Description

All I Need Is One Mic: Mobilizing Youth for Social Change in the Post-Civil Rights Era

Based on the author’s extensive work with youth of color in the San Francisco Bay Area, this article explores how youth use hip-hop music and culture in their activism on their high school campuses and youth empowerment organizations. The author also examines the larger social justice potential of hip-hop music for youth and explores how hip-hop music assists in the development of a political consciousness among youth activists. The author argues that music can enable youth, disenfranchised from electoral politics, to engage in the practice of democracy.

hip-hop, youth of color, political consciousness, youth organizing, popular culture, social movements, identity formation

Citation: Social Justice Vol. 33, No. 2 (2006): 105-121