COVID-19 and Youth Activism against Mass Atrocities

This project chronicles the experiences of six youth activists in the mass atrocity and peacebuilding space during COVID-19

by Abby Edwards

Introduction

Just a few days after I had flown home from college to bunker down with my family in South Carolina, I got a call. I had been chosen to be the new Student Director of the organization STAND: the student-led movement to end mass atrocities. I would lead us through the “new reality” of COVID-19 and whatever came with it. 

When I took on STAND, the leadership team (the Managing Committee)—a group of 12 high school, college, and grad students had had their lives uprooted. Just about three months into the spring semester, most had been forced to move home and to a new online world where classes and most other social interactions took place on Zoom. Over the year, members of our team were forced to navigate moving back in with their families (and saying goodbye to the freedom of living away), new mental health issues, and losing loved ones. For many of us who had been on the team since before the pandemic started, STAND was one of the few communities that felt relatively unchanged. 

Yet, this year also brought us unprecedented opportunities. After noticing that former US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power was regularly doing instagram lives about her new book, I emailed her on a whim asking if she’d do an event with STAND. She emailed me back nine minutes later saying yes, absolutely!

In the past year, I have been amazed to see how my team of high school and college students have adapted and overcome the most daunting challenges and disruptions to their lives they have ever faced. Even more so, I have been awestruck by their continued and often increased dedication to atrocity prevention and peacebuilding activism despite these challenges. 

As such, this project begins with the question, how has youth activism in the atrocity prevention and peacebuilding space in the US changed since the advent of COVID-19? Through this project, I aim to share and analyze the experiences of six of these young activists who were willing to share their stories with me as well as their ideas about how youth activism has changed and will continue to change in this “new world.”

Literature Review

There is little existing literature on youth activism against genocide and mass atrocities. Indeed, with STAND being the only youth-led organization in the US focused specifically on genocide and atrocity prevention, we might say that mass atrocities are not typically considered a “youth issue.” As such, to understand the place of young people in atrocity prevention activism, I explore the intersection of literature on youth activism and that on atrocity prevention. 

The world today has the largest population of young people that humanity has ever seen. Approximately half of the people alive right now are under the age of 30, and one-fourth of the world’s youth live in areas of conflict (Aspholm & Mattaini). Furthermore, in places of conflict, young men are three times more likely than the global average to be the target of violence (Aspholm & Mattaini). Nonetheless, in one-third of countries, people younger than 25 are not eligible to hold roles in national government, pushed out of decision-making spaces, and derivatively, made to feel powerless (“Youth, Political Participation and Decision Making”).

In this way, young people have perhaps the biggest stake in making #neveragain a reality. 

Historically, young people have been at the forefront of activist movements. In the 1930s, young people were leaders in the Cultural Front. In the 1950s and 1960s, young people took to the streets as leaders of the civil rights movement. In 1968, youth around the world stood up against militarism and capitalism. In 1989, young people calling for democracy lost their lives protesting in Tiananmen Square (Jenkins, et al.).

Discussing the history of youth-led activist movements, Jenkins, Shresthova, Gamber-Thompson, Kligler-Vilenchik, and Zimmerman locate an essential contradiction. 

On the one hand, there is a widespread perception that: the institutions historically associated with American democracy are dysfunctional, public trust in core institutions is eroding, civic organizations no longer bring us together, elected representatives are more beholden to big contributors than to voters, electoral processes have been rigged to protect incumbents and to disqualify minority and youth participants, periodic government shutdowns and budget crisis reflect a core impasse between the two parties in Washington, the mass media is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a dwindling number of conglomerates, the news we are receiving is sharply biased by those same partisan interests, surveillance invades our privacy and intimidates would-be political participants, and very little is likely to emerge at the level of institutional politics that is going to shift those conditions very much. On the other hand, we have seen an expansion of the communicative and organizational resources available to everyday people (and grassroots organizations) as we become more and more accustomed to using networked communications beyond our collective interests. (Jenkins, et al., 3)

Indeed, while power and tools of power are becoming located in a more concentrated and elite group, people outside of this group are increasingly able to access technology and resources which they can mobilize to challenge existing institutions. For STAND and organizations like STAND, social media has become a space to mobilize to organize and to spread awareness about issues in a way that is easily accessible to and consumable by young people. 

Castell, on the power of technologies like social media for young people, names three key claims about these spaces. First, these spaces serve to create community “forging social bonds and collective identities between participants” (Castell 3). Second, “such occupied spaces become sites for imagining alternatives, generating new symbols, reconnecting with historical memories, and testing and refining new rhetorics, often in a highly accelerated fashion,” (Castell 3). Finally, these platforms create space for deliberation and debate as well as collaboration, facilitating innovation (Castell 4). 

