Maureen Johnson - How I Resist: Activism and Hope for a New Generation

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This book is for all of you out there calling, marching, working, running for office, working on campaigns, working for agencies, talking to friends and relatives, posting, and keeping the conversation going.

For those of you just being yourselves in places and in situations where being yourself isnt easy.

For your multitudinous acts of resistance, for your courage, for getting up and doing it again each day for your hope in the future. Thank you.

To the incredible Kate Welsh, who kept every spreadsheet, read every email, checked every box, edited, responded, tracked, and generally sweated every detail so that each one of these amazing contributions made it into the book. Without her, there would be no book. Thank you to Sara and everyone at St. Martins/Wednesday for giving this book a place to call home. To my agent, Kate Schafer Testerman, who is all things to me. To Cheryl Klein, who helped curate the book list. To my friend Dan Sinker, who encouraged me to make a podcast about resistance (its called Says Who come join us!) and who taught me how to stop worrying and MAKE. And to the incredible contributors who gave so freely of themselves for this book. Thank you all.

When I told people I was working on a resistance guide for teens, occasionally someone would ask me, Why? They cant vote.

I would just shake my head. Adults are so dumb sometimes. We forget that we were all teensNO ONE HAS SKIPPED THIS STEP. We spent most of our time in school learning stuff like history, social studies, public speaking, composition. You know, stuff to make us better members of society. Adults forget that we knew stuff back then and had opinions and that there is no magic transformation that occurs when the clock ticks you over from age seventeen to eighteen. You, my teenage friends, are voters-in-training, the same as adults. Adults forget that we are all voters-in-training. The learning process never stops. We need to look to our younger citizens and non-citizens because youre the ones coming at subjects for the first time; your perspectives, as a result, are fresh and passionate. You practice learning every day. You know how the Internet works. You have not developed the often rigid ways of thinking that plague adults.

In short, you are often better at activism.

Tragically, it took the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, to make this point clear to everyone. When the students rose and made the Never Again movement, when you debated senators in a televised town hall a week later, when you led students across the country to take action on gun control everyone knew that you had changed the program.

This book came about because I had that strange, sucking feeling in my soul after the 2016 electionthe one that made me (and almost everyone I know) ask, But what can I do? WHAT CAN I DO? The question haunted me day and night. I only know how to make books, I said to myself.

So I decided to do that.

Here is a book about resistance for teens. (And anyone else who wants to read this book. ALL ARE WELCOME HERE. We are all in training, remember.)

On the most basic level, resistance means not accepting things the way they are. It means asking questions about how things get done, about how society, laws, and cultural norms have come to be. It can also mean actively taking part in the political processgoing to marches, working for campaigns, posting, debating, creating.

It can mean a lot of things.

In these pages youre going to find different types of materials. There are essays. There are poems. There are songs. There are cartoons. There are lists. There are interviews. There are sample letters to help you contact your representatives. There is information about specific actions people under eighteen can take. There is advice on how to step out of your comfort zone and make something.

Read this book in any order you wantstart at the beginning and read it through, or open at random. Whatever speaks to you wonderful. Its not a prescription; its a way to get you going. Your acts of resistance will vary. Your ways of approaching issues will differ. Good. Thats the way it should be. Resistance isnt a set of stepsit is an ecosystem in which all the different creations live and help one another grow.

These are hard times, but also times of great opportunity. So come on in and lets get to it!

Junauda Petrus is a creative activist, writer, playwright, screenwriter, and multidimensional performance artist who is Minneapolis-born, of West Indian descent, and African-sourced. She is the cofounder with Erin Sharkey of Free Black Dirt, an experimental arts production company. She is currently writing and directing Sweetness of Wild, a web series themed around Blackness, queerness, biking, resistance, love, and coming of age in Minneapolis. Her work centers around wildness, Afrofuturism, ancestral healing, sweetness, spectacle, and shimmer. Her first YA novel, Mable & Audres Existential Transcendental Journey Through Black Universe, debuts in 2019 from Dutton Childrens Books. Follow her on Twitter @junaudaalma and Instagram @Junauda.

COULD WE PLEASE GIVE THE POLICE DEPARTMENTS TO THE GRANDMOTHERS?

Could we please give the police departments to the grandmothers? Give them the salaries and the pensions and the city vehicles, but make them a fleet of vintage Corvettes, Jaguars, and Cadillacs, with white leather interior. Diamond in the back, sunroof top, and digging the scene with the gangsta lean.

Let the cars be badass!

You would hear the old-school jams from Patti LaBelle, Anita Baker, and Al Green. You would hear Sweet Honey in the Rock harmonizing on Ellas Song: We who believe in freedom cannot rest bumping out the speakers.

And they got the booming system.

If youre up to mischief, they will pick you up swiftly in their sweet ride and look at you until you catch shame and look down at your lap. She asks you if you are hungry and you say yes and of course you are. Shes got a crown of dreadlocks and on the dashboard you see brown faces like yours, shea buttered and loved up.

And there are no precincts.

Just love temples that got spaces to meditate and eat delicious food. Mangoes, blueberries, nectarines, cornbread, peas and rice, fried plantain, fufu, yams, greens, okra, pecan pie, salad, and lemonade.

Things that make your mouth water and soul arrive.

All the hungry bellies know warmth, all the children expect love. The grandmas help you with homework, practice yoga with you, and teach you how to make jambalaya and coconut cake. From scratch.

When youre sleepy she will start humming and rub your back while you drift off. A song that she used to have the record of when she was your age. She remembers how it felt to be you and be young and not know the world that good. Grandma is a sacred child herself, who just circled the sun enough times into the ripeness of her cronehood.

She wants your life to be sweeter.

When you are wildin out because your heart is broke or you dont have what you need, the grandmas take your hand and lead you to their gardens. You can lay down amongst the flowers. Her grasses, roses, dahlias, irises, lilies, collards, kale, eggplants, blackberries. She wants you to know that you are safe and protected, universal limitless, sacred, sensual, divine, and free.