SPOTLIGHT
Learning Lessons from Social Movements Summit
Sponsored by COOL, Raise Your Voice/Campus Compact, Florida Campus Compact, and Miami-Dade Community College
February 21-23, 2003
Miami-Dade Community College
VISION AND CONCEPT
Community service participation by college students today is at a high point, with nearly half of students surveyed at over 600 campuses reporting involvement during their undergraduate years. US News and World Report found that 75 percent of students reported being involved in community service in some form before college. Nonetheless, these positive trends are tempered by some counter trends, including that voting among young people is at all all-time low, at roughly only 32 percent of those eligible participating. Academic research suggests students view service as an alternative form of engagement in the political and electoral process. Moreover, the picture of community welfare is framed by the economic landscape that has changed in notable ways, including America's shrinking middle class and widening gap between wealthy and poor, a gap that is wider than at any point since the 1920's. While student participation may be high, the reasons and issues that demand citizen participation in a participatory democracy (among them poverty, unequal opportunity, and potential for stronger democracies) remain strong.
Our communities and our approaches to addressing community problems suffer from a high degree of isolation and fragmentation. Students and other citizens are interested in finding ways to break down this isolation and be connected to something larger, but we often have little exposure to knowing how to build or be a part of a larger social movement. In our nation and world's history, there have been many social movements that have worked to achieve positive social change, to eliminate inequity or prejudice, or to otherwise make our human communities more fair and tolerable places to live. The 2nd COOL Student Summit: Learning the Lessons from Social Movements, co-sponsored by Raise Your Voice/CAMPUS COMPACT, was held February 21-23, 2003 at Miami-Dade Community College. Workshops focused on:
• The Civil Rights Movement
• The Environmental Movement
• The Student Service and Service-Learning Movement
• The Women's Movement
• Movements for Immigrants' Rights, such as Latinos and Hispanics in the U.S.
• Political Movements: Left, Right, and Center
• Skills and strategies in general for social change and community building
We explored:
• The role that college students or other youth have historically played in other movements for social change
• The role that adults (such as teachers, mentors, or professionals) have played as advocates for social change
• Definitions, examples, and practice of leadership; who is recognized as leaders in other social movements and what we can learn for our own attempts to be leaders.
• The types of strategies and approaches to social change that these movements have utilized, including direct service, social action, activism, using the media, electoral politics and voting, public policy, community and economic development, and other issues
• How to apply lessons from other social movements to our work and action today in order to strengthen our collective efforts to improve communities and people's quality of life
Through the Student Summit, participants gained a stronger sense of how their actions tie into a broader, historical framework of people, especially students and young people working for positive social change.
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