Journal Topic -
"If there is no struggle, there is progress." - Fredrick Douglass

You have been selected to lead youth protest. What are you demands? How will you organize fellow youth, including the reluctant ones? During the DNC how will you demonstrate? What is your objective?

Mireya Robles

If I was in charge of a Youth protest, my group and I would probably be protesting for youth rights and better education. We would demand well-trained teachers, no long term subs, and no teachers with emergency credentials. To recruit these young protestors I would send out a lot of flyers to the local communities and post them on the streets. I would then look at how many people show up and divide them up into smaller groups and have them stick together through out the protesting. This way we won't get too lost if something unexpected happens or if police try to break us up. We would then walk the streets carrying big posters and banners stating our beliefs. I think I would also have a podium sort of thing were these young protestors could speak out on the streets so people passing by could hear them, this would grab the media’s attention. Our objective for the protesting would be to have our ideas and concerns heard. We wouldn’t hope to solve all the problems with the protesting but that would at least inform the adults and officials in our community that young people do care about their rights, education, and their futures.

As the speaker who came yesterday said, "It would only be a small step" to a hopefully future bigger outcome. Hopefully this would also encourage other youths to stand up for themselves and protest for other issues that may be concerning them.

Nuria Santamaría

If I were selected to be the leader of the youth protest, I would do my best to make the DNC and the general public hear our demands. Our youth group would be protesting for money for schools, and not jails. Too much money is being put into the jails and not into the schools. If government officials were wise, they would understand that putting the money in the schools would help produce better educated citizens less likely to lead a life of crime, therefore diminishing the need for too many jails.

Youth understand this issue and see how it affects them. I would convince the reluctant ones by showing them statistics of how much money goes to jails and how much goes to schools. I would let them know that the worst schools are in communities with the most minorities and that jails are mostly composed of minorities.

I would organize a march through the streets of Los Angeles that culminates at the Staples Center. We would march peacefully with banners, posters, etc, so that people would know what we are protesting. I would organize a committee to set up a web page to email all members of the group and to reach out to those who don’t know about the demonstrations. I would also organize a different committee to be responsible for putting up banners and other propaganda around schools and places where youth gather. This would enable us to reach more youth to be involved.

To make our voices louder, we would invite the media to provide news coverage on the issue. We would go to radio stations most popular among youth and ask them to participate. Reaching a lot of people is very important because the more people who participate, the greater chance we have of making a difference. Everyone involved would be a volunteer. We would accept donations only from groups who do not harm youth (i.e. Tobacco industry). All our supplies would also be donations.

The major objective of our march would be to bring this issue to the public’s attention. Many people do not know about the allocation of money in schools and jails. Policy makers need to hear the concern directly from the youth; this will be a wake up call for legislation. New laws need to be put in place to fix this problem.

Anthony Locke

As the leader if a youth protest group I will gather support and organize a union by going to different schools across the nation and together with other youth come up with our demands. As the organizer I would give my input and see how the group as a whole fells about my individual demands. I would fight for my youth involvement. Why is it that whenever politicians are arguing youth issues like education and violence in schools, that there are no actual youth present My second demand would be to raise the pay of teachers. We say education is a priority but because the pay for teachers is so low, many of the well educated, qualified teachers don’t teach or stop teaching. If there was a livable wage, teachers would hardly make it, and yet we say their jobs are priorities. Our demonstration would remain nonviolent. We would stick to marching and picketing.

<-- Back to LABI Students

<-- Back to LA Students