Stay Solid!: A Radical Handbook For Youth - Softcover

Matt Hern

Softcover

ISBN 10: 184935099X ISBN 13: 9781849350990

Publisher: AK Press, 2013

Synopsis

It ain't easy being a kid these days. For the first time in generations, today's teens have worse prospects ahead of them than their parents did, and the pressure to toe the line and be a success is heavier than ever... and so is the temptation to just give up. But there are things in the world worth fighting for! This scrapbook-style collection of essays, excerpts, explanations, and images pushes back against a culture that relentlessly demands that kids give up their best ideals, abandon their hopes, forget their ethical objections to dominant life, soothe their rage, and accept their fates. From dealing with the cops to dealing with your peers, from school and community to drugs and sex, from race and class to money and mental health, Stay Solid! provides essential support for radically inclined teens who believe that it's possible for all of us to hang on to our values and build a life we believe in. Compiled and edited by radical urbanist and educator Matt Hern, with the assistance of the youth community at Vancouver's Purple Thistle Centre, Stay Solid! is for kids everywhere, and for anyone who considers themselves an ally parents, teachers, neighbours, friends, relatives, and beyond. Contributors include Michelle Alexander, Michael Hardt, The Guerilla Girls, Dan Savage, Pete Jordan, Lisa Gray-Garcia, Shira Tarrant, Lee Naught, Mike Davis, Geoff Mann, Victoria Law, Dawn Paley, The Baltimore Algebra Project, CrimethInc, and many, many more.

About this title

About the Author

Matt Hern lives and works in East Vancouver with his partner and daughters. He founded, and for nine years has directed the Purple Thistle Centre, an all-ages youth-run community center for arts and activism. Among his other projects is a youth exchange program with an isolated town in northern Canada designed to bring native and non-native kids together to live, work, and travel.

His books and writing have been published on all six continents and translated into ten languages. He writes features and articles for a wide variety of publications, and continues to lecture globally.

He is the author of Field Day (New Star, 2003), Watch Yourself: Why Safer Isn't Always Better (New Star, 2007), and Common Ground in a Liquid City: Essays in Defense of an Urban Future, and is the editor of Deschooling Our Lives (New Society, 1996), and Everywhere, All the Time (AK Press, 2008).

Matt holds a PhD in Urban Studies and lectures at SFU and UBC in Urban Studies and Education departments and is on faculty at the Institute for Social Ecology and Prescott College in Arizona. He remains active in a number of movements in Vancouver, is a food security activist, avid gardener and unrepentant sports fan. For more info, be sure to visit his website: www.mightymatthern.com.

Edition details

• Publisher: AK Press
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 184935099X
• ISBN 13: 9781849350990
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 319
• Editor: Matt Hern