by Nicole McClelland and Kristina Rizga

From shutting down toxic waste facilities to making colleges more affordable, young people all over America put their energies into remarkable actions in 2007. The year was filled with many great youth organizing successes. And though there are countless other examples of protest, cooperation, and informed dissent, here are three especially inspirational stories. Congratulations to all young people who took responsibility in 2007 to put their energies into action for their communities and for the world.

Shutting toxic things down
In a triumph for the environment, the members of Youth United for Community Action, an organization created and run by youth of color ages 13-30 in the Bay Area, became heroes of their neighborhood and role models for grassroots organizers nationwide. YUCA forced California to shut down a hazardous-waste-handling company that had been plaguing the vicinity for more than four decades. YUCA worked to rid its community of Romic Environmental Technologies Corporation, fined for multiple hazardous-waste violations by the California Department of Toxic Substances Control for 16 years. Thanks to YUCA, the state issued an order that Romic close most of its East Palo Alto operations.

Freeing the Jena 6
The day after a few black students at Jena High School in Louisiana sat under a campus tree traditionally claimed by white students, two nooses were dangling from it. When white youth assaulted black students later that year, they were tried as juveniles and got away with a slap on the wrist. But when black students retaliated, the district attorney tried the six 15- to 17-year-olds as adults and charged them with attempted second-degree murder, for which each faced more than 20 years in prison.

A year later this story burst into national prominence thanks to the most massive civil-rights-movement mobilization since the ’60s of over 10,000 college students, activists and hip-hop artists. Thousands of youth in Jena and students on campuses nationwide protested a case that epitomized a long-standing history of unfair sentencing of people of color in America. The Jena 6 campaign mobilized millions of socially conscious youth, and this grassroots-driven campaign helped overturn the original sentences of the Jena 6.

Fairer immigrant wages? Lovin’ it.
Two years of organizing and protesting finally paid off in April for the Student/Farmworker Alliance, which, in partnership with the immigrant-laborer-led Coalition of Immokalee Workers, finally achieved results from its long-standing boycott against McDonald’s. The company agreed to pay an extra penny per pound to its tomato suppliers, nearly doubling the wages of the impoverished pickers in Florida. A month later, the parent company of Taco Bell, which struck a similar deal with the activists in 2005 after four years of their perseverance, announced that it would expand the agreement to its four other chains, including Pizza Hut and A&W.

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Excerpted from WiretapMag.org. Nicole McClelland is the founding editor of the online jounral The Extrovert and an editor of Mother Jones. Kristina Rizga is an editor and publisher of the online Wiretap magazine.