{"id":5470,"date":"2021-06-10T12:55:07","date_gmt":"2021-06-10T12:55:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/?p=5470"},"modified":"2021-06-10T13:09:49","modified_gmt":"2021-06-10T13:09:49","slug":"talk-of-the-town-youth-activism-and-your-impact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/2021\/06\/talk-of-the-town-youth-activism-and-your-impact\/","title":{"rendered":"Talk of the Town: Youth Activism and Your Impact"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>by Gregory Brooks<br><br>Clara Tripp has been a social justice activist for most of her life and has recently gotten into phone banking, on top of her current work of fact-checking political articles.<br><br>\t\u201cI\u2019m a very self-motivated person,\u201d activist and social justice advocate Clara Tripp begins. \u201cBut the thought of a world I\u2019d want everyone to have has kept me on my path.\u201d At her couch, taking notes during a study hall, Tripp gets on the call during a dewy Wednesday morning. Tripp spent a lot of her free time with activism, and it comes from the way she was brought up. \u201cIn my town, there was a local climate strike when I was six, and I think that was my first introduction to activism,\u201d She chuckles at the image of her younger self. \u201cMy parents were always trying to get me involved in things and to be aware of the world around me.\u201d She had spent a lot of time participating in climate strikes, political canvassing, and interviews, one of her most notable ones with Michelle Obama. <br><br>Being that she\u2019s been doing social justice activism for years, it wouldn\u2019t be surprising if she didn\u2019t want to continue, or she just got tired of it. But to that, she says  \u201cYou wouldn\u2019t need social justice work if something negative wasn\u2019t happening, and that negativity inspires me to work for change because nobody wants to see that negativity.\u201d Something that always comes to mind for her when she talks about social justice and bringing change is capitalism and the way government powers value money over change, with politicians\u2019 attitudes towards the Green New Deal being an example. \u201cThe biggest roadblock in change is valuing money over lives.\u201d  <br><br>The foil to these money-hungry politicians is the young generations. \u201cChildren are generally bolder, so they don\u2019t tend to hesitate,\u201d Tripp speaks from experience. When she had the urge to be an activist, she went out and did it. \u201cAs we get older, we\u2019re held back by our self-consciousness, so that\u2019s why the younger people are great for making change.\u201d She sees a lot of people of her generation recognizing what needs to be changed, which gives her hope. \u201cI have to have hope because I know no one will swoop in and save us.\u201d<br><br>Tripp knows that every action counts, so even minor things made by anyone can make an impact. In response to being asked about what makes success as an activist, she says, \u201cAs long as you\u2019re doing something, you\u2019re already successful.\u201d And Tripp makes a point that once people get involved, they\u2019ll learn the skills they need from experience. \u201cThe most important skill is getting out there.\u201d <br>During a campaign against misinformation, Tripp takes notice of the rampant falsehoods on the internet, especially with misinformation. \u201cMisinformation is major, and that ties into the ignorance.\u201d She recognizes that while the internet can be an extremely useful tool to learn about things, it\u2019s also full of fake news and false info. She knows the importance of being an aware media consumer. \u201cMisinformation is the greatest threat to change.\u201d<br><br>\u201cEach generation will educate the next,\u201d Tripp says, with both a positive and negative connotation in mind. She\u2019s aware that this obviously means good things for future generations, but there are also people that constantly stand on the wrong side of change, and that\u2019s being fed to the younger generations.\u201d The lack of change in our present leads to more and repeated problems in our future. Because of this, we as supporters of social justice  are obligated to implement change, even for those who stand against it.\u201d<br><br>NOTE: 8th graders wrote their own versions of THE NEW YORKER&#8217;S Talk of the Town this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Gregory Brooks Clara Tripp has been a social justice activist for most of her life and has recently gotten into phone banking, on top of her current work of fact-checking political articles. \u201cI\u2019m a very self-motivated person,\u201d activist and social justice advocate Clara Tripp begins. \u201cBut the thought of a world I\u2019d want everyone to have has kept me on my path.\u201d At her couch, taking notes during a study hall, Tripp gets on<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":282,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[402,58],"tags":[],"coauthors":[404],"class_list":["post-5470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fieldstonian-middle-school-paper","category-slider"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/282"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5470"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5474,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5470\/revisions\/5474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5470"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}