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POLITICS

Electoral Catalyst
Malika Sanders, 27
Selma, Alabama
Before she was born, Malika Sanders' hometown of Selma was a notorious place where advocates of black voting rights were beaten bloody. In Sanders' eyes, too little had changed in the intervening decades. Despite the town's shift from predominantly white to predominantly black, Mayor Joe Smitherman-who once referred to Martin Luther King Jr. as a 'coon' on national TV-was still in office, likely due to rigged balloting. As director of the 21st Century Youth Leadership Movement, which trains African American youth to be community leaders, she helped organize the 'Joe Gotta Go' campaign for the 2000 mayoral elections. Mobilizing young voters with help from public service announcements by such musicians as The Outlawz and MC Lyte had the desired result: Joe's gone . . . and Selma has its first black mayor.

And that's not all Sanders has done. At 16, she started SMART, the Student Movement Against Racial Tracking, in Selma schools. More recently, working with the Environmental Justice Movement in Georgia, Sanders spoke out for eliminating the Confederate symbol on the state flag.
-Jacqueline White

Radical Cheerleaders
The Jennings Sisters: Aimee, 28, Cara, 25, and Coleen, 23
Lake Worth, Florida
Demonstrations, frankly, can get a tad dull. What's wrong with having a little fun on the way to the revolution? Radical cheerleading squads-'One, two, three, four, boring protests no more'-have popped up all over since sisters Aimee, Cara, and Coleen Jennings hatched the idea on their way to the 1996 Youth Liberation Conference in Sarasota, Florida. Yet as anarchists, these authors of three zine cheer books (available with donation from Box 961, Lake Worth, FL 33460) are uncomfortable getting credit for being the first to bring pom-poms to the protest line (they may or may not be in the photo above). 'Radical cheerleading is a wonderful testament to collaborative art and decentralized organizing,' says former junior high cheerleader Aimee. A squad might, for example, sport hand-spray-painted T-shirts and shake water bottles full of pebbles while chanting against sweatshops or in praise of being fat. Watch for them to enliven the next rally you attend.
-Abbie Jarman

Jail Breaker
Kate Rhee, 29
New York, New York
Imagine a society with fewer prisons: That's the dream of activist Kate Rhee, director of the Brooklyn-based Prison Moratorium Project (www.nomoreprisons.org). A juvenile justice counselor who moved back to New York City after studying philosophy at the University of Chicago, Rhee joined the project in 1999, four years after the group was forged out of a meeting of young ex-prisoners and their allies. The youth-led project-demanding 'education, not incarceration'-has convinced politicians to reduce unnecessary prison expansion and sparked successful campus campaigns to get shareholders to divest stock in the controversial Corrections Corporation of America. With Raptivism Records (www.raptivism.com), the organization put out the 'No More Prisons' CD, considered one of the most successful alliances between a social movement and rap artists.
-Chris Dodge

Liberation Educators
Harmony Goldberg, 27, and Genevieve Gonzáles, 23
Oakland, California
Growing up in California near the Mexican border, Genevieve Gonzáles from an early age was involved with activists confronting anti-Chicano racism. Thousands of miles away, Harmony Goldberg was outspoken in her opposition to prejudice in one of the most segregated cities in the country: Buffalo, New York. Now Gonzáles and Goldberg fight intolerance and bigotry through SOUL, the School of Unity and Liberation (www.youthec.org/soul), which they liken to the famed Highlander Folk School, training ground for many civil rights workers. One of four founding groups of the Youth Empowerment Center (YEC, www.youthec.org), in Oakland, SOUL aims to inspire and train a new generation of young political organizers-especially women, people of color, working-class youth, and queer youth-through classes, workshops, and summer programs. National director Goldberg co-founded SOUL with Rona Fernandez, 30, who now works with the YEC. Bay Area director Gonzáles reaches out to the young people who will fill SOUL's ranks. 'Genevieve has a way of connecting with young people,' says Goldberg. 'She can go into a high school and inspire kids who have never been exposed to these kinds of ideas.'
-Sara V. Buckwitz

Silicon Valley Rabble-Rouser
Raj Jayadev, 27
San Jose, California
As an $8-an-hour temp for Hewlett-Packard, Raj Jayadev saw Silicon Valley's underbelly up close. Temporary factory employees-mostly women and mostly women of color-might toil for years without benefits, sometimes under unsafe conditions. Jayadev's efforts to rally workers led to his dismissal-and to a new form of labor organizing as editor of Silicon Valley De-Bug: The Voice of the Young and Temporary (www.siliconvalleydebug.org). Raising questions about Silicon Valley's 'new economy,' De-Bug is a combination zine and collective of workers, writers, and artists that educates temp workers on their rights as employees. Sponsored by Pacific News Service, the publication aims to 'inspire a rage to take action.'
-Rebecca Wienbar

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