How Worcester Teens are Dealing with Racism

Friday, April 13, 2012

Ashley Klann, GoLocalWorcester Contributor

Members of Youth Activism and Empowerment.

The Worcester organization Youth Empowerment and Activism (YEA) is helping local children better understand and react to racism. The group was present at the rally at City Hall on April 3rd on racial profiling and administrative accountability, and has recently united around the issue of David Russo’s arrest.

“We’re a youth and adult collective aimed at eliminating racism in the community. We’re a tight knit group. Some of us were involved at the rally, specifically around the David Russo incident and following concerns that Isabel Gonzalez was raising,” said Marianna Islam, who has been involved with YEA for years. “We were really disheartened. Even back then when we heard about it.” Islam said that the group was asked to come to the rally, something that she believes benefited the youth in their program.

“We talk about a lot of things in our groups and seek to build skills like public speaking. We stress the importance of being accountable and following through with things, and we were teaching it from the rally.” Islam said. “If we’re asking for (accountability) we need to be delivering it ourselves. We help youths develop skills in that area.

While Islam was pleased at the turnout and organization of the rally and believes it will have some preventative measure, she knows that the remedy will only come through a larger event.

“I think when you are clear with cultural accountability it does have a preventable force,” she said. “It’s not a one time deal though. It has to be about a culture change, not solely event oriented.”

Talking About Real Issues

YEA holds workshops and dialogues with their members to educate them on the best ways to deal with racism. Islam feels that by providing this service to local youths, YEA is preventing another generation from feeling lost.

“What we try to do is open eyes and expand minds. For a lot of us this was a struggle growing up in Worcester,” she said. “We represent a lot of different areas. We’re a diverse group of immigrants and first-generation citizens, and it’s really important for us as we reflect on our adolescence that either someone was there to guide us through racism we experienced or we struggled to figure it out. We want to be the force in the community to provide that for youth.”

Besides talking about these issues, Islam says that YEA seeks to create unity and a sense of community through these topics.

“We show young people that there’s a way of organizing. Racism isn’t just something you talk about – you organize around it,” she said. “We want to foster awareness of racism in the community and promote dialogue and ways of talking about racism.”

Where it Began

YEA grew out of a formerly active organization, the Worcester Social Justice Roundtable in 2009.

“They tried to galvanize the community around several justice issues. I then started the youth empowerment team as a part of it, engaging people in the conversation,” Islam said. We quickly grew from there into a youth adult collective. We didn’t want to be a program of a specific organization.. We then decided to become a non-profit.”

Projects and Workshops

One recent project that YEA is putting together is a video, collecting responses about education in Worcester’s Main South neighborhood.

“We’re working on identifying folks who would talk about their education experience in Main South Worcester – about some of the challenges and opportunities for them. We used that as a tool to consult conversations about why educators can use story telling as an important tool in addressing the education needs of students. We’re looking to do more workshops,” Islam said. The group will hold a public screening of the video on May 24th and host neighborhood dialogues. The location is to be determined.

In 2010, the group also held a discussion with the superintendent and a mayoral candidate forum held by the youth.

“Young people put a lot of work into that and other workshops,” Islam said. “We came back from a conference two weekends ago in New York – the Collective of Radical Educators. The group did a presentation there, and we’re looking to do additional conferences in the area.”

In the Future

While the group has been primarily working through education and workshops, Islam said that they are developing a more determined focus on action.

“There is a public demand for this type of work,” Islam said. “We have retuning members, but a lot graduated and went to college last year, which is great. This year it’s a part of the developmental process.”

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