The Flavors of Leadership

The Flavors of Leadership

by Joy Garlin Hunt
October 2004

Pick up a newspaper today and you will probably get the impression that America’s youth are lazy, videogame playing, pop-culture obsessed, political neophytes who couldn’t tell John Kerry from George W. Bush if our MP3 players depended on it. Hearing these stories of youth apathy time and time again could almost make us believe they were true. If only we didn’t know better.

A generation of young activists is working tirelessly for the causes we believe in, but these stories are usually ignored by mainstream news media. Yet, as young activists, we see amazing social justice work taking place. We watch our friends march tirelessly against the war, work daily to mentor young children, and debate fair trade, the purpose and benefits of free, public education and the so-called “jobless recovery”-- leaving us to wonder how the national media has failed to report on the passion and conviction of so many of today’s young people.

Luckily, there is an extraordinary program called Leadership for a Changing World (LCW). Each year LCW honors social justice leaders from a variety of disciplines whose stories renew and inspire activists, young and old, to have faith that our goals are achievable, our struggles interconnected. What follows are the stories of several extraordinary young women whose work has been recognized through the Leadership for a Changing World program. The members of this group are activists with passion, with heart, with a true and unyielding desire to make their communities better places for generations to come. As the saying goes, they are “reaching as they climb.”

Meet Lateefah Simon.

Raised by a working class mother in San Francisco's economically depressed Western Addition, Lateefah Simon watched as friends and community members lost their homes to gentrification, and their children, their economic stability and their lives to drugs. Drawing strength and determination from these life experiences, Simon is weaving together her community by building an organization dedicated to providing realistic alternatives to crime and incarceration for young women. At the age of 17, Simon was working in her after-school job at Taco Bell when an outreach worker approached her from the Center for Young Women’s Development. Soon thereafter, Simon took an entry-level position with the Center. Her unflagging interest, enthusiasm and skills quickly won her promotions until, in 1997, at the age of 20, the Center's board of directors appointed her executive director. Today, at 26, she is the oldest member of her staff. “I know the streets, I know the system, I know poverty, and I know how it feels to be 15 and not have a safe place to go,” she adds. “Working at this agency, I found my power, my voice. Many folks have asked me, ‘How do you do it and why have you sacrificed so much to do this work?’ The answer comes easy. I look at my daughter and find hope in that she is living in a world of struggle, of social and political movement. She and the other five-year-olds will grow up in a more just, more equitable world. She motivates me.” In 2001, Simon became the youngest person ever to receive a Leadership for a Changing World award.

Then there is Grace Kong.

Grace Kong is the daughter of immigrants. Her parents, while struggling to live day to day and provide for their family, taught her the core values of treating everyone with dignity and of working for a just and compassionate society for all people. In 2002, Kong shared a Leadership for a Changing World award with two other organizers of the Laotian Organizing Project (LOP) in Richmond, California. She was only 25 years old.

Richmond, a city in Contra Costa County, California, is one of the most toxic places in the United States. Homes and schools stand alongside Superfund toxic cleanup sites and adjacent to some 350 industrial facilities, including waste incinerators, oil refineries and pesticide, fertilizer and other chemical manufacturers. The LOP was organized to help members of the Laotian community in Richmond, California struggle for environmental justice and social change. Among the organization’s community-building activities: conducting a survey project on contaminated seafood consumption, managing land available to Laotian families for communal gardening to ensure food security, and supporting political campaigns against anti-immigrant statewide initiatives.

Today, Grace Kong has moved on to become Asian Pacific Islander Network Coordinator for the Asian Pacific Environmental Network. At the age of 27, we can expect great things from this young woman in the years to come.

Finally, meet the women of LIFETIME.

LIFETIME is a nonprofit organization created by student mothers at the University of California - Berkeley who completed college degrees while raising their families on welfare, and who are committed to helping others do the same. Diana Spatz, Executive Director; Anita M. Rees, Program Director; Leilani Luia, Board Chair; Sylvia Cabrales, Board Vice Chair; and Heather E. Jackson, Board Secretary are the heart and soul of LIFETIME, and they are 2003 Leadership for a Changing World awardees. Their work is an inspiration to anyone committed to women’s empowerment and a truly public education for all.

Some of LIFETIME’s accomplishments include training many parents who have fought successfully to have their higher education count as a welfare-to-work activity under California's welfare program. The organization has pressured the state to restore funding to community college welfare-to-work programs, in the midst of California’s current budget crisis. It has created a parent speakers’ bureau, through which low-income parents participate in policymaking about welfare reform. LIFETIME also has organized a student-parent scholarship campaign to help parents continue in school after their welfare benefits end.

The project also teaches low-income people economic literacy and financial planning skills so that they can save money to invest in completing their education, buying homes, and starting businesses. LIFETIME’s leaders are committed to helping all low-income families, particularly those who are the working poor, access education and training and find jobs that pay a living wage. With so many successful programs under their belt, the young women of LIFETIME are truly an inspiration for us all.

Next time someone complains to me about the so-called apathy of youth, I will be able to proudly tell them about Lateefah Simon, Grace Kong, Diana Spatz, Anita Rees, Leilani Luia, Sylvia Cabrales, and Heather Jackson. The Leadership for a Changing World program has performed a great service in identifying the strategic, sustainable, and results-oriented activist work of these young women. Their stories deserve to be recognized, and young activists need to know we are not alone in our efforts to create a more just and fair tomorrow.