By Vanessa Williams and Erika Landberg

High school juniors at Capital City PCS in Washington, D.C. organized and presented 30 workshops at this year’s annual Youth Justice Summit (formerly the Youth Justice Food Summit). The six sessions of workshops encompassed a range social justice topics including book banning, the impacts of gentrification, queer representation in schools, gun violence, disability and policing, climate justice, and more.

Welcome and Opening Session

The day-long summit, held on a Thursday in April, kicked off with a welcome and brief orientation led by students Ares and JJ in the school’s theater. They introduced the schedule for the day and led a discussion about the interconnectedness of the many workshop topics. After their dialogue wrapped, the audience of 9–12th graders was dismissed in waves to head to the first session of workshops.

Climate Change Effects

Obed, Edwin, and Rosie facilitated a session on the causes and effects of global climate change. They began by asking attendees to write down what they already knew about climate change. They then gave a presentation on climate change, which included listing causes like the use of fossil fuels, rapid industrialization, deforestation, and resource extraction. Participants then played a game, splitting into two teams and competing (with buzzers!) to see who could quickly determine what were — and were not — effects of climate change. Lastly, the presenters asked attendees to reflect on what they’d learned and why they should care about climate change.

Disability Justice: Police Brutality Against People Who Are Disabled

Claudia facilitated an informative and impassioned session on how ableism can drive violence from on-duty police officers. She began the workshop by instructing attendees to turn and talk to their neighbors about their experience with disability and why they decided to participate in this session. Claudia then grounded participants in some statistics about disability, including how 20% of people live with disabilities. Alarmingly, 30%–50% of people who are subject to police force are people with disabilities. The stat is almost identical for people who are killed by police. Claudia found data specifically about people who are deaf or hard of hearing, have a heart condition, are labeled with schizophrenia, or have autism. Much of Claudia’s data came from Mapping Police Violence.

Police Encounters:  Know your Rights

This session facilitated by Kevin, Eddy, and Jehu included opening questions handed out to everyone, an excellent set of informative slides, and participants working in pairs on a booklet of scenarios of encounters with the police.  The two opening questions were:

1.  When it comes to the police and when they stop you, what can and cannot you do?

2. Have you or anyone that you know ever interacted with a police officer?  What happened?

Besides various statistics, the slide show included information on what to do if stopped by the police, the rights you have when stopped, and how this connects to youth justice.  The participants were divided up into pairs to discuss and then act out some of the scenarios in a booklet handed out.  It contained provocative questions such as what to do if:

• You feel your rights have been violated

• You are stopped for questioning; stopped in your car

• You are questioned about your immigration status

• Police or immigration officials come to your home

• You are contacted by the FBI

• You are taken into Immigration for “ICE” custody

The teacher in the session confirmed that the slides and overall agenda were all created by the students themselves!

Trauma and Youth

JJ, one of the students who led the welcome and opening, co-facilitated a workshop with La’Nique on the effects of child abuse and ways to go about healing and treating trauma from it. Participants were in groups and began the workshop by discussing what we know about child abuse, what they think are the long term effects of child abuse, and their initial thoughts on how to treat trauma. One poignant moment was when JJ and La’Nique noted the consequences of unhealed trauma and defined generational trauma. They also delineated the pros and cons of both group and individual therapy, including the financial barriers. To help participants better understand this, they distributed notecards with basic profiles of students who might want to consider individual or group therapy. Participants went up to JJ and La’Nique to receive confirmation of what kind of treatment they could receive based on their insurance and family income.

Education Justice: College Debt

Brady facilitated an engaging workshop on college debt that illuminated and demystified some of the unknowns of financing an undergraduate degree. It started with four corners activity where participants declared whether they “strongly agreed,” agreed,” “disagreed,” “strongly disagreed,” or had no opinion on the following prompts:

• I plan on going to college

• I’m aware of how much college costs. How? Does it scare you?

• I would go out of state for college and take out a loan (banks, orgs, the actual school)

• I’m looking forward to getting an academic scholarship

• I know the benefits of scholarships and how to get them

From there, Brady explained concepts like the different types of college scholarships, in-state and out-of-state tuition, why students tend to drop out of college, and in which states the most college dropouts are concentrated and why. Brady shared a slideshow about scholarships and folks were given handouts with the cost of out-of-state tuition for various higher ed institutions, a GPA, and were asked if they’d go to that school, what type of scholarship they might be eligible for, and whether they would attend their assigned institution and defend why or why not. To conclude the session, participants competed in a Kahoot with the information he shared throughout the workshop (Vanessa finished in 2nd place!)

Housing Justice: We Living

Kelvin, Michelle, Alex, Curtis, and David facilitated a session on housing justice with a focus on the D.C. area. They opened by asking attendees: Do you think rent is affordable in D.C.? What does affordable housing look like to you? Attendees answered that rent is not affordable in D.C. and that affordable housing generally involves being able to pay for housing and still have money and resources left over for food and other necessities.

The presenters then led an activity to be completed among table groups: organizing D.C. wards by lowest to highest cost of rent. Many of the participants knew that Ward 7 and 8 would likely have the lowest rent, and Ward 2 the highest, but the presenters came around to confirm or correct the order formed by each table group. In this segment of the workshop, presenters also gave a thoughtful talk and demonstration on strategies landlords often use to profit and exploit renters and trends in D.C. housing over the last three decades. These strategies and trends included renting policies that had clearly displaced minorities from the “Chocolate City” in recent years.

Closing Session

In the final group session, students reflected on their favorite sessions of the day, what it was like to have a whole day led by students, and what they would do differently to make next year’s summit even better.