In an adult dominated society teenagers are often shut out of participation in politics We Fight to Win offers a compelling account of young people s attempts to get involved in community politics and documents the battles waged to form youth movements and create social change in schools and neighborhoods Hava Rachel Gordon compares the struggles and successes of two very different youth movements a mostly white middle class youth activist network in Portland Oregon and a working class network of minority youth in Oakland California She examines how these young activists navigate schools families community organizations and the mainstream media and employ a variety of strategies to make their voices heard on some of today s most pressing issuesuwar school funding the environmental crisis the prison industrial complex standardized testing corporate accountability and educational reform We Fight to Win is one of the first books to focus on adolescence and political action and deftly explore the ways that the politics of youth activism are structured by age inequality as well as race class and gender