Youths from across Massachusetts held colorful signs on the stairs of the State House Thursday morning and later took to Zoom to demand legislators act to create more jobs for them, improve juvenile justice, stabilize housing costs, and support comprehensive sex education in public schools.
“We’re all here today to make sure our legislators know that they need to prioritize these issues for the youth,” said Princess Willie, a sophomore at North High School in Worcester and a youth organizer with the I Have A Future coalition, who spoke during the afternoon Zoom rally. “We are the future, and we will fight to better the future.”
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With the coronavirus vaccine rollout expanding and legislators thinking of what policies they will push when the pandemic is under control, rally organizers said they did not want to return to a status quo riddled with inequities and injustice. On Thursday morning, they took to the State House steps, urging politicians to fund youth jobs and education, and to allocate less money to police in schools.
Wearing masks, they stood under cold, gray skies, holding handmade signs that read “Youth Power” and “Jobs + Education, Not Mass Incarceration,” among other rally signs.
In the afternoon, more than 100 teenagers and young adults took part in the virtual rally to expand on their ideas to change policy.
“We asked our legislators to address the issue of housing inequality, and the lack of rent control throughout the state of Massachusetts to ensure that rent is affordable to low-income families,” said Nisrine Feham, 14, of Boston, who spoke about homelessness, gentrification, and housing instability. “During this pandemic crisis, financial stability has become even harder to achieve.”
Representative Liz Miranda, a Boston Democrat and herself an alumna of youth jobs and empowerment programs, joined the Zoom rally and encouraged the group to keep asking legislators from across the state for change, particularly when they take up the next budget in April.
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“We have a wealthy state. We should be providing opportunity to every young person, not only an after school job or a summer job, but access to college and vocational training, housing, and immigration support,” Miranda said. “When we think about economic opportunity, young people need to know that they could be me one day and they can be bigger than me one day.”
She also told the teenagers to remember their own power.
“Sometimes people think that young people, because they can’t vote, don’t have a lot of power,” Miranda said. “But that’s not true because there hasn’t been one movement in history not led by you, not led by young people, and particularly young people of color.”
Gal Tziperman Lotan is a former Globe staff member.