Flagler-Palm Coast grads who led school walkouts set up nonprofit to back young activists

Three Flagler-Palm Coast High School graduates, who in 2022 helped organize statewide school "Say Gay" walkouts in protest of Florida's Parental Rights in Education law, are now looking to prop up other youthful progressives.

Along with other college students, they've started the Youth Action Fund, a nonprofit that has already attracted a $350,000 seed grant. Because they have established the fund as a 501(c)(3), they are barred from giving to political parties and specific candidates, but may support advocacy for progressive causes of which they are passionate, such as LGBTQ+ rights and climate change.

After receiving a donation from the Miami-based Jonathan D. Lewis Foundation, the Youth Action Fund will have $25,000 this year and another $100,000 in 2024 to provide backing to efforts led by people between ages 16 and 24, said Executive Director Cameron Driggers. The plan is to provide grants of up to $1,000 for youth-led, issue-based campaigns, with other programs under development.

The $1,000 stipends will help cover costs that impede youth organizing, things such as gas money, protest supplies, such as signs, and video-editing software, Driggers said.

Driggers, of Flagler Beach, is a first-year University of Florida student studying business administration. Joining him in establishing the fund are fellow Flagler-Palm Coast grads Jack Petocz and Alysa Vidal, as well as Generation Z activists Maxx Fenning, who is founder and executive director of Prism FL Inc., a South Florida-based LGBTQ+ organization, and Will Larkins of Winter Park.

Generation Z is loosely defined as those born in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

"That generation, Gen-Z, has grown up in a particularly polarizing and eventful world," Driggers said. "The duty of youth is to challenge corruption. Every generation has led the progressive movement, and Gen-Z is particularly inclined to do so because of how cynical and unhappy we are."

Driggers said he and his cohorts were inspired by the youth movement that emerged following the mass shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland that left 17 people dead in 2018. Some of the student survivors helped organize the anti-gun-violence group March for Our Lives.

"That year the Florida Legislature did end up approving gun-control reforms. We are obviously trying to build on that success," he said.

The grip Republicans have had on the Florida Governor's Office and Legislature for 30 years is "disheartening," Driggers said, but the state is also home to a "burgeoning youth movement" of people who "feel directly attacked" by policies, such as the exclusion of some books from schools and school libraries.

Driggers views the Youth Action Fund as a way to start combatting the millions from "moneyed interests" that have "captured the far right."

So does Petocz, who is now a student at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, where he is studying political science and has an eye on attending law school, returning to Florida and seeking elected office.

"As an LGBTQ+ rights activist in Florida, I have witnessed firsthand how financially taxing advocacy can be," Petocz said in an email. "In high school, I worked part-time at Publix as a cashier to power my actions in Flagler County and beyond. With the advent of Youth Action Fund, that kind of sacrifice is no longer necessary, making organizing far more accessible and manageable."

Petocz, whose activism work helped get him invited to the White House for a bill-signing ceremony in December 2022, expressed optimism that Florida can become more "inclusive and equitable" if young people protest and disrupt the status quo.

That comes in the wake of Florida Republicans, who have a supermajority in the Legislature, only gaining strength by expanding its statewide voter registration lead over Democrats by more than 626,000 voters as of Sept. 30.

"Although these past two legislative sessions have been incredibly depressing and difficult to navigate," Petocz said, "they've also birthed a new generation of changemakers this country hasn't seen in decades."

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This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Teens offer aid to other progressive youths in GOP-dominated Florida