Organizing MySpace: Youth Walkouts, Pleasure, Politics, and New Media

Caddo Gap Press. 3145 Geary Boulevard PMB 275, San Francisco, CA 94118. Tel: 415-666-3012; Fax: 415-666-3552; e-mail: [email protected]; Web site: http://www.caddogap.com

Y

20

Popular Culture; Legislators; Immigrants; Computer Mediated Communication; Civil Rights; Activism; State Legislation; Urban Areas; Youth; Role; Internet; Social Change; High School Students; Adolescents; Social Networks; Mass Media Effects

1047-8248

While the major urban centers around the country were flooded by millions of protesters demanding immigrant rights in March 2006, the San Francisco Bay Area remained relatively quiet. A coalition of organizers, including Centro Legal de la Raza, Deporten A La Migra, and the Bay Area Immigrant Rights Coalition mobilized a one-week hunger strike, creating media visibility and political pressure despite their smaller numbers. On the morning of March 27th, 2006, a throng of organizers broke camp and prepared to march to U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein's office to demand changes to the bill being constructed by her senate committee. Eventually, thousands of people including teenagers closed down Market Street, the main thoroughfare through downtown San Francisco, to rally in front of Senator Feinstein's office. Youth played a large role in organizing for immigrant rights in cities throughout the country, but in San Francisco they became the critical mass necessary for a significant mobilization. This article explores the nature of "fast organizing" among youth made possible through the advent of new media, particularly instantaneous text messaging and virtual communities formed in cyberspace. However, this study affords an analysis of not just new media, but of the contemporary terrain of youth organizing and popular culture. (Contains 9 notes.)

ERIC

32

2009

EJ821602