lder activists talk a lot about “passing the torch” to the next generation.

After spending time with AngelMarie Taylor, I’m beginning to think we may have the metaphor wrong.

Young people like Taylor aren’t standing around waiting for somebody to hand them a torch. They have already picked it up. The more urgent question is whether those of us who have been doing this work for decades are prepared to support them, listen to them and help clear obstacles out of their way.

Taylor is a Youth Vanguard Organizer with Black Lives Matter Grassroots, and when I recently interviewed her, I was struck by the contrast between her youth and the amount of organizing she has already packed into her life.

During her years at California State University Channel Islands, she was active with groups including Students for Quality Education, the Black Student Union, reproductive and gender-equity organizing, Students for Justice in Palestine and Students Against Fascism.

But her activism started long before college.

It started when she was 10 years old.

Organizing Because Children Needed Lunch

Taylor told me that she and her siblings sometimes went to school without being able to afford lunch. Rather than accepting that as simply the way things were, she joined student government and began working to make food universally available at her school.

“I started as a student organizer when I was 10 years old,” she told me. “There were so many situations where myself and my siblings were going to school and could not afford lunch.”

That first experience taught her something enormously important: organizing could actually change conditions. To read the full article go to the LA Progressive