Young people have never known life without Roe against Wade.
Bye now.
After the Supreme Court overturned the historic ruling protecting the right to abortion on Friday, many of them have a lot to say about it.
Defined as those born after 1996, members of Generation Z has experienced unprecedented events, including the 9/11 attacks and the coronavirus pandemic. In recent years, issues such as climate change, gun control and racial justice have mobilized them as young voters. And social media is playing a central role: they are launching coordinated actions from their phones.
They have now focused on abortion as states regain the power to determine its legality. (So far, about half of them are ready to ban or drastically restrict access).
[Abortion is now banned in these states. Others will follow.]
To understand how younger Americans are getting involved in this issue, The Washington Post explored how two influential people at opposite ends of the debate, Olivia Julianna and Savannah Craven, have risen as youth activists at TikTok, where Generation Z accounts for more than 60 percent of users. .
Their stories show how Generation Z is harnessing political power: creating small-sized videos on the country’s fastest-growing social media platform.
The catalysts of action
Olivia Juliana
Last fall, Olivia Julianna needed a trip to Austin. Although she was only a three-hour drive from her small hometown in southeast Texas, the 19-year-old had no car, no license or any family who wanted or could take her, she said.
But she had friends.
One offered to take her back and forth. Another flew from California to be by her side during what Olivia calls one of the most significant events of her life: the Austin Women’s March 2021, where she would address more than 35,000 people from the stairs of the Texas Capitol .
Moments before Olivia could take the stage that October day, she walked aimlessly through the crowd.
“He was extremely nervous, like a panic attack on the edge,” said Olivia, who uses her first and last names publicly and was granted partial anonymity due to privacy issues.
But once he reached the lectern and looked at the crowd, his nerves dropped, “I’ve never felt so calm in my life,” he said.
From the stage, Olivia delivered a scorching speech addressed to Governor Greg Abbott (R) and SB 8, which at the time was the most restrictive abortion law in the country. It had come into force a month before the protest, causing a wave of laws imitating Republican-led states.
“How can you be pro-life but force a rape victim to have a rapist’s baby?” Olivia said to the crowd. “How can you be pro-life and force a girl to be a mother before she can get her driver’s license?”
[This Texas teen wanted an abortion. She now has twins.]
Coming down from the stage minutes later, Olivia was thrilled, she said. It was the first time he had attended a face-to-face political event; the first time he made a public address; and the first time his purpose was made clear.
Before that moment, Olivia had been questioning her recent defense: the anti-Trump TikTok videos she began secretly making a year earlier, the fractures her liberal views created with members of her conservative religious family .
“It has cost me so many people in my life to do this,” Olivia said. But “that moment he consolidated that he knew he was doing the right thing.”
Last year, as Olivia began to focus more on advocating for abortion rights, a young activist from the other end of the Bible Belt region began to find her voice in the movement. against abortion.
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Savannah Craven
For Savannah Craven, 20, the call came years earlier in her high school math class in Myrtle Beach, SC. It was the spring of 2019, and Savannah had made a friendship with the girl sitting next to him.
One day, Savannah said, her classmate showed her a photo of a positive pregnancy test on her phone.
“I had never met anyone personally nor had I had a friend who would have gotten pregnant young or at school,” Savannah said. “I just looked at her and said, ‘Well, what are you going to do?’
The partner said she planned to have an abortion. And he almost did.
She had scheduled an appointment at the nearest abortion center, about two hours away. But the morning of the procedure, Savannah said, her friend woke up with a hanging tire.
He immediately called Savannah, the only person in his life who had not pressured him to terminate the pregnancy, according to Savannah. “She said,‘ You have no idea. I’ve been praying for a sign, ‘”Savannah recalled.
“I just knew I was destined to have this baby,” Savannah continued. “They don’t promise us an easy life.… But women are stronger than their circumstances.”
This is a message that Savannah realized she wanted to spread.
