists,” said Najma Nazyat, long time activist and lead organizer of the Boston Youth Organizing Project. “People are really feeling that and rolling in the tradition of the [1960s] Freedom Rides, rolling as part of a movement larger than our individual work.”

Nazyat sees the forum as an event that will “give our youth an opportunity to see how they are a part of a national movement, to see what is happening across the country.”

“Recently, our youth have been fighting by themselves and it really sucks,” Nazyat said. “It is going to be great to go somewhere where adults respect what they are doing, validate them and encourage them to keep doing what they are doing.”

According to Alice Lovelace, national lead staff organizer for the U.S. Social Forum, youth are going to play a key role in the gathering.

“We do not think about youth as leadership to come, but leadership that is here at this moment,” said Lovelace. “The question is how do we mentor and raise them up as they grow. They are critical.”

Initially, Boston organizers planned to bring only two buses of young people, but the high level of responses pushed them to add another coach bus. The mobilization has also expanded to include Providence, R.I., and Washington, D.C., where the buses will stop to bring delegations from those cities.

“The biggest thing for me is seeing what other people who are interested in this work are doing, [and] connecting our local issues to what is happening nationally and globally,” said Brandon McDowell, a youth organizer with ACE’s Roxbury Environmental Empowerment Project. “I’m going to meet people from D.C., Chicago, and New York and other places and see how we are in the same struggle.”

To cover the increased transportation costs, local organizers have been raising money through foundation grants, fundraising events, and individual donations. In addition to last Friday’s dance party, there have been movie showings and artistic performances to raise the necessary funds little by little.

“It has really not happened that movements have worked in a larger way for social justice,” said Nazyat. “This is probably one of the first efforts that have moved like this, with indigenous people talking to Chicano people [and] talking to environmental people. This is really radical and it is really happening with grassroots fundraising. [In Boston] we’ve taken their lead and done the same.”

These efforts have also benefited from generous individual donations like the one made by City Councilor Felix Arroyo during a June 19 press conference at City Hall. Last May, Arroyo and fellow Councilor Chuck Turner were the only councilors to oppose an increase in the annual salaries of the mayor, top administration officials, and councilors themselves, believing that city money would be better served going toward Boston youth and social justice groups.

“There are many youth organizations throughout the city that have been underfunded, and I hope that my small donation will help to ease some of the costs that organizations face while trying to care for the concerns of Boston’s youth,” said Arroyo, who donated $1,000 to help Mobilize the Bean send youth representatives to the forum in Atlanta.

“There are a lot of folks that have participated in earlier struggles and are participating in current movements that will be getting together in one place,” said Councilor Arroyo’s son Ernesto Arroyo, who performs under the stage name “Eroc” as a member of The Foundation Movement. “That is a nightmare for the folks in power, with people looking for ways we can unite rather than remain divided.” The Foundation Movement will perform alongside other musical groups tomorrow at a concert as part of the forum.

Mobilize the Bean brought two youth film crews to document their bus trip and time at the United States Social Forum. Upon returning, they plan to show their experiences at community meetings as part of informational and fundraising efforts.