For youth—especially those too young to vote—social media is a means of “participatory politics, in which political news and opinions are expressed, consumed, and remixed peer‐to‐peer through online social networks,” (Earl, Maher, and Elliot). Beyond the concrete opportunities that these spaces create for activism and organizing, scholarship has shown that young people tend to gravitate towards these spaces naturally as they feel pushed away from spaces and institutions directed or governed by adults (Larson & Hansen): “Even in spaces set up specifically for youth, such as youth advisory councils; adult‐directed political socialization is incongruent with how youth perceive themselves, leading some to start their own youth‐centered organizations. (Earl, Maher, and Elliot)”

As spaces long dominated by youth such as Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok move to the main stage of activism and organizing with the onset of COVID-19, this project seeks to understand how youth activists have adapted to and perhaps even commanded activism in the “new world.”

Methodology 

In order to learn more about how COVID-19 has affected the work and lives of youth activists and organizers in the atrocity prevention space, I employed a mix of ethnographic research and oral history methodology. The decision to employ both ethnographic and oral history methodology stemmed from my goal of both situating the experiences of these young people in existing scholarship while also granting them the agency to tell their own stories. For this reason, I include both my personal analysis of our conversations and the audio recordings of their answers to my questions.

For my participants, I chose six young women between the ages of 16 and 24, all of whom are on the Managing Committee of the organization STAND: the student-led movement to end mass atrocities. This choice was made for a variety of reasons. First, because of the short-term nature of this project, it was convenient to work with participants I already knew through my own participation and leadership in the organization. Second, STAND as an organization is unique in a number of ways. We are the only completely student-led organization in the US dedicated to atrocity and genocide prevention. While we have run in-person programming every year since 2004, the work of our leadership team (the Managing Committee) has been largely virtual as student leaders live across the country. As such, I was interested to learn more about if young people who had organized virtually before the pandemic felt uniquely prepared to organize in the specific context created by COVID-19. Third, the participants I chose to interview represent a broad spectrum of “youth,” ranging from high school juniors to second-year Master’s students. Fourth, the participants have a range of experiences in advocacy—from becoming involved in STAND and other advocacy projects in the past year to having acquired a major book deal to write about their advocacy work. Finally, I wanted to choose students advocating around an issue that had been significantly exacerbated or changed by the pandemic. 

After approaching the participants over Slack (the service we use to communicate as an organization) and giving them an overview of the project. I interviewed the participants over Zoom in a semi-structured interview form. All participants gave oral consent to having the Zoom recorded and shared as a part of the project. The interviews each lasted between 12 and 30 minutes. 

While the interviews were more or less an open conversation guided by the subject, I loosely structured them around seven questions: 1. Introduce yourself (name, age, hometown, school), 2. How would you describe your involvement in mass atrocity prevention/peacebuilding activism and organizing before COVID-19? 3. How has your involvement in mass atrocity prevention/peacebuilding activism changed since March of last year? 4. What do you see as the strengths of youth-led activism in the context of COVID-19? 5. What do you see as the weaknesses of youth-led activism in the context of COVID-19? 6. Do you think COVID-19 has significantly changed the form or model applied by youth-led movements? 7. How has COVID-19/the events of the past year changed you as an activist or organizer? These questions were purposefully designed to be broad so as to allow the participants to guide their telling of their experiences. 

Background of STAND 

STAND was formed in 2004 at Georgetown as Students Take Action Now Darfur as a part of the Save Darfur movement. At its height, the organization had over 300 chapters across the US and lead protests and events that featured speakers such as former President Barack Obama. Since 2009, STAND’s focus has expanded to work on the prevention of genocide and mass atrocities more broadly; today, STAND is known as the student and youth-led movement to end mass atrocities. Each year, STAND’s Managing Committee—a group of 10-12 students who lead and make strategic decisions for the organization—uses a selection methodology to choose the regions and issue areas that the organization focuses on. This year (2020-2021) STAND focused on East Turkistan (Xinjiang, China), Sudan & South Sudan, Kashmir, Yemen, and Burma. Next year (2021-2022), the organization will focus on East Turkistan, Yemen, Burma, and for the first time ever, the United States. 

My positionality

Importantly, it should be acknowledged that I am the current co-Student Director of STAND, meaning that I lead the Managing Committee from which the participants were drawn. Subjects were not in any way coerced into being interviewed for the project and were told that their participation was completely voluntary and separate from their work at STAND. No benefits were offered for their participation, but all participants I asked to be interviewed agreed. 

