| This research study explores the critical literacy praxis of five urban youth organizers. As a literacy study, this research answers two central questions: How do urban youth organizers engage in critical literacy praxis as they become activists? How do urban youth organizers articulate a vision of themselves as activists? Critical literacy praxis is a kind of literacy about structures, structural violence, and power systems that involves engaging in cycles of action and reflection around social and political issues in the lives of learners. The research design takes a hybrid approach to critical discourse analysis through a taxonomy of critical literacy, answering the questions through qualitative interviews that explore polyvocality. Findings from this study offer practical implications for youth activists, literacy educators, social science researchers and community organizers alike. Youth organizing programming, like the Human Rights Activist Project, can offer a generative, safe space within community-based organizations from which to engage young people in critical reflection upon their social and political contexts, to collectively envision and take action for positive change. As a space not congested by external measures of formal education, organizing projects provide an informal youth development platform through which critical literacy learning is more fully realized. The participants of this study all call for further creation of such safe spaces for ethical, intersubjective, social justice youth activism. |
