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American Morning
Taking Activism From Classroom to the Road
Aired July 02, 2001 - 10:28 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Well, from feminism to youth activism, some young people are taking a hands-on approach to helping the world around them. A group of college students has taken its brand of activism from out of the classroom to on the road. Here now is CNN's Kathy Slobogin with the story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KATHY SLOBOGIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It may look like a bus, but it's actually a class on wheels for students who want to learn how to change the world.
TAMEKA PRINGLE, STUDENT: I was thrilled with the idea of going around and studying and getting hands on skills as opposed to just sitting in a classroom and being fed knowledge.
SLOBOGIN: Eleven students from Brandeis University are on a bus tour of America's hot spots of social change. It's part of a course on how to be an activist that's taken them from civil rights landmarks like Selma, Alabama to a Habitat For Humanity site in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Habitat is not just about building houses. We build a community.
SLOBOGIN: Here, the students help renovate houses for low income homeowners. But they're also learning a lesson about working with people who will actually benefit from what they do.
SUZY STONE, STUDENT: We realize that, you know, it's not about the theory. It's about the people and getting down to the level of where we're working on a one on one individual basis with some of these people is really nice.
SLOBOGIN: The tour is the brainchild of David Cunningham, an assistant professor at Brandeis who feels many students today are overwhelmed at the prospect of finding a way to make a difference.
DAVID CUNNINGHAM, BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY: What I found over the last few years working with college students is they have the sense of what I like to think of as vicarious nostalgia about the '60s and even into the early '70s about what activism meant and how social change occurs. SLOBOGIN: Cunningham hopes to help these students take baby steps towards finding their own brand of activism, and that doesn't necessarily mean organizing protests like those that tore through Seattle two years ago against the World Trade Organization.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT: They're constructing math problems around kids' experiences.
SLOBOGIN: One stop that had a big impact was the Algebra Project in Mississippi, where former civil rights leaders help children through a math curriculum.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: It's almost not revolutionary in that it's trying to create a big social movement almost, but just through a little program to teach kids math.
CUNNINGHAM: I think it's broadened their sense of what it means to be an activist in the sense that they don't have to be out there protesting on the street with placards or with their fists raised and they can work within the system sometimes or even outside of the system with organizations that are trying to make a difference.
SLOBOGIN: While some have written off the younger generation as politically apathetic, it turns out kids today may be just as engaged as their more famous counterparts of the '60s, if not more so.
(on camera): A survey of college freshmen found the percentage who participated in organized demonstrations in high school has actually tripled since the '60s and 80 percent of today's college freshmen reported doing some kind of volunteer work.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT: The first thing is that you really need to make a decision about what message you want to get across.
SLOBOGIN: One of the last stops on the 30 day bus tour was a visit to Washington for tips on how to lobby for a quiet but effective way to make social change.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT: You want to talk from your heart. You want to talk like someone who cares about this.
SLOBOGIN: The next day, the students tried out their new skills on Congressman Ed Markey from Massachusetts. Their issue? Pushing for a moratorium on the death penalty.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT: Two thirteen and 1038, they're both relating to the death penalty.
SLOBOGIN: They didn't get much argument from Markey, who opposes the death penalty. Still, it was good practice and another life lesson for the budding young activists on the bus from Brandeis.
Kathy Slobogin, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
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