The Young People Leading the Grassroots Revolution

It is no secret that young people are often at the helm of social movements in the United States: take the high schoolers who wore black armbands in protest of the Vietnam War, take March For Our Lives, take the occupation protests started by college students in support of Palestine. These youth movements may be among the flashiest, but they certainly aren’t the only ones affecting change. Grassroots organizations—groups of civilians from the same community working towards a common social or political goal—first became widespread in the U.S. during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 60s, and today they thrive in every nook and cranny of the nation.

President Donald Trump’s administration poses a particular threat to young Americans, who will not only endure the immediate consequences of his executive actions, but will live long enough to witness the domino effect of his deleterious climate policy, his undoing of human rights legislation, and his isolationism and nationalism. In the face of the new administration, however, youth grassroots organizations are as tenacious and resilient as their name implies. They are also tremendously important at a time when civic apathy is rampant among young people: only 42% of voters aged 18 to 29 cast ballots in the 2024 presidential election, down from 2020.

In an attempt to shed light on the lesser-known youth movements driving change in their communities, to determine what young people like myself can do to help, I turned to the grassroots organizations of my home state, New Hampshire. I first reached out to the New Hampshire Young Democrats (NHYD), a youth political organization made up of over 500 members statewide. Much of this organization’s work revolves around electing young democrats to local offices—in recent months, they have organized a canvass launch for two aspiring state representatives and held a candidate training seminar for people under the age of 41—but they dip into national politics as well, having hosted an annual barbeque this past summer with Governor Tim Walz as a guest speaker.

I contacted Madelyn McCluskey, the Vice President of Public Affairs for the NHYD, who sent me a package of resources and information put together by the organization’s board: “As we deal with getting folks 40 and under elected to their local, state, and even federal offices the best advice we have to stay engaged is to stay in communication with your representatives and to be involved in your city or towns government and processes,” the statement opened. NHYD emphasized that President Trump has unraveled years and “even decades” of national protections and advancements since he entered office, and offered two main ways to combat these regressions.

The first action young people can take, according to the NHYD, is submitting testimony in support or opposition of certain bills. “Last week over 15,000 granite staters submitted testimony/signed in online in opposition of a 15-week abortion ban, and in turn the sponsors and GOP are withdrawing the bill,” wrote McCluskey. “Making it hard to pass extreme legislation is a way to fight back.” McCluskey linked to the New Hampshire General Court website, where written testimonies can be submitted for various bills. This is not exclusive to NH, of course; a link to the legislature website of every U.S. state can be found here, and ACLU has tips for both writing and orally delivering testimony.

The other suggestion made by NHYD is to participate in your town’s Town Meeting Day: “Most towns in New Hampshire elect their local officers at an annual election and deliberate on their town budget and warrant articles at this annual meeting.” Not every state in the U.S. has town meetings; they are most common in New England, and information about the dates of meetings can be found on town websites. “It’s so important that all members of the community participate because decisions made at the local level truly impact our lives so much.”

To learn about the passion driving youth movements and the work their members put in behind the scenes, I spoke with Taylor Barry, who—despite being a freshman in college—has already had a career in grassroots activism spanning four years. She was recently made hub coordinator of the New Hampshire Youth Movement (NHYM), but she also worked on the Get Out the Vote campaign, served on theNashua Energy and Environment Committee, and spent over a year with 350NH, a local organization focused on clean energy and climate justice. Barry studies Community and Environmental Planning as well as Sustainability at the University of New Hampshire, and expressed that environmental activism is her first love; however, her responsibilities as hub coordinator now have her tackling the interpersonal side of activism.

“I’m learning as I go,” Barry laughed. She stepped into the role of hub coordinator only a month ago, after a fellow NHYM team member graduated. “My number one goal is to facilitate meetings. That’s like, generating an agenda, making slides, presenting, facilitating conversations, getting members to come to meetings. Number two, recruitment. This year is really a base-building year. We’re trying to get more people to join NHYM and then build relationships in order to establish a big base. The primary method is one-on-ones, which are literally one-on-one meetings with someone to form a relationship with them and get their opinions on the meetings and what they’re passionate about.”