My positionality as the Student Director of STAND means that I have an in-depth knowledge of STAND’s work which will help me situate the experiences of these young people. However, my work at STAND and my existing relationships with the participants will no doubt cloud my analysis of their stories. 

Furthermore, while I don’t evaluate the background of my participants, I should note that I am a white woman from an upper-middle-class background and a student at an elite university. I feel privileged to be able to participate in activism with and beyond STAND and I want to acknowledge my background in so far as it likely influences my analysis and my experiences (when they are included). 

Data And Analysis

Introducing our youth activists

an interactive map of the project participants, by hometown

How would you describe your involvement in mass atrocity prevention/peacebuilding activism and organizing before COVID-19?

My first question aimed to gauge the rootedness of the participants in the mass atrocity/peacebuilding advocacy space before COVID-19. I considered this important for two reasons. First, this rootedness seems central to their ability to understanding the changes and disruptions youth activism has faced since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. Secondly, for participants who were not actively involved before COVID-19, it opened up discussion on why they became involved in the past year and how that may or may not have been related to the opportunities and challenges created by COVID-19. 

Aisha, Claire, Caroline, and Megan had all served on the Managing Committee for over a year, meaning that they had played a role in STAND leadership before COVID-19 started when we were still running in-person programming and events. Aisha and Claire both served outreach roles—leading recruitment efforts both on college and high school campuses as well as organizing outreach events with regional partners. For instance, before the shutdown, Aisha and I had been planning an event on the Youth, Peace, and Security Bill in NYC with Representative Grace Meng.

Caroline, who had been on the MC for three years prior to COVID-19, and Megan, who had been on the MC for one year prior, emphasized that things looked significantly different before: chapters were in person, we had in-person “retreats” (biannual planning weekends in DC), and we regularly lobbied in person on the Hill. At the same time, Megan, Caroline, and Aisha each noted that STAND was an early adopter of Zoom. Indeed, while we met in DC twice a year to plan our strategy for the semester/year, we met weekly on Sunday nights over Zoom for years before Zoom became a household name. Having implemented a system for virtual planning and work before the onset of COVID-19, participants seemed to suggest even in this question about “before times” that we were better equipped to weather the harsh realities and challenges of activism during the pandemic. 

Allison and Jenna were both new to the MC this year, meaning that they were recruited in late March/early April 2020 after COVID had already taken hold of the world. Interestingly, in their answers to this question and later questions, both describe having had little or no experience in activism before the pandemic. However, both had participated in some related work. Allison had been a member of her high school STAND chapter for some time and Jenna had done an internship with the Borgen Project (an organization focused on the eradication of global poverty). 

How has your involvement in mass atrocity prevention/peacebuilding activism changed since March of last year?

Central to this project is the question of how these young activists’ lives and work changed during COVID-19—a reality that is no doubt evolving by the day. Claire’s work was perhaps the most profoundly affected. As the fundraising lead on the MC, she found it difficult to do her work as she wanted to be sensitive to people’s losses, especially during the early period of COVID-19. 

While their specific roles were less directly affected, both Allison (discussing the work of her high school chapter) and Megan (discussing the work of STAND more broadly) mentioned that the advent of the pandemic had truly disrupted our grassroots work with youth across the country. As everything became virtual, Zoom fatigue quickly became a reality. For some STAND members who were previously active, STAND fell to the wayside as other more pressing issues took priority. For chapters, the loss of in-person programming and events made participation less meaningful for chapter members and resulted in a huge drop in engagement, as discussed by Allison. 

Yet, others such as Aisha and Caroline emphasized the unique ways in which STAND was cut out to function in the virtual environment. Aisha discussed the fact that many of our partners in the peacebuilding and atrocity prevention field had long operated only in person and as such, when the pandemic began, lacked a lot of the skills that we as an organization had already developed—either just from being young people who are very “online” or from organizing virtually in the past. This opened up major new opportunities for us. For instance, as Aisha briefly discussed, over summer 2020 members of the STAND managing committee were hired by MercyCorps to design and implement a virtual advocacy campaign calling for the proper implementation of the Global Fragility Act. MercyCorps is one of the biggest peacebuilding/humanitarian organizations in the world, yet they looked to (and paid!) us, a group of high school and college students to run a four-month-long social media campaign because they lacked the expertise and skills which we had developed just from spending too much time on Instagram. 

