Conscientizar—The Development and Enactment of Sociopolitical Consciousness and Critical Hopefulness in Salinas Youth Activists

In March 2020, a photo of two elementary-aged girls working alone outside of a Taco Bell in Salinas, California went viral. The girls used the franchise location’s wi-fi to complete their online schooling, as a result of initial stay-at-home orders, because they did not have internet access at home. In response, the youth of Salinas rallied around them, collecting funds to provide for the girls’ internet and those of other children in similar situations. After several weeks of coverage by the media, both locally and nationally, and push from local youth who were consistently and constantly representing this clear inequality in access to basic technology at community meetings, the issue was brought up to Salinas’ school board members who created a network of hotspots in safe areas around the city for students in need to use when needed.
This honors thesis analyzes the work of Salinas youth activism during quarantine and the immediate aftermath through the lens of critical consciousness and collective action to understand the drivers pushing youth to engage in change-making collective action in an era of tremendous upheaval, uncertainty, and marginalization. Additionally, I show how youth’s formation of their critical analysis informed their demands and strategies. Drawing on 12 interviews with youth and an extended community ethnography of La Cosecha, a high school youth organizing group in Salinas, I found that youth’s activism was informed by critique engendered by participation in activism. Furthermore, I illustrate how various factors: quarantine shifts, adult actions, and group practices greatly impacted the capacity of youth to engage in collective action for change. This study contributes to the literature on the origins of motivation and hope within youth activists, as well as which organizational structures facilitate or impede youth activism.