Good Trouble: Understanding and Supporting Youth Activism for Equity and Justice

Nyla Bell:

Welcome everyone. Welcome to MAEC’s webinar of today, titled Good Trouble: Understanding and Supporting Youth Activism for Equity and Justice. My name is Nyla Bell, I’m a senior education equity specialist and one of the moderators for today. And joining me is Michelle Nutter. She’s a senior education equity consultant here in MAEC. Also, joining us as part of our webinar support team are Kate Farbry, she’s the director of communications at MAEC. Jessica Lim, she’s a finance associate here at MAEC. Nikevia Thomas, who’s a live program director here at MAEC. And Kathleen Pulupa, who’s our communications coordinator here at MAEC. Kate and Jessica will be handling technical support, Nikevia will be handling our chat box and audience Q&A, and Kathleen will be handling our social media. If you have any questions or tech issues, please feel free to directly message either Kate or Jessica.

Nyla Bell:

So what is in MAEC?, MAEC which stands for Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium, was founded in 1991 as an education nonprofit dedicated to increasing access to a high-quality education for culturally, linguistically, and economically diverse learners. Our vision is that one day, all students will have equitable opportunities to learn and achieve at high levels. And our mission is promote excellence and equity in education to achieve social justice. MAEC runs the Center for Education, which is a center, short for CEE, which are acting in the CEE is a project of MAEC and is one of four regional equity assistance centers funded by the U.S. Department of Education under Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. We work in partnership with WestEd and AIR to improve and sustain the systemic capacity of public education to increase outcomes for students regardless of race, gender, religion, and national origin.

Nyla Bell:

So as we get started, we want to go over a few etiquette norms. One is please use the chat box to post questions and engage with panelists and other participants. We recommend that you click on the chat icon at the bottom or top toolbar on your screen and keep the chat box open at all times. One poll will appear in the center of your screen. Please click on the appropriate button and we’ll read the results when we’re ready. Please also keep your microphones and cameras off at all times. Our tech team will mute audio and video as needed.

Nyla Bell:

And then lastly, we’re pleased to announce that we’re offering interpreting services. So for those services, please select the interpretation icon on your webinar control at the bottom of your zoom window, there should be a picture of a globe symbol, and please select the language of your preference. Spanish is now available. And then a few more details about enabling and disabling live caption is that it should show up on your screen by default. You can turn it off if you wish, and you can select Hide Subtitle. If you want to view them again, repeat step two and select Show Subtitle instead.

Nyla Bell:

So, little bit of background about the topic of this webinar. The past year of historic large-scale public protests in response to systemic racism and social inequality has inspired more students to get civically engaged and has left some educators wondering how to support their student’s growth. This webinar, today, will provide information about the work of select groups of young activists who are organizing and advocating for equity and justice in their communities.

Nyla Bell:

On this webinar, we will engage in a dialogue on the intersections of civic engagement, activism, youth development, and public schooling. And in doing so, we seek to deepen the educators’ understanding of the meaning of youth activism and build the capacity of educators and education leaders to respond and teach about youth activism.

Nyla Bell:

So, the next thing we’d like to do is get a sense of who you are as audience members. So, momentarily should get a poll showing up on your screen. Please take a moment to respond. And since I’m sharing my screen, Kate and Jess, I can’t tell what the audience is seeing.

Nyla Bell:

Okay, I see the poll now. So once she sees a poll, please respond and then…

Nyla Bell:

Jess or Kate, if you can let me know when we have the responses ready, that’d be great.

Michelle Nutter:

Shout out to all the librarians who are joining us.

Nyla Bell:

All right, our poll results are in. So it looks like we have 50% on education nonprofit professionals. We have the next largest number, our students, which is great. We have district leaders, staff joining us, and then we have a nice mix of teachers, middle, high school teachers, school counselors, school leaders, and administrators. Some folks, some staff from state education agencies are joining us, which is awesome. And then I see in the chat, we have librarians, folks who work in public health, and state library youth services coordinator. Welcome. We also like to know where you’re from. Where are you located? Post it in the chat. Give us a sense of who’s represented today.

Nyla Bell:

Awesome. Harrisburg, Maryland, Maine, California, Pittsburgh, Massachusetts, Oregon, Illinois, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Arizona. Wow. Hawaii, Alabama. Awesome, thank you for joining us. Okay. So now I’d like to introduce our speakers and panelists. So we have youth and speakers of representing themselves and for different organizations. We have Baltimore Algebra Project joining us today. And from Baltimore Algebra Project, we have Mychaell Farmer, Jonothan Gray, Antwain, also known as TwanDoe Jordan. We also have the Philadelphia Student Union. Joining us from Philly Student Union is Fred Pinguel and Josh Sor. Also joining us is Providence Student Union in Rhode Island. From Providence Student Union joining us is Precious Lopez and Jayda Williams. And then last but certainly not least, we have SHOUT, which stands for Social Handprints Overcoming Unjust Treatment, based in South Fayette, Pennsylvania. And from SHOUT we have Mehreen, Zachary, and Dr. Chuck Herring.

Nyla Bell:

And then last but not least, here to speak with us about youth activism and defining that is Dr. Sonia Rosen, who is the director of inquiry and reflective practice in Independent School Teaching. Director of inquiry and reflective practice of Independent School Teaching Residency, sorry, at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. And she’s also a scholar on youth activism. So with that said, I’m going to the mic to our first speaker. Welcome Sonia.

Dr .Sonia Rosen:

Thank you so much, Nyla. It is really great to be here today. And I truly feel honored to present alongside such an esteemed panel of youth activists. So, thank you for having me. Right now, without thinking too hard, I would just like you to very quickly share one to three words in the chat that adults usually use to refer to teenagers. Just throw it in there.

Dr. Sonia Rosen:

Okay. So we’re seeing like, moody, tiring, annoying. Some leaders, but you know, impulsive, brats, kids, disrespectful, technology-addicted. So, you can keep looking at all the words people are putting in, but I think we can see a few themes across these words, right? And those themes remind us that as a society, we tend to pathologize youth. We view youth as fickle, as incapable, as self-absorbed, and as difficult to deal with in general.

Dr. Sonia Rosen:

And in a world that often demonizes youth and strips young people of the power to influence key decisions or set cultural norms or control the distribution of resources, activism offers young people opportunities to develop a sense of individual agency and collective power. So, a sense of being able to sort of control, to exert control and power as individuals and also alongside others, right? So, I think you’ll find today’s panel of youth activists and their adult partners offers a wonderful contradiction to these harmful assumptions. What I hope you’ll all walk away with in an hour and a half is a vision of young people as having the capacity to be individually agentive and also collectively powerful. Meaning, they can have power to act on the world, both individually and alongside others. And I hope you’ll see youth activists as the voices we should be listening to in our shared quest to promote systemic change, I certainly do.

Dr. Sonia Rosen:

So, what do we mean when we refer to youth activism? So, in this webinar we’re discussing… You can advance the slide. In this webinar, we’re discussing grassroots activism, which I define as acts that challenged the status quo and seek to reconfigure asymmetrical power relations. Activism involves undermining structures that privilege particular social actors and marginalize others, and it seeks to include in decision-making structures and processes those whose voices have been systematically muted. It paves pathways for inclusion, access, and equity. And I got this out of a book that I co-edited with a colleague of mine, Dr. Jerusha Conner.

