‘Kids are participants in the work of justice’: how US children are being folded into activism

Nova, seven, and her mother, Elizabeth Hamby, lead an activity at the Judson Memorial church in New York City on 14 June 2026. Photograph: Edward Grattan/The Guardian

On a recent Sunday morning at Judson Memorial church in New York, seven-year-old Nova stood in the middle of the congregation and read from the children’s book We Are the Builders.

“Raise our voices, banners and beats. Meet and march out in the streets,” she told the dozens of congregants, many old enough to be her grandparents, as the summer sun poured through the stained-glass windows. “Who wants to join the disrupters?”