Caroline brought up the fact that the challenges created by COVID-19 for activism were somewhat mediated by the ways in which our “new world” made activism more accessible in a number of ways. She highlighted that, especially for lobbying, it was very exclusionary for people to have to travel to DC to be able to meet directly with the offices of their Senators and Representatives. Now, people are able to lobby virtually over Zoom or Skype from anywhere in the country or world. For STAND, this is especially crucial as we can bring people who are directly affected by violent conflict and mass atrocities to our meetings to discuss their experiences. 

Jenna and Caroline also brought up the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic created new opportunities for them as organizers and activists. Caroline discussed the fact that she now felt more comfortable sharing her activism on her personal social media—something which she felt became significantly more normalized over the past year. She also brought up the fact that she felt in some ways motivated by the COVID-19 pandemic in that it made the work feel more relevant. 

For Jenna, a dual Master’s student and an active swimmer and swim coach, COVID-19 meant she had way more time in her schedule which is how she came to become involved in atrocity prevention activism and STAND, more specifically. She explained that she normally would not have had time to participate in the kind of work STAND is doing because of swim coaching and graduate assistantships. However, since COVID-19 changed what those looked like, she was able to explore an interest that she had always had in activism and advocacy. 

What do you see as the strengths of youth-led activism in the context of COVID-19?

Similar to the themes that began to be explored in the last question, the activists emphasized the global connections that were possible to make thanks to technology and platforms such as Zoom. Allison, speaking on a fellowship that she is participating in with the organization Together We Remember, discussed how important it had been to her to get to connect and interact with other fellows across the world—especially those living in places of violent conflict and atrocities. She felt that those interactions were crucial for people in the US who might not know much about the world outside of their country.

Just as the new virtual reality expanded young people’s worldviews, COVID-19 and the events of the past year have fired young people up. Both Aisha and Caroline emphasized the fact that young people had seen their lives disrupted more so than perhaps any other generation during COVID-19. Directly affected by the challenges of the new world, young people were especially motivated to take action against the injustices in their communities and in the world more broadly. As voiced by Caroline, as the next generation, we have to care. And luckily, with school completely disrupted, youth have more opportunities than ever before to get involved with activism. 

Along this same vein, Claire discussed the ways in which youth activism during COVID is built on a foundation created by the work of youth activists during the past decade. Activists working for STAND or in other movements such as the Sunrise Movement or March for Our Lives have created a generation of activists who are uniquely prepared to work in this moment. And now, with the world going virtual, these young people are able to navigate spaces they haven’t been before and furthermore, create youth-specific organizing spaces. Claire goes as far as to argue that working in person actually serves as a major limitation on youth activism. 

What do you see as the weaknesses of youth-led activism in the context of COVID-19?

When discussing the challenges faced by youth activists during COVID-19, most everyone brought up Zoom fatigue. It was one thing to meet regularly over Zoom when hardly anyone else knew what Zoom was. But now that everyone is online all day long, it’s hard to motivate people to come to a virtual meeting or a virtual event. 

Aisha and Claire also brought up some of the costs of youth activism—specifically, that the time commitment that young people are expected to contribute comes at the expense of time they could be spending doing other things. Especially during COVID-19, Aisha feels that youth activism can be exclusionary of populations of young people who have to prioritize other things. This is, of course, exacerbated by the fact that (with the exception of our MercyCorps contract) work with STAND and similar organizations is not paid.

While Claire had discussed in the last question the way that young people are now able to build youth-specific spaces, she also discussed the ways in which young people were finding themselves excluded or ignored in the virtual world. Claire frequently speaks on panels about her work single-handedly passing Oregon’s genocide education bill at the age of 14 and brought up the fact that she feels like other panelists ignore her in a way that they were not able to do when serving on a panel in person. Jenna echoed this—it has been much more difficult for young people to network and build relationships and a community among activists during COVID-19.

Finally, Caroline discussed that it has been challenging—for the atrocity prevention and peacebuilding space especially—to emphasize the importance of these issues. Since STAND’s work is largely focused on areas and conflicts outside of the United States, the quick-moving news cycle of the past year and domestic conflict has made our work feel, at times, arbitrary. 

Do you think COVID-19 has significantly changed the form or model applied by youth-led movements?

As people begin to get vaccinated and the world gains some semblance of normalcy, one thing on the mind of many scholars and thought leaders is the question of what aspects of the reality during COVID-19 will become part of the “new normal?” Specifically, I wanted to know what these young activists thought would continue from COVID-19 in the atrocity prevention and peacebuilding activism space and for youth movements more broadly. 

Almost everyone agreed that COVID-19 has not affected all youth movements in a uniform way. But for everyone, COVID-19 has created the challenge of how to create impact over Zoom—a platform that we almost universally recognize will be a part of the new reality. 