Dr. Sonia Rosen:

So, many youth activists make a distinction between activism and organizing. With organizing being understood as the deeper work that creates social connections and structures to support the strategizing that happens in movements for social change. I’m going to use the word activism today as a shorthand, but I urge you to listen closely to the groups that have joined us today and really hear how they describe the work that they do and what distinctions they’re making.

Dr. Sonia Rosen:

So, young people… You can skip to the next slide. Young people have historically been at the forefront of many movements for social change. Thinking back to the last century alone, there are many examples of movements within and outside of the U.S. That have been led, or at least included significant leadership from young people in their teens or early twenties. So for instance, the U.S. Labor Movement of the early 20th century. The Civil Rights Movement, in particular the Black Panther Party and SNCC were very led by young people. The anti-war movement of the ’60s and ’70s. The South African Anti-Apartheid Movement was certainly prompted and led by young people. The anti-globalization protests in the ’90s. Student protests around higher education against austerity measures across Europe and South America in the 2010s. The immigrant rights movement, especially the Dreamers. The Arab Spring. And more recently, the Black Lives Matter movement, in particular, a group called Black Youth Project 100. And then the educational justice movement, which has been significantly advanced by the work of middle and high school students and college students as well.

Dr. Sonia Rosen:

So this is just a short list to highlight the range of ways that young people have led us in positive change to create a more just world. Can you advance to the next slide?

Dr. Sonia Rosen:

So, why young people? Why would young people be particularly good for it, good as activists and as predisposed to this work? So one thing is that young people are often willing to take risks that adults won’t take. They have less stake, the stakes are sometimes lower and they have usually fewer people to care for. But also they’re sort of more daring than adults in a lot of ways. They’re often driven by a sense of fairness and they very commonly reject the assumption that the world is the way it is and it can’t change. Young people are more creative about what they can imagine in the world often than most adults are. And finally, they’re future-looking. They’re interested in creating world they want to live in because we’ve left them a world that isn’t great and young people are finding ways to exert power to make the world that they want, for them, and for their kids, or for their peers.

Dr. Sonia Rosen:

So, can you switch to the next slide? In my own research in the Philadelphia Student Union, who you’ll hear from today, I found that youth members of PSU took on identities as activists as they immersed themselves in this kind of work. So specifically, PSU offered them what I called critical counterhegemonic frameworks for understanding the world. So basically, ways of seeing what’s happening around them that help them to disrupt inequities that they notice. It offered them a social environment that helped them feel really deeply connected to other youth and adults who were doing the work alongside them and even those who are doing the work in other places, such as, folks in other countries who are doing really important liberation work. It offered them a deep sense of love for themselves and for those they were fighting with and for. And also a structure to use their time in supporting these kinds of change efforts.

Dr. Sonia Rosen:

So, one thing I discovered was that though not all young people see and interact in the world in this way yet, all young people really have the potential to do so, given the right supports, social environments, critical frameworks, and opportunities to learn and work for justice alongside others. And this is something that I think is really important way to frame what you’re going to see today, because you might look at these young people and think, “Oh. Well, they’re just like special or they do…” But truthfully, we as adults, can do a lot to facilitate this kind of thinking and these kinds of actions for all kinds of young people in our lives.

Dr. Sonia Rosen:

So, what does contemporary activism, youth activism look like? So, what you’ll hear about today are several nonprofit organizations that include youth and adults and have various kinds of leadership structures. So some organizations are primarily led by youth, with the adults playing just a supportive role. Some are led by adults with youth positioned more as participants, but most contemporary nonprofit youth organizing groups view their work as intergenerational with various kinds of partnerships and power sharing between youth and adults. In all my years of witnessing and listening to youth activists, the one thing I can say is that young people are not puppets in these organizations. They play meaningful roles and they contribute their voices in important ways and the presence of adults in their work helps to mediate the social and legal risks that activism inevitably entails. So, they’re able to sort of figure out what kinds of strategic action they want to be able to take that fits within the kinds of risks they’re able to take given their circumstances.

Dr. Sonia Rosen:

But we’re also seeing a resurgence of youth activism that’s taking place outside of these nonprofit organizational structures. So for instance, the Black Lives Matter movement has been significantly advanced through youth participation, from the organizing work to the protests themselves. In the BLM movement, we’ve been seeing many young people bear the brunt of police violence and take risks that are not necessarily mediated by adults. And that’s important to think about. Regardless of the form young people’s activism takes, youth activists are always exploring the tensions between their individual power, and agency, and the collective power that they’re able to strategically develop by joining with other youth and adults to make social change. Can you advance to the next slide, please?

Dr. Sonia Rosen:

So, why should all of us educators, and educational leaders, and other youth workers care about and find ways to support youth activism? I think there are many reasons, but I’ve highlighted three here. One is that it helps to foster critical agency and leadership among youth. And that’s really important, we want to see young people being the leaders that we need to make the world that we want to have. And that can be in a variety of different arenas, but it could be in politics, it could be in communities, in their schools. But regardless, we need to foster this kind of youth leadership and their sense of being able to act on the world. It’s a means of developing solutions in ways that center the voices of those most affected by the problems that we’re collectively facing. And I think that’s really important because sometimes when we’re not the ones who are at the center of those problems, it’s hard for us to really understand the depth of how all these issues and structures actually affect those who are most affected.

Dr. Sonia Rosen:

And it expands how we imagine possibility in systems and institutions that are premised on inequity. And I think this is really key because sometimes we lack imagination. I know that I often do as an adult. I’m 43 years old and sometimes I fail to see what’s possible. And it’s really… Like, this is one of the reasons why I spend a lot of time around young people when I can is because I think they helped to expand my imagination and youth activists, in particular, do that because they are working hard all the time to think differently about our world and reimagine what we could be and what we could do.

Dr. Sonia Rosen:

So, I’m going to end with two things. So, if you can advance this next to my last slide? As you listen to this panel and you hear all the one amazing wisdom that they have to offer you, I want you to do two things. I’d like you to tune in to what the panelists are saying about the ways educators and educational leaders can support this work. So thinking about, how did they want to be supported? Not how we think we should support them, but how do young people articulate the supports that they need and what they want.

Dr. Sonia Rosen:

And then I also urge you to ask yourself, “What can I learn from these youth activists that might help me rethink my practice as an educator, educational leader, or youth worker?” What are you going to do? What are you going to walk away with that is actually going to help you make change in your practice? And I think that’s the value of these moments. It’s not just to sort of be more woke. It’s also to really be able to reenvision how we interact with young people and how we support the work that these amazing young people here are going to be presenting to us. So with that, I’ll pass this along to, I think to Michelle, right? Or, yeah, right?

Michelle Nutter:

Yes. Thank you so much, Sonia. That was so wonderful. At this point. I want to open it up. We have about four minutes where we could take questions for Dr. Rosen. So panelists, if you have any questions for her, please go ahead and raise your hands so we can call on you. And Nikevia’s going to be monitoring that chat box to see if any of our attendees have questions for Dr. Rosen.

Michelle Nutter:

Jon?

Jonothan Gray:

So I’m just going to, first off, say thank you to Dr. Rosen for the waking stuff, but I get… And also my question was, what’s one of the things that… I guess you kind of touched on this, we started about the imagination and stuff, but maybe what’s one of the things that kind of came out from your experience working with young people? Well, just about something that you maybe… I don’t know what this… I guess something that’s just really significant. Excuse me, I’ve got neighbors that got big monster trucks and whatnot, I don’t know. But yeah, so just something that kind of came out of organizing and whatnot with young people for you as kind of significant to your experience or whatever, something cool, I guess.