Today, she is a prominent voice advocating abortion restrictions on her more than 113,000 followers on TikTok. He has also teamed up with some of the largest anti-abortion groups in the country to lead national marches, counter-protests and door-to-door campaigns.
Although Savannah and Olivia grew up in conservative religious homes in the south, their views on abortion have been largely shaped by their respective identities and the communities they represent. Experts say consideration of these personal implications is a driving force behind youth activism.
“For Generation Z, identity is at the forefront and at the center. And I think that’s very important for an issue like the abortion debate, because abortion is such a personal issue,” Ioana Literat said. associate professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College, whose research examines young people’s political expression on social media. “So TikTok, I think, is such a suitable space for these discussions because the political expression in TikTok is par excellence personal.”
In fact, social metrics indicate that the issue has a wide reach on the platform: after the Supreme Court ruling on Friday, the hashtags #roevwade, #womensrights and #abortion began to be application trends. So far, #prochoice has garnered more than 4 billion video views. #Prolife has 2.3 billion. And dozens of other related tags, ranging from #abortionawareness to #antiabortion, have accumulated from hundreds of thousands to millions of total views, figures that will only continue to increase in a period afterRoe era.
The impact of influence
Olivia Juliana
Prior to the march to Austin, Olivia’s activism did not focus on a single topic.
Rather, it was spurred on by the political division of the 2020 elections, in which approximately 24 million eligible voters (or 10 percent of the electorate) were members of Generation Z.
It was Olivia’s first year of high school and she was “isolated at home.”
Olivia, a minor and immunocompromised, was unable to attend any protests that summer. Also, he said, “my parents didn’t agree with my political views, so they wouldn’t let me go.”
Instead, he downloaded TikTok and started using the platform to talk politics. His first videos released in July 2020 explained third-party voting, potential election results and more.
In one month, it had garnered more than 10,000 followers and hundreds of thousands of views, drawing the attention of a young, progressive, fast-growing organization, then known as “TikTok by Biden,” he said.
Throughout the election cycle, the coalition regularly took advantage of its content on its platforms and Olivia saw its account grow rapidly. As of January 2021, it had over 77,000 followers. Shortly after President Biden took office, “TikTok for Biden” became Gen-Z for Change, a non-profit organization that continues to turn to influencers for a wide range of political and social issues.
Today, the organization has members of more than 500 creators with a combined follow-up of approx 540 million people. As Politico first pointed out, that figure far exceeds the combined average monthly audience of Fox News, CNN and MSNBC combined.
“We’re not afraid to do things that other organizations probably wouldn’t do,” said Aidan Kohn-Murphy, 18-year-old founder and CEO. “We’re young, we’re crazy … we’re disruptive.”
Olivia, who works as Gen-Z for Change’s political strategy coordinator, leads some of the group’s boldest initiatives. As a queer Mexican woman, she feels that this defense is her duty.
“I know what it’s like to feel on the sidelines of certain conversations,” he said. “And if I don’t use my platform to try to make sure this doesn’t happen to other people, then I’m doing a poor service to the people who are in this conversation with me.”
Last August, in her most notable campaign to date, Olivia led an effort to send spam to the Texas Right to Life group’s abortion reporting site, where anonymous users could report alleged violations of SB 8. (The law enforcement mechanism allows any private person to sue anyone who helps facilitate an abortion.)
Activists said they believe their efforts, flooding the site with false reports, crashed the news line days after the law went into effect on September 1st. In that moment, Texas Right to Life answered that claim and said it was looking for a new hosting platform after it was abandoned by GoDaddy.
Now headquartered in Houston with a TikTok follow-up of over 215,000 users, Olivia is thinking about a future in politics. He goes to college online and will begin a political science program in the fall.
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Savannah Craven
The 2020 election year also laid the groundwork for Savannah’s advocacy efforts.
In the midst of a national race calculation, Savannah said, she began to learn about the …