Youth to Power
Book

Youth to Power

Your Voice and How to Use It

Jamie Margolin
Hachette Book Group USA, 2020
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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Applicable
  • For Beginners
  • Engaging

Recommendation

In her bold, inspiring guidebook, youth activist Jamie Margolin provides practical advice on how to be an agent of change. She explains the difficulties of being heard, the importance of knowing how to frame an issue to get results,the need to keep your ego out of the way and the value of – in the late Rep. John Lewis’s words – getting into “good trouble.” If you decide to advocate for a cause, Margolin can help you make it happen. Greta Thunberg’s foreword adds to her argument for young people to step forward. 

 

Summary

Finding your why is the first and most important step in becoming an activist.

Being an activist for any cause is hard work, so, before you begin your journey, investigate your “why.” Your why will propel you forward. It is the reason you are fighting. Every article you write, protest you attend and job you take serves your why; these measures are steps on the way, not ends in themselves.

Do you know someone who suffers from injustice? Do you want to emulate the people you see making a change? Or maybe you question ordinary rules, and recognize the value of making “good trouble.” You might not know your why at first. Meet people, attend events and educate yourself. Your why will reveal itself.

Jamie Margolin, who lives in the US Pacific Northwest, became an activist at age 12 when she saw the effects of pollution and climate change on the natural habitat around her. She realized that she could not live without its beauty and decided she would do all in her power to preserve it. She organized her first mass movement – Zero Hour – at...

About the Author

Zero Hour co-founder Jamie Margolin, 19, is a Colombian-American community organizer, activist, author and public speaker. In 2018, she led the “Youth Climate Marches” in Washington, DC and more than 25 other cities globally. She is now in her first year of university studying film and television. Greta Thunberg, who wrote the foreword, says Margolin's Zero Hour marches inspired her and her School Strike for Climate/Fridays for Future movement. 

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