Dr. Sonia Rosen:

Yeah, I mean I think one thing that is, that has been most impactful to me is the way… So, there’s a lot of young people who… Most of these contemporary youth-organizing groups like all of yours, tend to organize themselves in ways that are prefigurative. So, they’re enacting like what I call prefigurative politics. Like thinking about creating the kinds of social relationships, and organizing work, and organizations, and organizational culture that-

Dr. Sonia Rosen:

And organizations and organizational culture that helps to put forth the kind of world that they’re organizing for. So… And I think that is a really instructive way, instructive for me, because I feel like often adults, they sort of justify the means… the ends justifies the means and they don’t really think very carefully about creating a culture around them that helps us to move forward with the world we want. So I’ve been so impressed with the way young people are able to sort of create anti-oppressive environments, that also helped them do the work that they’re doing in ways that really put them in solidarity with people around the globe fighting for in-liberation struggles.

Speaker 1:

Thank you. [inaudible 00:24:01]

Dr. Sonia Rosen:

And I actually, I think it would be more productive to just turn it over to the youth panelists because I think most of the questions should really go to them. Is that… would that be okay?

Michelle Nutter:

Absolutely. Absolutely. So thank you again, Dr. Rosen. Such wonderful information, and thought provoking as well. So let’s go ahead and meet our panelists from our four organizations. I’m going to go ahead and introduce them alphabetically in order by their organization name. So we’re going to first hear from the Baltimore Algebra Project, and I’m going to ask each person who is engaged with that group to introduce yourself and give us just a quick understanding, about five minutes worth, of what your organization, who you are, what you do, what you’re focused on. So Baltimore Algebra Project take it away.

TwanDoe Jordan:

Alrighty, good afternoon, everybody. Great to see everyone. Well, great to see that it is a lot of people here. Always good to be in these spaces where we can lift up the work young people are doing and share in the community and just help each other advance the work that we’re all doing as well. So with that being said, my name is TwanDoe. I am the co-executive director of programs for the Baltimore Algebra Project. I’ve been with the Algebra Project since I was 15, I’m 29 now. And we use math as an organizing tool to help young people to develop political analysis and to make change in their communities. And yeah, I’m going to leave it there and let the young people go and step back.

Jonothan Gray:

Cool. So what’s up everybody? I’m Jon [inaudible 00:26:11]. I think I’ve also been with the Algebra Project since I was like 15 or 16. I mean, I’m not as old as Twan, so it’s not the same amount of time, but I started my high school year, my freshman year of high school kind of… And I was always just interested in like the way the world works and stuff like that. And just kind of saying stuff that you just know isn’t right and being like that ain’t right, you know? I don’t necessarily know what it’s supposed to be, but I know that ain’t right. And that kind of just transitioned into organizing and being at the Algebra Project.

Jonothan Gray:

So I was going to a high school in my city, Baltimore City College, and there was this group called… it was an organizing group and a lot of the members that were in the group had came from the Algebra Project in different ways and means, they was connected. So pretty much, somebody just kind of said… one of our Algebra Project alumni that was also going to the school at the time, he was like, “Yeah, you should come around.” We actually about to get together after this call and he was like, “Yeah, you should come around.” And like, “You’ll be interested.” And we meet every day. This was back when things were in person.

Jonothan Gray:

So I had went to a Thursday meeting and that’s when we have our advocacy meetings. Monday’s advocacy, Tuesday, at least at the time, this was the setup. Monday was advocacy, Tuesday was… Wednesday was summer planning, Tuesday was team building kind of our productive get together, family stuff. Thursday was another advocacy and Friday was leadership. The whole organization was there. So to make a long story short, there was a… at that time they laid off a bunch of teachers and it was a rally that the Algebra Project was having to kind of talk about the points of education. Somebody that was supposed to speak didn’t show up and I was kind of just chilling. This is my first thing. And they were on the stage and they looked around and they seen me, they was like, “Yeah, now Jon’s about to come up and talk to you about why we shouldn’t be laying off the teachers,” and whatnot. And I was like, “Jon about to do what? No I’m not.”

Jonothan Gray:

There was a bunch of people and I was nervous, but it was cool cause that’s the environment that we have and that’s kind of family feels like, yeah, we was going to come tell you why this stuff was wrong. We just want to talk to y’all and y’all just want to talk to yourself, cool. And I’ve been in love ever since, you feel me? I’ve kind of been around ever since. Algebra Project is really special to me, but yeah. Was there another question?

TwanDoe Jordan:

No, it’s Mychaell’s time. You only had five minutes.

Jonothan Gray:

Oh yeah. Five minutes each or-

TwanDoe Jordan:

No, no.

Jonothan Gray:

Mychaell, I’m done talking.

Michelle Nutter:

Jon, you did… I answered the follow-up question of how did you come to be involved in youth activism? So you took care of it all right there.

Jonothan Gray:

My bad. Reading is… well, I guess listening is fundamental.

Michelle Nutter:

Mychaell?

Mychaell Farmer:

It’s fine because mine be short. I’m Mychaell. I’m a youth organizer with the Baltimore Algebra Project. I’m also a junior at Calvert. What was the question? The question was how we got involved? Right? [crosstalk 00:29:26].

Michelle Nutter:

Exactly.

Mychaell Farmer:

All right. So I kind of got involved when I was 14, but I was going into… I got involved over the summer. So there [inaudible 00:29:33] as well. So I think it was a Spanish [inaudible 00:29:39] in our class and I was at the table and she recommended me to Baltimore Algebra Project because I usually help around the school and do things. It wasn’t anything major, it was kind of just like out of the kindness in my heart, by myself. So she told me that I might like it and I ended up signing up over the summer, and I stayed. And now I worked at the Baltimore Algebra Project.

Michelle Nutter:

Thank you.

TwanDoe Jordan:

Should I answer the follow-up question?

Michelle Nutter:

Sure.

TwanDoe Jordan:

Okay. So real quick, I got involved because I found out it was paying, they was giving money to young people to help with math. And I found the fastest way to sign up because I was already, like Mychaell said, helping people for free. So I was trying to get in on that. But what made me stay was we did some organizing and we were able to get the bus tickets extended… the time on our bus tickets extended from 6:30 to 8:30. So young people could do more afterschool for enrichment purposes, or if they had a job, or they just played a sport. They didn’t have to be hassled or they didn’t have to have that burden of trying to figure out how they would get home. And that was a pretty big impact to me because I saw that young people could actually make change and we can impact change as people, as a community, when we are organized. And so I was like, and we getting paid to do this. This is a dream. Nobody pinch me though, I want to stay asleep.

Michelle Nutter:

Thank you so much TwanDoe, Mychaell, and Jon and the Baltimore Algebra Project. We’re going to go ahead and move to the next alphabetically, the next group, which is the Philadelphia Student Union.

Fred Pinguel:

Hey everyone. My name is Fred Pinguel. I’m the executive director of the Philadelphia Student Union. First, it’s great to see everybody here and thank you for having us along with the other panelists to MAEC. The Philadelphia Student Union is… How should I say this? So, we believe that young people are not just future leaders, but have the capacity to be leaders right now in their schools and communities. I think what Twan, Jon, and Mychaell kind of spoke to and what Josh, who I’ll be introducing in a second, can speak to are all examples of the ways that young people aren’t just the future, they’re not just potential, but are right now making changes and influencing and directing institutions to behave in ways that are more respectful of young people and their families and of their communities. And the Philadelphia Student Union has been around for 25 years because we believe this.

