Pawns or power players: the grounds on which adults dismiss or defend youth organizers in the USA

Over the last two decades, youth organizing has emerged as an important strategy for social change, particularly within education policy; however, the ability of youth to influence policy is limited by the tendency of adults in positions of power to find reasons to distrust, discredit, or otherwise ignore them. This paper draws on interviews with 31 adult civic leaders in one American city to discern their views on a particular youth organizing group, Philadelphia Student Union (PSU), and to uncover the grounds on which they either dismiss or defend its work. Findings show that the tendency to doubt or deny the voices of youth organizers is not concentrated within any one institutional setting; that the most common reason for doubting or distrusting SFE's work is the belief that adult organizers manipulate the youth members; and that every reason adults offer to dismiss the youth organizers can be matched by a different reason other adults give to defend them, their work, and their place in the policy sphere. Implications for youth organizing groups, their adult allies, policy-makers, and the field are discussed.