A sweeping and innovative study that places young people at the heart of pivotal conflicts, decisions and transformations in American politics. Even though the voting age is 18, children in the United States are both crucial subjects and actors in democratic politics. Young people have been leveraged for important political causes again and again--from the 1963 Birmingham Children's Crusade in which civil rights leaders mobilized thousands of school kids in protest marches to the 2018 "family separation" policy in which Trump officials sacrificed migrant children as bargaining chips in its push for border control. In Democracy's Child, Alison L. Gash and Daniel J. Tichenor focus on the reciprocal relationship between children and politics by placing young people at the heart of pivotal conflicts, decisions, and transformations in American politics. From the March for Our Lives and Black Lives Matter, to Gay Straight Alliances and the Dreamer and Sunrise movements, they show that the prominence of young people as agents of change are unmistakable in contemporary political life. Yet, these movements reflect a long history of youth political mobilization and leadership, including Progressive Era labor organizing and 1960s civil rights and anti-war activism. Gash and Tichenor examine childhood as a potent category that combines with gender/gender identity, race, class, immigration status, or sexual orientation to produce powerful systems of privilege or disadvantage. Further, they argue that children also are crucial subjects of government and adult control, inspiring contention in nearly every realm of public policy, such as education, social welfare, abortion, gun control, immigration, civil rights and liberties, and criminal justice. A sweeping and innovative study, Democracy's Child reveals why the control, leveraging, and agency of young people shapes and defines our political landscape.

During the Progressive Era, a rehabilitative agenda took hold of American juvenile justice, materializing as a citizen-and-state-building project and mirroring the unequal racial politics of American democracy itself. Alongside this liberal "manufactory of citizens,” a parallel structure was enacted: a Jim Crow juvenile justice system that endured across the nation for most of the twentieth century. In The Black Child Savers, the first study of the rise and fall of Jim Crow juvenile justice, Geoff Ward examines the origins and organization of this separate and unequal juvenile justice system. Ward explores how generations of “black child-savers” mobilized to challenge the threat to black youth and community interests and how this struggle grew aligned with a wider civil rights movement, eventually forcing the formal integration of American juvenile justice. Ward’s book reveals nearly a century of struggle to build a more democratic model of juvenile justice—an effort that succeeded in part, but ultimately failed to deliver black youth and community to liberal rehabilitative ideals. At once an inspiring story about the shifting boundaries of race, citizenship, and democracy in America and a crucial look at the nature of racial inequality, The Black Child Savers is a stirring account of the stakes and meaning of social justice.

No matter who they are or where they come from, everyone deserves the right to have their say. This is called a democracy. An ABC of Democracy introduces complicated concepts to the youngest of children.

"Using accessible dinosaur characters and clear language, Democracy for Dinosaurs explores key civic values on every adult's mind and helps show young readers how the things they do every single day can be guided by principles we must share in a democratic society: freedom, fairness, the rule of law, equality, respect for free speech, and respect for the truth. By modeling accessible ways to practice being a good citizen, children will understand they are part of their country and that they have an important role to play."--Provided by publisher.

Discover the incredible story of a young daughter of immigrants who would grow up to be the first woman, first Black person, and first South Asian American ever elected Vice President of the United States—and in a history-making turn of events, likely to become the Democrats’ 2024 Presidential nominee—in this moving picture book biography of Kamala Harris. When Kamala Harris was young, she often accompanied her parents to civil rights marches—so many, in fact, that when her mother asked a frustrated Kamala what she wanted, the young girl responded with: “Freedom!” As Kamala grew from a small girl in Oakland to a senator running for president, it was this long-fostered belief in freedom and justice for all people that shaped her into the inspiring figure she is today. From fighting for the use of a soccer field in middle school to fighting for the people of her home state in Congress, Senator Harris used her voice to speak up for what she believed in and for those who were otherwise unheard. And now this dedication has led her all the way to being elected Vice President of the United States and a likely 2024 Presidential candidate. Told in Nikki Grimes's stunning verse and featuring gorgeous illustrations by Laura Freeman, this picture book biography brings to life a story that shows all young people that the American dream can belong to all of us if we fight for one another.

"Democracy's Child places young people at the heart of pivotal conflicts, decisions and transformations in American politics. From the March for Our Lives and Black Lives Matter, to Gay Straight Alliances and the Dreamer and Sunrise movements, the prominence of young people as agents of change are unmistakable in contemporary political life. Yet as Gash and Tichenor show, these movements reflect a long history of youth political mobilization and leadership, including Progressive Era labor organizing and 1960s civil rights and anti-war activism. Children also are crucial subjects of government and adult control, inspiring contention in nearly every realm of public policy, such as education, social welfare, abortion, gun control, immigration, civil rights and liberties, and criminal justice. And young people are regularly leveraged in political life as influential symbols of innocence and deviance, or treated as political collateral (as the spectacle of "kids in cages" under the Trump administration's "family separation" policy vividly captures). In a narrative that ranges from history and law to young adult literature, Democracy's Child reveals why the control, leveraging, and agency of young people shapes and defines our political landscape. Along the way, readers learn about age or childhood as a concrete difference that combines with gender, race, class, immigration status, or sexual orientation to produce powerful systems of privilege or disadvantage"--

The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, first published in 1944, is considered one of the most profound and relevant works by the influential theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, and certainly the fullest statement of his political philosophy. Written and first read during the prolonged, tragic world war between totalitarian and democratic forces, Niebuhr’s book took up the timely question of how democracy as a political system could best be defended. Most proponents of democracy, Niebuhr claimed, were “children of light,” who had optimistic but naïve ideas about how society could be rid of evil and governed by enlightened reason. They needed, he believed, to absorb some of the wisdom and strength of the “children of darkness,” whose ruthless cynicism and corrupt, anti-democratic politics should otherwise be repudiated. He argued for a prudent, liberal understanding of human society that took the measure of every group’s self-interest and was chastened by a realistic understanding of the limits of power. It is in the foreword to this book that he wrote, “Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.” This edition includes a new introduction by the theologian and Niebuhr scholar Gary Dorrien in which he elucidates the work’s significance and places it firmly into the arc of Niebuhr’s career.