Fred Pinguel:

I was a member when I was in high school. And throughout those 25 years, our history is the history of young people who believe that education in Philadelphia, and in this country, can be better. That our communities can be better and that they have something that they can contribute to making that change and has been doing that ever since. So I want to pass it over to Josh who can tell you his PSU story, but I remember Josh cause he joined last summer. He joined us. The first time that I met him was at a rally. We were having a march in July for our Police Free Schools campaign. And so this was, if people remember what was happening last summer, it was the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent uprisings, and so we had been working for years on issues around school, discipline, and policing.

Fred Pinguel:

And it had sort of culminated with, kind of, the attention and commitment to this issue just generally with Police Free Schools campaign that we started last summer. And we had an action as a part of that. And that was when I met Josh and Josh has been an integral leader in our organization ever since. And I’m really proud of all of the work that he’s done. And I hope that he can tell you all a little bit more about why PSU is important to me, important to him, and the things that he’s been doing as a leader for us.

Josh Sor:

Thanks Fred. So again, my name’s Josh, I am a sophomore, and joining PSU was definitely a huge moment of my life. I’ve always been into politics, always been a huge activist. And when I first went to that first rally for Police Free Schools, hearing the stories of the people sharing, or just like seeing the community come together, was a really big deal for me. And I mean, ever since then working with PSU, I’ve always used my hobbies or used my interest to expand my voice as a student. And I really appreciate that from PSU.

Josh Sor:

For example, right now we’re trying to create equitable funding throughout PA and I’m trying to create a video to be shared at a panel that’s going to be heard on May 17th and things like that that interest me or things that I’m interested in that help me use my voice are really important to me.

Michelle Nutter:

Thank you, Fred and Josh, so much. We’re going to go ahead and move on to the next group and it looks like it is the Providence Student Union. So go ahead and take it away.

Precious Lopez:

Thank you so much, Michelle. My name is Precious Lopez. I am the co-executive director of Providence Student Union. I’ve been with Providence Student Union for a total of two years, but just recently in this position, starting January of this year. Providence Student Union, we’re a youth led organization, 501(c)(3), and we’ve been around since 2010. And being that we’re youth led, I’m not going to say anymore about the organization, I’m going to let Jayda, who is part of our leadership team, talk more about our organization.

Jayda Williams:

Hello everyone. My name is Jayda Williams. I am a senior at Classical High School in Providence, Rhode Island. And I have been a part of PSU for four years now. I started during my freshman year of high school, but I didn’t officially become a member until my sophomore year of high school. And I am on the leadership team at PSU. We are a legislative body and we lead the organization as a group of students, in a way it’s a student board, designed as a student board. Next slide.

Jayda Williams:

Providence Student Union aims to improve education for students throughout the city, which means promoting good buildings, equitable teachers, good school values, great educators. Our main goals are to improve student education and student well-being. Through student well-being, we have well-being fund, which people can donate to. We have… And it’s also as a way for the students who are unfortunate or in need can go and borrow things from them. We are an action-based organization. So we need actions, we do protests, walkouts, sit ins, and we want to create demand so that our voices can be heard. PSU started in 2010. So we’re over a decade old and we have been student led since the beginning. Next slide.

Jayda Williams:

The main priority of Providence Student Union is to amplify youth voices and for our voices to be heard to adults. We use students to get the adults to listen to us. So usually students are the main focus of the group, of the organization. Before COVID we had groups at various high schools throughout the city and each school focused on their own campaign. At Mount Pleasant they focused on Save Our Stomachs, which was their own campaign. At my high school, we worked on getting quality teachers and we also run state-wide campaigns and city-wide campaigns. Now, during COVID, we have community meetings on Zoom and we all still get together and we organize that way. Next Slide.

Jayda Williams:

Some of our campaigns that we have been working on are finished. Student Bill of Rights, this is our Bill of Rights, similar to the Bill of Rights that we have as American citizens. These are just our rights that we believe that students should have. Counselors Not Cops, that’s one of our current campaigns. We recently did a two day action in April, the 29th or the 30th, demanding cops out of schools and implementing counselors. Our PPSD Pass/Fail Grading campaign, we did that last year during COVID to make sure all students had an equitable education, then we implemented the pass/fail grading system. And Cook v. Raimondo is our law suit and we’re suing the governor, to include both our former governor. So to demand civic education in our schools.

Jayda Williams:

In 2017, I was an eighth grader and Providence Student Union held a walkout protesting Trump’s inauguration. And I wasn’t allowed to go to the lockout because I was a middle school student, and in my high school there were police officers at every single door, which blocks students from leaving the building, and it was pretty scary to have a police officer in our school. And I know from… it felt wrong, and I was scared. And I know from that moment on that I wanted to be a part of action that could change that. So I had PSU in mind before I actually entered high school and then staff from PSU table was at my high school and I joined. I attended some meetings during my sophomore year of high school, that’s when I officially became a member. And now I am a part of action, such as Counselors Not Cops, where I can say no to cops in school and say yes to counselors. Thank you.

Michelle Nutter:

Thank you so much, Precious and Jayda. Thank you. And, oh, there’s one more slide. Do one of you want to take that before we move on to the next group?

Jayda Williams:

Yeah, I’ll continue, yeah. We always want to be in demand and at the forefront of youth, in youth decisions, like involving youth. So we want to be involved in the decision making and hiring the teachers, hiring the superintendent, hiring the commissioner. And we want to put in practices of non-violent practices. So restorative justice, removing cops out of school, furthering student well-being, which means instead of replacing counselors instead of cops, and we want students to focus on school. We want students to focus on school and themselves and what they’re into. So we want to get rid of test scores and focus on the student as a whole. Thank you.

Speaker 2:

Michelle, you’re muted.

Michelle Nutter:

Thank you so much. I can’t wait to dig into everything that all three of the groups have said, but we have one more group to introduce and then we will open it up for questions. And so I want to turn it over to SHOUT, Social Handprints Overcoming Unjust Treatment. And this is a group from South Fayette High School. SHOUT, go ahead.

Dr. Chuck Herring:

First and foremost, I just want to thank everybody for being here today. My name is Chuck Herring and I am the director of diversity, equity, and inclusion at the South Fayette Township school district, which is about six, seven miles outside of the city of Pittsburgh. Really, really, really honored and flat out excited to be here today. But before we get started, I just want to say to our Muslim sisters and brothers, “Eid Mubarak,” just because it’s the end of Ramadan. And definitely, I just wanted to celebrate that with you guys. And secondly, I wanted to say to the young lady who just spoke, Jayda. Jayda said that talking about pass/fail grades, and I know that you guys are in Providence, and I know that in Providence Brown University is there, and Brown University uses pass/fail. So if an Ivy League school like Brown University can use pass/fail, it seems as if our public schools can use pass/fail.

Dr. Chuck Herring:

I’m not going to say much. I’m really excited to turn it over to my students. And I’m really excited to have my students hearing from you guys because we in a little bit of a different space, but also I want you guys to hear from my students because no matter what your issues are still the same. We’re so much more alike than we are different. And that’s where we really have to peel past all of those silly layers that people throw on us to say that, oh, this person is this way. This person is that way. We’re all humans and we all need to speak and get together. So what I’m going to do is turn it over to the co-chairs of SHOUT, Zach Betz and Mehreen Awan. So I’m going to go ahead and turn it over to them now.