Barry said that motivating other young people to get involved with politics became easier once she entered college, and expressed that her past recruitment efforts have proved most successful when young people were sufficiently confident that the organization could affect change, or when they had a strong social media presence and offered networking or career opportunities for joinees. “If you can really explain how your organization is making an impact, people will be more likely to join,” said Barry. “I think it’s super important to utilize your existing contacts and to really make them excited about organizing.”

Like many college students (myself included), Barry spent election night at a campus watch party. She recalled that students’ optimism waned throughout the night as results favored Donald Trump: “Nobody wanted to admit it yet, because it was still really early. But you could kind of feel the mood in the room shifting.” It was especially poignant for members of NHYM to watch local candidates who they had spent months campaigning for loss to their conservative adversaries. “Once we heard the news that Joyce Craig bowed out of the race, and they announced that Kelly Ayotte won, you could hear a pin drop in the room.”

Craig, who ran for NH Governor alongside Ayotte, was a source of hope for young people in NH, having run on promises to expand clean energy, reduce gun violence, and codify Roe v. Wade. “Everyone was upset. One of my friends started crying. People didn’t want to give up hope, but that was a huge race that we were working on. I know the presidential election gets a lot of focus, but we’re all pretty tuned into politics and we know that the governor’s race is just as important for the political climate in New Hampshire,” said Barry, echoing McCluskey’s sentiment that local elections are some of the most important political spheres to observe and participate in.

Barry’s chapter of NHYM, which operates at her college, is concerned about the risk the Trump administration poses to students: “We’re concerned with the Trump administration cutting off funding to DEI. There’s also been concern about the crackdown on undocumented immigrants. We heard that officials might come to our school to gather and deport immigrants. NHYM is gearing up to educate students on their rights.”

In spite of (or perhaps because of) these worries, NHYM has picked up right where it left off: “We have our legislative campaign going right now, where our legislative analyst creates a document every week with current bills going through the House and Senate for us to testify for, online or in-person. There have been a lot of crazy ones that we’ve had to oppose, but also some good ones that are really exciting to support.” Barry named one 2024 bill they opposed which restricted student voting by requiring students to produce citizenship documents when they registered to vote, and another recent bill which aims to reduce high school course requirements, including the elimination of Holocaust and genocide education from social studies requirements. The NHYM provides updates on potentially dangerous bills and ways to oppose them on their Instagram page.

NHYM recently launched its “issue campaign,” where they identified three main issues to tackle in the coming months. “Our top three are affordable housing, bringing back legal services—which was a department that they got rid of due to budget cuts—and disability accessibility. Our main focus on our issue campaign has been to pick something that will solve a broad systemic issue that affects students, and to uphold NHYM values.”

Barry recommended that young people looking to get involved in activist movements should surround themselves with a politically-informed community when possible. “Get involved in your community,” said Barry. “Find social justice organizations, go to town meetings, join clubs to make a positive impact on your community and on campus, because it really is rewarding and helps you feel empowered as an activist.”

“I also try to read the news when I can,” added Barry. “It can be upsetting at times, but I do try to look at headlines and read relevant information. Following accounts on social media can be a good way to get overviews of the important information, but obviously, make sure you’re following credible sources and not getting too much of one political view.”

Barry said she was fearful about the state of democracy under President Trump and his ally Elon Musk, and expressed concern about the implementation of the Project 2025 agenda, but she remains hopeful for the future despite this: “I know after the election, people might be a little disappointed by how stuff turned out, but we’re hoping to prove, like, ‘Hey, it’s not over, we’re still organizing, you can make a difference.’ I’m just part of one organizing group in one state, but organizing is happening across the country. I truly believe that grassroots movements are going to be what produce change."