This report pairs original data from the first Youth Talk Back event with survey data on Buffalo youth (like the Youth Risk Behavior Survey administered in public schools), nationally representative youth surveys (like the 2026 Harvard Youth Poll, 2026 Tufts CIRCLE, 2024 UNICEF Voices of the Future), and other research from our team. Designed to be part social science report and part zine, the report is designed to be widely accessible.

People often lament that youth aren’t engaged enough in political life. This is largely because youth are systematically excluded from aspects of formal politics, like voting. This research article shows how civic organizations successfully mobilize youth who are most often excluded from politics–young, working-class people of color–and expand the boundaries of citizenship beyond voting. Having consistent, well-resourced youth-centered civic associations dedicated to year-round civic engagement and leadership development can help expand our democracy.

Abstract: Conventional wisdom assumes that people participate in democracy because they care about politics. However, this is not always the case. This article illustrates how civic associations mobilize diverse publics to participate in democracy, even when individuals lack prior politicization (political knowledge, interest, and efficacy). This article draws on 550 hours of ethnographic fieldwork across four years and in-depth interviews with 90 members of two civic associations. It identifies three distinct mobilization pathways: politicized, issue, and indirect. It also contributes to the literature on political participation, learning, and inequality in two ways. First, it provides an alternative to identity-based accounts of mobilization by focusing instead on the role of motivations. This approach illuminates the underlying processes and mechanisms that facilitate political participation. Second, it contributes to scholarship conceptualizing mobilization as a process rather than a static trait by distinguishing between initial and continued mobilization. This offers an opportunity to examine how motivations change. Longitudinal ethnographic methods provide crucial insights into the mobilization process as it unfolds in real time over many days, months, and even years. These findings have practical implications, pointing towards avenues to better realize democratic ideals by closing participation gaps and mobilizing a more diverse public.

Adultism is the systemic discrimination, stereotyping, and political-economic exclusion of youth. Applying an anti-adultist theoretical framework, this paper utilizes content analysis to assess youth representation within Maryland county and municipal comprehensive plans—key documents used by governments to communicate core values, priorities, goals, and resource management plans in the long-term. All county plans reference youth, but over a quarter of municipal plans omit any reference to adolescents or youth at all. Nearly half of the plans (45.80%; n = 60) reproduce adultist views of young people, while a small fraction (7.63%; n = 10) incorporate anti-adultist perspectives. Most plans (73.28%; n = 96) acknowledge the need for distinct youth services. However, nominal recognition of youth without meaningful youth empowerment falls short of anti-adultist praxis. Scholars and practitioners must grapple with adultist bias to foster youth inclusion and recognize youth as valuable community members with needs and preferences that are distinct from other age groups.