Zachary Betz:

All right. Thank you very much, Dr. Herring. So as we said, we are SHOUT and we want to, once again, thank you all so much for attending this incredible event. And once again, to everyone who is being a part and setting up this incredible event. One thing that we do in SHOUT, whenever someone does something really incredible, is we like to do what we like to call the money clap. Because most people clap like this, but we’re wealthy with knowledge, kindness, whatever you like to think, we’re wealthy with it. So we do what we like to call the money clap. So money clap to everyone who’s-

Zachary Betz:

So we do what we like to call the money, clap. So money clap to everyone who’s being a part of this event, whether you’re attending or helping set it up. It’s really incredible. And we’re just so happy to be here with all of you. So to give a bit of background first real quickly, Shout is a diversity equity and inclusion organization at South Fayette high school. And it’s also become a leadership organization. And Shout was actually started through a youth activist, a senior who was going to graduate back in 2019 by the name of Yamini Yapori wanted to start an organization at South Fayette, but focused on increasing the amount of diversity, equity and inclusion. So Yamini started talking around with all of her friends and one of her friends, Birfeen Birkin, who we and Michelle’s family like to refer to as Snow, really liked the idea.

Zachary Betz:

And so Yamani and Snow started talking to members of the school and eventually Yamani in Snow got in touch with Dr. Herring, who is an absolutely incredible person from there, Yamini, Snow and Dr. Herring started to send out emails, letters, trying to reach out to people and get a really diverse group of students to form Shout, which used to be called SDLC. After they had their first meeting, they had eight founding members in total, including Dr. Herring and from there, SDLC at the time again, what it was called at the time held their first ever event. The Hand Prints Heal Footprints event. And the basic idea behind hand prints and footprints are that a footprint is an intentional or unintentional act that causes harm to someone. However, a hand print is like a helping hand. It’s a positive gesture that offsets the negative effects of a footprint.

Zachary Betz:

And in this event, we had little tables around the high school hallways and we encourage students to dip their hands in paint and then put their pain covered hands on the windows of the hallways. Keep in mind that the idea of hand prints are positive gestures. So when people see all those hands on the windows, it’s a way to show that you’re not alone. You may think that you’re alone and that you’re the only one with these thoughts, you’re being treated in this way. But when you really look up and around, you’re not alone at all. And that event was huge. It really helped Shout. And from there, Shout started going to other schools and promoted the organization. Eventually Shout became Shout. It went from SDLC to shout during the summer, and we did so many incredible things. Even before the summer, before we even switched the name, we did so many incredible things and I can talk about it more. But I think that my fellow co-chair Marina Wan would be much better at talking about this so Mehreen, the floor is yours.

Mehreen Awan:

Thank you so much. Hi everyone. I hope everyone’s doing well. My name is Marina Wan. I’m a senior at South Fayette and I’m one of the other coachers. I got involved in youth activism because I was just fed up with all the hate and injustice everywhere. I wanted to make a change and educate people on any matter that they had misunderstandings about. I was introduced to Shout by my middle school ESL teacher. She knew my love for different cultures, religions, and backgrounds, and she knew about my dream to make a positive change. And so she introduced me to Shout and when I heard about it, I knew that this was perfect for me. So today I will be giving you an overview of what Shout has accomplished so far. Shout had a lot of plans before the pandemic, but unfortunately we had to switch everything online.

Mehreen Awan:

Even if we did a meet in person, we continued our work virtually our first accomplishment during the pandemic was writing a book. The book contains stories of Shout members on why they joined Shout and a time of when a footprint affected them. And if they responded with a hand print or footprint. I’m proud to say that we got the book published in just a few months and now everyone can purchase our book and learn about our stories. This also leads me into our next accomplishment, which is our book signing event. We had a book signing event on January 21st. It was virtual. The purpose of this event was to celebrate our amazing achievement. Students of Shout discussed the book and answered questions that the audience has had. The event was very well planned and the turnout was just amazing. Last October, we had a privilege walk and soon we will have one again. Privilege walk is an activity where students typically stand in a straight line across the field and respond to various statements such as if you’re a single child, take one step forward.

Mehreen Awan:

And at the end of the activity, participants who answered yes to more of the questions would be standing in front of the field while those who more frequently answered no would be standing toward the back. The goal of the exercise was to help students recognize how power and privilege affect their lives, even if they are unaware that it is happening. The privilege walk also turned out amazing. Everyone who planned this event did an amazing job. We had the privilege walk in an open area and followed all the safety measures. I will tell you a little bit about my experience of the privilege walk, because it will give you an idea of how it was.

Mehreen Awan:

I went to the privilege walk thinking that the questions would be really easy for me to answer. But when I heard the questions, trust me, that were not easy for me to answer. This event made me realize the importance of privilege. I believe that privilege walk is so important because it makes you realize where you are and where you stand. If someone was ahead, they might’ve felt a bit uneasy because they were given more privilege than the others who were behind them. I’m sure everyone that day realized that not everyone may have had those same privileges that you might have had. And that was our goal to get individuals to realize and know about privilege.

Mehreen Awan:

Next, Shout also had held a black lives matter rally on June 20, 2020. We had the rally in an open area and again, followed all the safety precautions at the rally. We had students of color from our school to talk about their experience with racism. And it was just so nice to see that many people showed up and showed support. The next event we organized was religions of the world day event. This event was also held virtually for this event., we had many different religious leaders talk about their religion. We had people speak from religions like Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, Christianity, and Dr. Herring, please correct me if I pronounce this wrong Zoroastrianism, this event was also a success and we got the chance to learn more about these religions. Now going back to hand prints heal footprints, we had our second hashtag Hand Prints Heal Footprints event from home on January 18th.

Mehreen Awan:

Everyone posted a picture of their hand traced on a sheet of paper or their hand painted onto a window with the hashtag hand prints heal footprints. Again, this event went also very well and we were just so glad to see that many students and teachers participated. Finally, our last two events that we held virtually were Women’s Her Story and Black History Month. Women’s Her Story month, that was a panel event where women from many different backgrounds and ages came together to talk about the history of woman, as well as times when women, including the panelists themselves broke down stereotypes about women. Black history month event was another panel event, had speakers such as people from historically black colleges and universities or HBCU’s speak about many topics relating to the black community, such as their experiences. Both of these events were amazing and again, we got to learn so much. So this is all that we have accomplished so far, and we’re so excited to see what else we will accomplish in the future. I am so proud of what the Shout family has been doing. And again, I’m just really looking forward to other amazing things we plan to accomplish. Thank you all so much. And now I will give it back to Zach to talk about where the Shout family is going next.

Zachary Betz:

All right. Thank you very much Marine. So the Shout family definitely has a lot of things that we’re going to be doing in the future. And one of them that we’d like to talk about just really quickly is an event called the Uncommon Conference that we’ll be doing in June. So if the Uncommon Conference we planned it last year, but COVID hit and everybody started closing their doors, schools, businesses, but now we’re coming back and we’re coming back strong this year. We’re gonna make sure that we have all kinds of different things to talk about all kinds of different events, some fun, some more serious, it’s a day-long event too. It’s around seven to eight hours, but there’s so much information and so many things to learn and so much fun to be had at that event. So we’re really excited about it.

