Addy speech: Black people can’t go for a run, walk around our own neighborhoods, go for a drive, sleep peacefully in our own homes, own a toy gun, a hair brush or a phone without the fear of being shot.

Addy: Hi, my name is Addy, and I'm 14 years old. Well, I was really hurting after George Floyd's death. Every time a black person dies and I have to hear about it, it pains me.

Black Lives Matter means to me is that I shouldn't be afraid when I walk down the street. I shouldn't be afraid to wear a hood. / I shouldn't feel scared to go out with my friends and have fun. I shouldn't feel like if they do something wrong, I'm the only one who's going to get in trouble. And it really hurts, so I said I wanted to do something now.

Well my first step was I practically begged my dad to let me go to every protest we could find. And at first, he was a little scared. He said, "I'm afraid / because some of the protests are getting violent, and I don't want you to get hurt." So, instead, we decided to go to our curb, and we held up signs. And the next day we had 60 people. The next day we had 200. Our entire community had come out to support us and show that they believe in the movement as much as we do.

The most impactful sign that I held I think was one that read, "Will I be the next George Floyd?" A lot of white people came up to me and said, "That's really dark. Why would you say that? You're only 14 years old." And that's the point. I'm only 14 years old, and I have to worry about things like that.

So, I was standing there with everyone on the street, and my friends come up to me, and they say , "You should give a speech." And it wasn't really the time or the place because we were on the side of a highway. So I go to my dad, and I think, "Well, I can't give a speech here, but we could hold a rally. We have the numbers." He says, "Okay." So, from there on we go and plan the rally.

Yeah. The most important person for helping me in this was definitely my dad. / He was the person who listened to all of my ideas and my crazy ramblings. He helped me edit my speech. He was just always there by my side no matter what just telling me I was going to be okay. This was going to be okay. This is not going to be the end of the world, and I was going to get through this.

I was really nervous though. I did not want to mess up. I did not want to get booed. But I stood up there, and I took a deep breath, I was so relieved to get these words off my chest and through the microphone and into the crowd.

Addy speech: We will make changes happen because I don’t want another 6 year old to feel the wait of the world on their shoulders. Because this is not a political issue to work from an angle. This is a matter of life and death.

Addy: I think that the biggest obstacle I faced was when I didn't have the support of the people I cared about the most. In school, I used to say a lot of things about the movement. I was very vocal because my school is predominately white. Most of the kids, most of my friends are white.

Addy speech: And if you’re white the most important thing you can do right now is listen. Change does not stop here. Everything single think you do matters. Every dollar you donate to a black charity matters. Every time you attend a protest and every single petition you sign matters. I didn’t think that I, as a 14 old girl could do anything to help and yet here you all are.

Addy: Yeah. I used to be very afraid of speaking my mind and speaking up, but now I've spoken in front of around 1,000 people. And I told them how I feel and I got mostly a positive reaction, so I'm not going to shut up now.

It's just important to remember that you do have power. Your voice has power. People care. People will care about what you're saying. Just make sure that you take a chance, take a risk and you try to do it.

Addy speech: Because no lives matter until black lives matter. And America won’t be the land of the free until black Americans are granted the most basic right: the right to live.

Alondra: I hope y’all haven’t forgotten that the real Boston is still here and I don't know they think a little gentrification, raising rent prices and new buildings are going to come down and push us out but our voices are here and our bodies are too. I hope in my heart that getting rid of us is not what you're trying to do cuz if you get rid of us Boston comes with us too.

My name is Alondra Bobadilla, and I am a student at Fenway High School Senior. I started writing when I was around 12 I'd say, poetry more specifically

As a kid, and still now, I have a lot going on in my head at once. And it was very hard at the time as a kid to get everything out that I wanted to say.

My thought process gave me anxiety. Writing for me became my way of release. It became my way to process my thinking.

And then as I got older, and as I started with my civics classes and stuff like that, learning more about political climates, social climates. Different aspects of identity, writing about the different gaps between ethnic and racial groups in this country, and where that clash comes in. The voice of Latin Americans specifically in conversations of race.

I definitely considered myself at that time, and still now in many ways, a voice for the voiceless.

