Maya Brady-Ngugi's 5 Steps to Becoming an Activist

Hi Teen Resisters! As a brief interlude between our July and August lists, we're including this little activist guide from one of our favorite activists on Earth, the incomparable Maya Brady-Ngugi (she's also our Teen Resister of the Month). ​Her approach to activism is holistic, strategic, productive, and often takes inspiration from history. Her 5 step guide (which she says is "kind of like making a cake"), plus extra tips and recommendations, will have you thinking and planning all summer long (at your own pace!).

Maya Brady-Ngugi speaking at April 20th's NYC Says Enough Rally. Photo by Rainer Turim.

5 Step Guide to Becoming an Activist:

1. LEARN: Maya's first step is to learn. Once you feel passionate about something, the most important thing to do is seek out information. She recommends reading books, watching documentaries, and reading articles from newspapers or academic journals. Expand your horizons, and try looking into issues you don't know much about. Educating yourself in itself is an act of resistance. Once you've informed yourself, take the time to meditate on the issue, think about it, and challenge your ideas about it. Once you feel like you know what you need to know, you can go on to the next step.
2. GATHER: Activist work is most successful and enjoyable when done with other passionate people. You can meet amazing friends, mentors and colleagues through activist work. Especially if you're new to activism or the issue, it's a good idea to try to seek out existing coalitions or organizations so you can observe how the work is done and become a participant in a community you can learn from. But starting your own group doesn't have to be hard either! Maya recommends "just starting a group with your friends." 
3. PLANNING: This is all about developing a goal. "What do you want to help contribute to?" Maya said. "Your goal doesn't have to be what you think is realistic, or even something really big." Then, map out a way to get to that goal. Try to think of action steps, even ones you may not be able to do (there are always ways to get things done, even from afar!). Then, make a concrete plan about what you might want to do. And let your actions grow with you! One of Maya's favorite quotes is from adrienne maree brown in her book Emergent Strategy: "Small is good. Small is all. The large is a reflection of the small." It's almost always better to start small and find local things to do, and let the actions grow with you. It's easy to think of activist work as only the huge moments you see in national movements, but more successful movements start from the ground up.
4. ACTION: "The next step is action, which has really plagued me for a very very long time," Maya said, "This is basically putting out your plan... trying to achieve your goal. This is really where activism is, and even though you make a plan, you're supposed to be really fluid and try and solve the problems as they're coming. This is also where you're really working with a group of people." Maya referenced what she learned from a 50th Anniversary Black Panther book. "One of the really prominent woman Black Panthers, Ericka Huggins, said that young people come up to her so often and are like 'How did you do this? How did you guys start this?' Like the Breakfast Program, for example, that fed 15,000 kids across the country, where Black Panthers would wake up at 5 AM and feed kids breakfast every single day- how did they start that? How did they run the clinics? The Black Panthers ran a lot of programs in communities that were completely run by them... they took old ladies to things, they had a school in Oakland, and it's kind of crazy that they were able to do this and have an international network... She kind of just said that you just have to do it. You just have to figure it out and try to come up with a plan, and if that doesn't work you move on to try to find a new plan. You just can't be afraid to try something, because even if you fail, it's still a step in the right direction." 
5. SHARE: ​This is the step most associate with activism in the age of social media- sharing what you are doing and your thoughts. Maya urges you to work at what you're doing and take baby steps (while sharing, if you want!) before making the reach of your actions your first priority. But that's not to discount the importance of sharing! Grassroots movements grow into tall trees when aided by large groups of passionate people.

"Those are some principles that I find really helpful to activism. The Learn, Gather, Plan, Act and Share... are the bare bones, and activism gets a lot more complicated than that, but those are the things that I have learned," Maya said. 

Maya's Recommendations:

Top Activist Books:

• Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown is "life changing," according to Maya. "The author takes things that happen in nature, almost like laws or practices she knows happen in nature, like ants, for example, or the way that ferns grow, and then she's like, 'because nature operates this way, we as people should organize this way,'" Maya explained. She said the book is "super helpful" for thinking about activism. 
• A Taste of Power: A Black Woman's Story by Elaine Brown
• The Black Panthers: Portraits from an Unfinished Revolution by Bryan Shih
• Hope and History by Vincent Harding
• Freedom is a Constant Struggle by Angela Davis

Favorite Documentary: Eyes on the Prize 

Maya's Teen Resister of the Month Bio:
Meet our July Teen Resister of the Month, the amazing Maya Brady-Ngugi.
Maya is 18 and an experienced and passionate activist based in NYC, but is moving to Atlanta for college later this summer. She has been working in activism for years. She’s planned teach-ins at her high school in 2015, 2016 and 2017, and planned Black History Month events in ’17 and ’18. She’s run an academic and social mentorship program that connects high school students with struggling elementary school students. On the protest front, Maya has planned walkouts and rallies for Black Lives Matter, following Trump’s election, and for the March 14th ENOUGH Walkout. She also was a co-organizer of the April 20th NYC Says Enough rally in Washington Square Park, and currently serves as the NYCSE Head of Community Outreach. Maya also worked on a Dakota Access Pipeline divestment plan and raised money for protesters there. On top of that, she is on the Sexual Health Education Committee for the mayor’s office in New York City. If her credits weren’t enough, people who’ve worked with Maya know that she is constantly thinking and learning about activist theory, and that she tangibly applies the wisdom she has learned and thought of to the work she does. 
Check back for her forthcoming TR list on solutions to police brutality.