Zachary Betz:

We have a bunch of organizations and other chapters in schools, cause Shout is in more than 10 schools. We’re growing and we’re all pitching in to help each other, just like a family. We always call ourselves the Shout family and that’s really what we are. And then before I finish up, cause I did notice this, my apologies for not mentioning this earlier, why I decided to get involved with the youth activism just really quickly. I technically got involved ever since I was a freshman. I was diagnosed with a form of autism and I gave a Ted talk my freshman year at my high school, which is called the Benefits of Autism. And it’s on TEDx’s official YouTube channel right now. And Dr. Herring attended the talk and he reached out to me about joining Shout and I thought this would be an incredible opportunity just to provide hand prints to people and show that no matter who you are or what you’re born with, you can still be successful and happy in your day-to-day life. Just like what I talked about in my Ted talk. Thank you very much. And if you have any questions for Shout or any of these incredible organizations, we love to answer them. Thank you.

Michelle Nutter:

Thank you, Marine, Zachary and Dr. Herring. I just want to, before we open it up to questions, if any of our panelists did not respond to that question, how did you get involved in youth activism? I want to just provide space for any of you who didn’t answer that question. Or any of our leaders.

Dr. Chuck Herring:

Well, I know I didn’t answer the question, but I’ll be brief. I’ll just say I got, I’ve been involved with it my whole life, but what really happened was is my oldest daughter. When I really think about it as an adult, she’s now older than most of the people on this panels she’s 33, 34. But when she was in third or fourth grade, they had to do a lineage activity and art class where they had to look and research our history. And of course being black in America, we could, we could trace it back to like Georgia and Alabama. And so I was like, but I know that our ancestors are from Africa. So pick a country in Africa. So she picked Egypt and the teacher wouldn’t put her in assignment up because the teacher told her that Egypt wasn’t in Africa. And I was like, what? And so I had to go up there and give the teacher a lesson about on geography, number one, and then some history about Egypt originally called Kemet and the country that’s right next to it called Ethiopia, which is the land of the black skin. And I’m like, wait a minute. So that really got me started, say about 25, 27 years ago, or so.

Michelle Nutter:

Thank you, Chuck. Tondo, I saw that you had your hand up. Do you want to speak?

TwanDoe Jordan:

I was, real quick, going to say one of the important or one of the reasons why it is important to employ young people to do the kind of work that we do is because, not specifically for me, it fills the gap where you didn’t have to choose between making money and providing for your family and yourself or getting education and trying to go to school and learn and better yourself as well. So there’s definitely one part of it is making sure young people have a financial security, but it’s also a peace of mind and asset in terms of leverage in that asset to be able to further your education. So just in terms of thinking about concept and structure, why that is important part of the model.

Michelle Nutter:

Thank you, Tondo. I know that there were a few questions that were posed to Dr. Rosen in the chat, and she indicated that she’d rather questions go to the panelists. So Nikevia, do you mind circling back to some of questions that were posted earlier and any panelist, if you would like to answer, please raise your hand so that we can go ahead and call on you. Nikevia? Hey, well, we’ll come back to that. And any other questions that might be in the chat? So no Nikevia, we cannot hear you. Hey, she’s going to go out and come back in. Sometimes this happens, even though it says we’re un-muted, I’m sure with as much as everyone has been on zoom, we’ve all experienced this at some time or another. So when Nikevia is able to rejoin us, we’ll get some questions from the chat box. In the meantime, just a question for anyone again, raise your hand if you’d like to answer it, but what do you think, what qualities are necessary to make a good youth activist leader? Cause we’ve got a whole bunch of them on this panel. So what qualities do you think are necessary to be that really strong leader in an a youth activist organization?

Nikevia:

Hello? Can you hear me now?

Michelle Nutter:

We can.

Nikevia:

Oh, great. Great.

Michelle Nutter:

So let’s let them respond to the question I just asked to keep it and then we’ll turn it right back over to you, John. I saw you had your hand raised. Did you want to respond to that one?

Jonothan Gray:

Yeah, and I was thinking on the question, I was really just thinking, being the youngest person in the room, I think that’s something that I really learned from BAP kind of I was expecting, well sheesh I’m 19. So I guess I’m an adult now. I’ll always be like I’m not an adult so it’s like I just need to go work, but it really is like, it’s more sort of mentality of looking out for younger people and putting them forward and making sure that they really all the forefront and that you’re supporting them. And it’s not just like you’re not saying things because you want to accomplish what they want to accomplish because it’s not yours to accomplish really. You’re doing it and making sure that your purpose really is to just help them get away and go, you feel me take out some of the unnecessary we’ve been feeling and yeah.

Jonothan Gray:

And it was really, I would say you kind of understand the age thing also when Twan was talking about, when you asked the question of kind of what he knows best to be a youth organizer and Twan kind of talks about like, like really understanding and stuff like that. Kind of understand the options and whatnot. That was a big part of it for me too. It’s kind of being open-minded you feel me because at first you hear like, right, I’m going to do some math, I’m going to do whatever. And you don’t see the direct correlation, but cause I’m not I wasn’t great at math when I first started with algebra, but I’m definitely a lot better and definitely it is something that like I’m passionate about, but you really do see the correlation between education and every single day to day thing.

Jonothan Gray:

And then also I wanted to… You see a correlation between education and life. And it really is just the same thing. It’s just that school makes you feel like supposed to be that building. But I said all that to say understanding, putting young people first and also being able to make connections between other things. So that’s what organizing is Twan said all the times that your networking your bandwidth and whatnot. I was kind of like what you can do and what you can, what connections you can make. I also wanted to throw a shirt up. No education, no life. Now this isn’t our best work. This is kind of just an example right now. Something I just had in the house. My screen is weird. It’s like when I go left, it goes right. So I’m trying to push it to the wall, but pretty much no education, no life. And the thought process behind that is that it’s really no doing this without education and there’s no doing this without really understand the why points of education and why education even beyond that is a constitutional importance. If you’re trying to get some shirts and stuff or some pins, one second, I’m not going to stop. Shirts and pins.

Jonothan Gray:

That’s our pin, that’s our shirt stick, it’s all that. You can go into website that Twan dropped in the chat or you can just hit me or Twan. We want to drop by our information sheet. We’ll be letting you know about a new design and all that. But yeah, I definitely think understanding young people and in the website Twan said in the chat, [01:06:10] noap.org. That’s also our email handles just our initial and our last name at that, but we’ll drop all that stuff. So just saying, I’m understanding you put young people first and being able to make the connection between education and life or just making it, being able to make connections, to get to a goal.

Michelle Nutter:

Thank you, John. I see Jada has her hand up. Go ahead, Jada.

Jayda Williams:

Yeah. Could you repeat the question and then I’ll answer it?

Michelle Nutter:

Absolutely. What makes someone a strong or effective leader or youth activist? What qualities?

Jayda Williams:

I feel like in order to be a strongest leader, you really just need passion, drive and some qualities, some pieces of leadership, because you don’t have to be the best at anything because throughout your work you’re going to get on the job experience, you’re going to get the training. And so you don’t have to be the best speaker. You don’t even have to speak on panels, if you’re too shy and you don’t have to be an introvert or an extrovert. The qualities that you get from being a youth activist come from being the activist and doing the work. I think that makes the best quality in a youth leader because someone who isn’t good at speaking, they may be good at art. They may be good at drawing, directing and they still put in the work the same amount as someone who’s speaking. And I think it all, as long as you have a solid team and everyone’s willing to play a part and know when to step up and to step back, then that’s when you know you have like, you are a good activist in, you are an activist. That’s what I would say.

Michelle Nutter:

Thank you, Jada. So insightful. So important. Mykelle.

Mychaell Farmer:

Yeah. I wanted to answer the question. Could you repeat it just so I can take a deep breath.

Michelle Nutter:

Absolutely. What makes someone a strong or effective youth activist? What qualities?