Will this stay like this forever? Will we have virtual lobby meetings? Will we ever go back in person and have these large events? What does that look like—and I think that all depends on what our return to normal looks like. Because, once we figure that out and navigate that, it will be easier to see what will stick and what will fade out. Like, will Zoom still be a thing in five years? Probably, but how will it be used? - Claire, 16

Jenna, Megan, and Caroline all agree that social media is going to be more important than ever for activist movements—giving youth an edge. Caroline increasingly sees internships for graphic designers and social media strategists popping up at big advocacy organizations, highlighting the importance of these skills in the changing world. Jenna hopes for a world where we can run campaigns that balance online and in person activism. Megan feels grateful that activism is more common on social media—meaning we are able to facilitate discussions about these issues with people who might otherwise not define themselves as ‘activists’ or ‘organizers.’ 

In the context of STAND, Caroline discussed the decision to focus more on the US next year. Previously, STAND has focused on genocide and atrocities solely taking place outside of the US, with the exception of doing some work on indigenous issues. However, following the murder of George Floyd (and too many others) as well as the political violence surrounding the election, the parallels became all too clear and STAND leaders found it imperative that we turn a critical eye to our own country and communities. Caroline hopes it will be an easy transition to focus on these issues as they have become a more common discussion topic on social media than they were before COVID.

How has COVID-19/the events of the past year changed you as an activist or organizer?

Finally, I wanted to turn to think about how the events of the past year have affected each of these young people individually. Allison, Claire, and Jenna highlighted the positive ways they had each grown in their activism since COVID-19. Allison discussed feeling renewed motivation and inspiration to do the work, while Jenna found herself exploring activism for the very first time after wanting to dip her toes in for years. Claire found herself no longer flying across the country to speak on panels, but found new ways to think about the issues over the year. For Aisha, COVID-19 has been a reminder of how quickly things can change. 

Seeing the recent events, especially the events of the summer, the election, it has definitely inspired me to get more involved. It has inspired me to keep going and inspired me to keep up my work and better myself as much as I can especially as these are crucial events in our country’s history. Seeing these events take place is really a reminder of why I started doing this work in the first place. - Allison, 17

For Caroline, the context of COVID-19 made her increasingly concerned about accessibility. She found herself learning about new ways to make her work accessible to others—adding alternative text to social media posts with images or infographics and making sure that her work is intersectional. For Megan, COVID-19 was a challenge and reminded her about the need for self-care and community care. She discussed her realization that activism is a lifelong project which requires a lot of endurance.

Conclusion

Overall, despite the challenges presented by an unexpected global pandemic—especially for youth—youth-led organizations like STAND have been able to adapt exceptionally well to the “new world” of COVID-19. As predicted by scholars such as Castell, the young organizers at STAND have looked to the familiar space of social media to organize and create new spaces of activism. Like Claire and Allison discussed, this has been a double-edged sword as youth have found themselves able to connect with other young people around the world and lead virtual activism campaigns in the pandemic world, but also more frequently and easily ignored in adult-dominated spaces. 

But this project is not just about youth having an edge. Rather, after repeatedly being spoken for or not having their stories told at all, young people need to have an opportunity to share their experiences in their own words. For as much as I can praise their resilience, their vulnerability about their struggles during the pandemic is just as important to this project and to our understanding of youth activism. I found that Megan put it best when she said, “Activism is a life-long project.” Indeed, in the area of atrocity prevention, it is a grueling and often unforgiving marathon. 

Works Cited

Aspholm, Roberto R., and Mark A. Mattaini. “Youth Activism as Violence Prevention.” Wiley Online Library. American Cancer Society, September 8, 2017. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/9781119057574.whbva104.

Castells, Manuel. Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2018.

Earl, Jennifer, Thomas Maher, and Thomas Elliot. “Youth, Activism, and Social Movements.” Sociology Compass, n.d. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12465.

Jenkins, Henry, Sangita Shresthova, Liana Gamber-Thompson, Neta Kligler-Vilenchik, Arely M. Zimmerman, and Elisabeth Soep. By Any Media Necessary: the New Youth Activism. New York: New York University Press, 2019.

Larson, Reed, and David Hansen. “The Development of Strategic Thinking: Learning to Impact Human Systems in a Youth Activism Program.” Human Development 48, no. 6 (2005): 327–49. https://doi.org/10.1159/000088251.

“YOUTH, POLITICAL PARTICIPATION AND DECISION-MAKING .” The United Nations. UN Youth, n.d. https://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/youth/fact-sheets/youth-political-participation.pdf.