On a recent Sunday at Judson Memorial Church in lower Manhattan, seven-year-old Nova stood before dozens of congregants and read aloud from a children's book about community organizing. The moment captured something shifting in progressive spaces across New York: children are no longer being tucked away during activism. They are being brought to the center of it.
Nova's appearance was part of a redesigned Sunday service at Judson, a multi-denominational church known for its social justice roots. Rather than sending children to separate Sunday school rooms, the church integrated them into the full service and its accompanying activism workshop. During the session, congregants sorted themselves into roles inspired by the book Nova read from: builders, disrupters, caregivers, visionaries. They then discussed concrete ways to help their neighbors, from documenting ICE raids to delivering groceries to climate advocacy.
"Children are not merely recipients of justice," said Steff Reed, Judson's Sunday school director. "They are participants in the work of justice."
What began at Judson reflects a broader wave of children-centered organizing taking shape across the city. Parents navigating ICE enforcement, geopolitical conflict, and climate catastrophe are wrestling with how to explain these crises to their kids and, crucially, how to include them in responses.
Elizabeth Hamby, Nova's mother and an artist working in the nonprofit sector, founded Seeds, a justice-oriented families group in the Bronx, shortly after Donald Trump returned to office. The group gathers monthly, with attendance ranging from a handful of families to dozens. They read children's books about civil rights, learn resistance songs, and talk frankly about why people protest. Children play freely while adults process the weight of parenting through global instability.
For Hamby, there was no instruction manual. "There's no roadmap for how we parent through this," she said. "There are no easy answers, and so having a space where we can talk about it, at least we can work on it together."
Eduardo Rega Calvo, a Seeds member, noted that his six-year-old daughter Naira has spent her entire life surrounded by protest. Born during the pandemic, she grew up hearing Black Lives Matter chants, community organizing for Palestine, and weekly marches against Trump administration policies.
In March, Seeds marched down Broadway with 75 people for the No Kings protest. The children carried a parachute emblazoned with the words, "We are the ones we have been waiting for." Hamby watched kids pass a small megaphone between them, each one leading chants and songs. "It's super energizing for us, and I think for others too," she said.
Other organizations are building similar infrastructure. Hands Off NYC helps families organize community playdates that double as organizing events, setting up coloring tables and chalk at local playgrounds or hosting small teach-ins with musicians and performers. The goal is straightforward: integrate activism into the texture of everyday life with children.
"When you have young kids, you don't stop having them just because the government is doing bad things that you need to protest," said Grace Lindsay, a Hands Off NYC organizer. "So there needs to be a way for those things to work together."
Climate Families NYC, which has grown to 5,000 members since 2019, runs similar park gatherings but focused on environmental issues. The group rallies against AI in schools and pushes for local climate legislation. When Liat Olenick, the group's program and communications director, brought her four-year-old to the state capitol to advocate for the Sunny Act, which allows renters to install balcony solar panels, her child bolted down the hallway in a sun costume.
"A four-year-old in Albany is hilarious by default," Olenick said, "but he knows what the Sunny Act is, he knows who the governor of New York is."
Judson's approach echoes a historical precedent. Black churches served as critical organizing hubs during the civil rights era, and young people were deliberately included in that work. Sheyann Webb-Christburg, who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at age eight, recalled King's insistence on bringing children into the movement. "He took us by our hands and said: 'Let them stand,' and he brought us into that room, pulled up chairs and sat right in front of us, continuing to have conversations with us," she told the Guardian. "That was special."
Back at Judson, after the service ended, children painted butterfly wings for the Queer Liberation parade while eating ice-cream sundaes. Ada, nine years old, had topped her sundae with whipped cream and identified herself as a visionary in the community's framework of roles.
"I imagine a lot of good things, but I also imagine things that probably will never happen, like water parks with ice-cream and not water," she said. Then, more seriously: "I would also like to see everyone helping each other, and more people respecting others, even though we're different."
Author James Rodriguez: "These groups are betting that children raised inside movements, not shielded from them, will become adults who see justice work as simply part of how communities function."
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