Mychaell Farmer:

I feel like John and Jada, they hit the main ones, but I think it’s also well-roundedness. So being able to understand multiple subjects at once. I think for both youth and adults, because I feel adults were youth at one point and they do remind us and say ll, they’ve been in our place before, but I think it’s also they, I guess it’s like how people, individual women cause individually, we all do different stuff or the same stuff, but at different times, and we all handle it differently. So I feel like you could care about it because I feel like…

Mychaell Farmer:

We all handle it differently. So I feel like, you could care about it but you also have to be well-rounded enough to be able to deal with other types of situation. Say for example, this is the only one at the top of my head, this moment. I’m sorry. But racism or rape. You can probably be able to know how to organize around racism if you’ve experienced it, or if you know that it’s not right, but you might not be able to organize around helping rape victims, if you haven’t been through it. I haven’t sat in enough things. So I feel like well-roundedness would be enough. Would be one of the main key, if that makes sense. I’m a shut up.

Michelle Nutter:

No. Very, very insightful as well. Any of our panelists, anyone else on our panel want to respond to that question?

Michelle Nutter:

If not, I know [Nikevia 01:09:49] has a question, but we did say we would go to [Nikevia 01:09:52] to pull some things from the chat, that may have passed us by, and then we’ll go directly to Nikevia for her question.

Nikevia:

Yes. Okay. So I have a bit of a long one. I didn’t make a note of who asked it, but it’s about the privilege walks. “I’m interested in feedback on privilege walks. My experience has been powerful, showed me my privilege, and caused me to decide to focus on using that privilege for the benefit of others. However, I’m hearing a lot, including from civil rights activists, that these can have the opposite effect of both those discovering their privilege, with the guilt and shame and denial, and those who feel the same emotions as a result of answering personal questions about themselves. Have you experienced either of those extremes in the privilege walk? And if so, or not, how do you stage the privilege walk to avoid those extremes from happening?”

Dr. Chuck Herring:

Before they answer, can I give you just a quick intro as to how to frame it? Okay so, you frame these things and this is where a lot of people make big mistakes, they don’t keep kids and adults safe. And so when you frame it, you have to set up a set of ground rules. And so, one of the ground rules that we have in our district is something that we at SHOUT have started, and we’re doing it vertically aligned from kindergarten through 12th grade. Teachers and students are learning these together. One of the ground rules is, is no shame, no blame, no guilt. And so what that means is, is that those who have privilege because of something that their ancestors have done, they don’t have to own up to that shame or blame or feel guilty about what their ancestors did.

Dr. Chuck Herring:

What they need to do is, is that they have acknowledged that the things that their ancestors had done, have caused people who are disenfranchised and marginalized to suffer today. So it’s not you, it’s not your fault, but you acknowledged that these things are still hurting people, and you might be able to use your privilege to help other people. So that’s how we frame, that’s one of the ground rules that we have, to kind of take that off of people, because it is easy to feel guilty, to feel shame, and to feel like you should take all the blame.

Michelle Nutter:

Thank you for providing that context. I think that’s really helpful. Do any of the other panelists want to respond to that question? Go ahead Zach.

Zachary Betz:

So, I unfortunately do not know how to raise my hand on Zoom, so my apologies for that. But I do actually do want to follow up with what Dr. Herring said. When it comes to how you think of it, because obviously, you could think of the privilege walk as, “oh, my ancestors did this,” or you could think of it as “I recognize that my ancestors did this.” There’s a big difference there. You don’t want to go to a privilege walk, learn one thing that disturbs you. You don’t want to realize that, “oh, I have so many privileges because of this, that or the other thing,” or, “oh, I don’t have that many privileges. So I’m like at a spot where I’m not actually.” Everybody should be equal. And the thing that is important with the privilege walk and important in life in general is just, you have to make sure that you understand how to see it from another perspective.

Zachary Betz:

So for example, with me, with the privilege walk, I attended it. And when I was young, I was bullied a lot because I had a form of autism. And a lot of people thought that that made me lesser than who I actually was. I constantly heard the names, “stupid, loser.” Those words were always around me. So, and I’m just going to be honest, I went to the privilege walk thinking, “okay…” Because if the most privileged you could say are right in the front, because we had them walk out, and if you had a privilege, you step forward, if you didn’t, you stayed where you were. And I’ll be honest, I’ll admit, I thought, okay, I was treated horribly. I had a lot of physical and mental challenges, especially mental challenges. Or I used to think of them as challenges. Now they’re just more of like unique traits, but really I was thinking I was going to be way in the back, and yet I was in the middle.

Zachary Betz:

So with me, my thought was okay. I thought I was the most miserable kid in the world, I did. But now I understand that there are others out there who are struggling more than me. And that only made me want to be involved in SHOUT more, it only made me want to give hand prints to people more. So, you could have looked at it as this “I’m in the middle. Okay, I don’t have it as bad as other people. I’m all good. I’m going to hang out with my family now.” Or you can see it as, “oh, there are people out there who are struggling even more than me.” “There are people out there who need support, let’s go do that.” So it’s all about how you think things you could think of it as “thank gosh,” or you can think of it as, “”oh, I should help.” Or you can think of it as, “oh, I’m to blame,” or you can think of it as, “oh, this happened in the past. What can I do to make the present and future better?”

Zachary Betz:

So it’s just all about the thoughts. And I think the privilege walk, I can understand how that could, make some people think negatively. But to that, again, it’s just things like our ground rules of SHOUT. We just have to make sure that we word things and do things in a positive way to reinforce positivity.

Michelle Nutter:

Thank you so much for sharing that truth and being vulnerable with us. Thank you. I see Fred has his hand up.

Fred Pinguel:

Yeah. I really wanted to address this and thank you to Dr. Herring, Zach for getting us started because I think an important aspect of youth activism and youth organizing is political education. And the privilege walk or like a spectrum exercise, and those types of things are really important modules for developing political analysis in a way that can be really accessible. It was really critical to my development for example, when I was a member of PSU. But I think the important thing for us at least, is that those activities be structured and paired with very specific and intentional analysis that allows the participants to understand what they’re going through in context of historical and systemic realities. So a privilege walk, like Dr. Herring and Zach said, it’s not about any individual people, and it’s not about individual guilt or blame.

Fred Pinguel:

It’s about placing people in context of a historical and a systemic, set of conditions that people continue to benefit from. Right. It’s not just the fact that, some people’s parents benefited in one way and others didn’t, it’s just that it’s a rolling advantage that continues. And there are aspects of society that continued to exist and that affect young people. And that I think a lot of our organizations are trying to encourage young people to have more agency over it, to express their leadership through. That is grounded in a lot of the these kinds of systemic, and surgical conditions, and specifically public education. So I think that when we’ve run this at PSU for example, we did this in context of talking about white supremacy or talking about income inequality, or talking about other aspects of people’s experiences. That’s not just…

Fred Pinguel:

Because I think in sort of what Dr Rosen’s research showed is that, one of the critical things that PSU kind of offered to people is that it allowed them to see their individual experiences in context of a larger framework. As a part of a larger cascade of systemic and individual conditions. And that they have the ability to do something about it. And that through organizing and through collective action, there is something that young people can do to intervene in these conditions. And so I think that, that’s really important to say as well, because at least for us, and for me at PSU, it’s really important to pair the kind of personal awakening and the personal kind of consciousness raising, that things like the privilege walk and other kinds of modules like this can offer with very specific political analysis.

Michelle Nutter:

Thank you, Fred. Thank you so much. Jon, I saw you had your hand up, but you put it down. Did you want to say anything, or do you want us to go ahead and move on to the next question?

Jonothan Gray:

I can make it quick. I was just going to say that also another piece of it is that, we also got to be careful of [inaudible 01:20:08] some stuff that could be beneficial to us. And I personally don’t… When we hear the phrase, white tears and stuff like that, [inaudible 00:01:20:22] at the privilege walks. Ans not like [inaudible 01:20:37], it’s not, [inaudible 01:20:41] my school is [inaudible 01:20:43] they have less, I can understand that [inaudible 01:20:49]

Speaker 3:

I’m sorry Jonothan, can you hear us? I think you’re breaking up a little bit.

Jonothan Gray:

[inaudible 01:20:55] better now is it?

Speaker 3:

No. It might be a good idea for you to try and disconnect and reconnect. So, hopefully he’ll be able to join us back and have better audio.

Michelle Nutter:

It looks like we have a question in the Q and A box.

Nikevia:

We do. It’s from Jenny. And the question is what kind of support is needed from teachers and school leaders to keep moving youth activism forward?

Michelle Nutter:

Mychaell?

Mychaell Farmer:

So I feel like the support from teachers… It was teachers and hold on, wait, teachers and what? I’m sorry.

Michelle Nutter:

Other adults.

Mychaell Farmer:

It’s going to be hard I guess, because I feel like teachers need to be more understanding that as students, that we’re doing classwork and we’re also working to, kind of fight for our lives out here. That it’s going to get a little bit hard. They have to realize that I probably won’t be able to try and get assignment at 8:00. And I feel like they prioritize education over…

Mychaell Farmer:

I’m not saying that education isn’t important, but I feel like in the works of education and feed the world peace or being able to better education, they should probably go for the latter. And for adults, I feel like also understanding that we…Well, coming from my point of view, I’m a calm down, my point of view, sometimes adults feel like that we’re making the wrong choices and stuff and try to protect us. And say, “well, I’m looking out for you, I know what’s what’s better for you than you know.” But at the same time, I guess we got different mindsets, because we’re being raised by them, we kind of see the flaws and stuff, or we see the things that we don’t like, and we want to change it. And they kind of don’t see it. It’s kind of like a disconnect, but it’s not a disconnect. Yeah. That’s all for right now. I forgot, but someone else can take it.

Michelle Nutter:

Thank you Mychaell. Jayda has her hand up.

Jayda Williams:

Yeah, teachers and school staff members, they have a seat at the table that students don’t have, but as students, we want a seat at the table. And because we don’t have that, they are our way in. So I think if you have some of your students, you know that they’re going to a walkout or, you know they’re going to a protest, or these are some of the actions that they have. Then you can bring them to your staff meetings with the principal. You can bring them to your teacher’s union and you can bring them to whatever board meeting that you have. And, try to implement these ideas and get our voices heard, because we cannot be there because they don’t allow us to be there. So teachers and staff like you are way out.

Jayda Williams:

And I think another big part of it is discipline. I think you shouldn’t punish students for, walking out because, Tinker v. Des Moines, that’s our amendment right. We have a right to walk out and you cannot punish us for it. And I think that teachers, and support staff, when it comes to discipline that I think we should move away from traditional discipline practices and move towards restorative justice practices so that we aren’t being harmed because we want to advocate for our other students, and our peers. We just want you guys to take accountability and understand your privilege and the power that you have, even if you don’t think that you have it, you do. And we would love for you all to be on our side.

Dr. Chuck Herring:

If I can interject with what Jayda just said, because she drops some gems there. That’s what we talk about when you need a money clap, because that’s when somebody gives you something valuable. So money clap for you Jayda, as you just really just dropped some serious nuggets on us. What we do, and the mission behind SHOUT is to make schools culturally responsive, safe spaces for all students, faculty and staff. That’s our mission. And what you were saying is that you don’t feel safe. And so that’s one of the key tenants of, as educators, when we talk about our hierarchy of needs, we need to feel safe. It’s like one of the basic needs. And if you don’t feel safe in school, you have to figure out a way to feel safe. Now that’s one of the reasons why SHOUT was started because there were kids who didn’t feel safe.

Dr. Chuck Herring:

And one of our mantras is, is that there’s strength in numbers. And you guys have agency. And what I’ve shown the kids, and what they’ve taken advantage of is that you guys as teenagers, you are really in the power position. And what I mean by that is you guys have power over your elected officials. Why? Because if you’re not 18, you will be 18 soon. And if you’re going to be 18 soon, that means that you’re probably going to have at least 60, 70, more years of voting in you. And so if you have a block of kids that are coming together, to be able to say, “Hey, we want these things to occur.” And we’re all 16, 17 years old. You guys can come together and say, “okay, you don’t listen to us. Now you will listen to us in two years.” Because one thing about politicians is that politicians follow where their votes are, and you guys have a lot of juice.

Dr. Chuck Herring:

And we have at SHOUT, we’ve spoken to… We actually, one of the things that Mehreen didn’t bring up was we actually had a virtual Harrisburg Day, which is the capital of Pennsylvania. And we received the commendations from Senator Toomey, and Senator Casey’s office, and Governor Wolf’s office. Because we came all together, if it was just one or two of us. Mm-mm (negative). But it was a gang of us, and we’re able to make moves. And so you’re able to make moves because you guys have all the power position. So I just wanted to share that with you.

Speaker 3:

Thank you. I wish we had more time to ask more questions. Maybe I’ll pose this question as we close out. There are so many that we could have asked. And also in the chat box, you’ll see that [Nikevia 01:28:24] posted a link for our evaluation. But a question that I have, that maybe one person can respond to who hasn’t spoken very much is: has your activism work, changed how you think about what you want to do in the future? And if so, how? And this is particularly for folks who have not spoken up very much, maybe one or two people can respond.

Michelle Nutter:

Go ahead, Josh.

Josh Sor :

Definitely it has. As I said, I’ve always been into activism, but joining PSU, it’s taken it to a whole nother level. I feel like I’ve learned so much from different people or going to different events. And it’s really changed my perspective on what I want to do. I so am very interested in my different hobbies.

Josh Sor :

As I said, I make videos. I’m really big into digital arts. But adding the component with activism or in with politics, it definitely puts a whole new perspective on everything I do. For example, not too long ago I went to a rally for the MOVE bombing. Basically there’s a whole situation with [inaudible 01:30:09]. And today is actually the anniversary for that incident. But basically hearing the people talk, hearing the survivors and seeing them, it definitely was impactful for me. And I never realized how much I could learn from just a short amount of time from being a part of PSU, and how much it’s changed my life so far.

Speaker 3:

Thank you, Josh. And thank you everyone for joining us today. We are at time so thank you. Forgive us for going a little bit over. I want to thank all of our speakers and panelists, Mychaell Farmer, Jonathan Gray, Antwan AKA TwanDoe Jordan from the Baltimore Algebra Project. Fred Pinguel, and Josh Sor from Philadelphia Student Union. Precious Lopez and Jayda Williams from Providence Student Union. Mehreen Awan, Zachary Betz, and Dr. Chuck herring from SHOUT. And then last but not least, Dr. Sonja Rosen from the University of Pennsylvania. Thank you so much for joining us. Please make sure you complete the survey, our evaluation survey that’s posted in the chat box, and you can also use your camera to snap on the QR code in front of you. You can check out more information about these organizations by reaching out to our panelists or going to their websites. Thank you again. Until next time.