I am proud to be Latina, proud to have this language and these roots in my blood. And your opinion on my pride is really not my problem. Its ok for you to talk about my roots like you know the story better than I do, But when I do it becomes a problem. Let us tell our own stories because you stay telling it wrong.

I think sometimes people see poetry... The way I saw poetry in the classroom. Shakespeare. It was less about politics and civic engagement and social movements, and more about pretty words and relationships and ballets and sonnets and et cetera. Which is completely untrue, there’s multiple people throughout history and art in general that was used to make statements.

The process to get the courage to apply for the Boston Youth Poet Laureate position was a weird one. I was going through a lot. I was trying to just focus on my academics. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I know I wanted to do something, get involved in something. I just wasn't sure what it was.

Until finally my friend was like, "I have something I need to send you. You'd better do it." She was like threatening me basically, and sent it to my email and was just like, "You need to apply to this thing." It was intimidating. I was very intimidated.

One of the poems they were asking for was a poem about the city of Boston. And when I read that, I was like do they want me to write about how I like the city and my roots to the city or do they want me to write about the things that are really happening?

The issues that were bothering me about Boston, beginning with Gentrification….My family's technically middle class. Technically middle class. But with debt, whether it's student loans, whether it's other things, and then the fact that Boston is just... incredibly unaffordable. Not just necessarily for people in housing, but just regular lower middle class families who are struggling ... it often feels like Boston and Massachusetts doesn't give you adamant opportunity to really raise out of some of these situations. It almost feels like more tac on top of more debt.

And it was a topic that... It was something more that I saw and then I was able to understand when I looked it up, researched, et cetera, and then I started writing.

Big buildings block my view. Condos I will never afford are like a looming threat. I see faces I’ve never seen, walking down dangerous streets, with bright smiles like they don’t like beside poor mothers and fathers struggling to make ends meet. Yet right beside their scared aside, lives a young couple or a college student that doesn’t know this city like they do. Living in a luxury apartment they could only dream to move into with the five children they could barely feed. And the children’s lips only know one word…hungry.

And that sort of the entirety of the process until the day I got the title.

People were very pleased. They were very pleased with the honesty, and a lot of them also felt like thank you for talking about the things that we've been trying to say in other settings, and thank you for saying it with your words. I definitely do also believe that were people who sort of considered maybe some of the roles that they play in that topic in itself and in the poem itself.

There were other people who were like... And this has happened to me before with other work. "Maybe you could've said this differently?" And I'm like no. You're not going to censor me.

The advice that I give to young poets both in my workshops and just in general is to be authentic . I think that you can be authentic and talk about how you feel and still say it in a respectful manner, but I don't think that you should censor yourself for anyone.

And I think it's also really important that when you're using your art, that you also explain it. And you use research and you show that you can mix politics and civic engagement with art, with your explanations of your art.

Art moves people. And the same way your art first moved you when you first wrote it, you when you first drew it, the first time you danced it out, it moves the people that end up viewing it.

Moctesuma: My name is Moctesuma Espara and I was one of the student leaders, when I was 18 years old, of the Student Walkouts of East Los Angeles in 1968.

I was born and raised in Boyle Heights, which is a neighborhood near downtown Los Angeles. I went to Lincoln High School. It was a time, the mid 60s when the free speech movement was flourishing, when protest against the Vietnam War was flourishing, when the civil rights struggle of African Americans was getting a lot of attention.

A group of young Chicano Students,  we were 10th graders, 11th graders, formed an organization called Young Citizens for Community Action. And we would get together on weekends and we would talk about what was wrong, what was wrong in our schools, what was wrong in our lives and our community?

Why was it that our teachers were not encouraging us to go to college? We had plenty of shop classes at Lincoln but almost no honors classes. We were being trained to be laborers. The schools were like prisons. We couldn't use the restrooms. We were punished. We were spanked for speaking Spanish. And all of the students were unhappy about that.

We talked about what could we do to make difference? "All right, we need to take a lesson from what's going on in the rest of the world."

The plan was, we walk out.

It took us six months to organize the walkouts. So we, together, planned how to do it so that all the students from all five high schools would walk out together.

We published a newspaper called Chicano Student News and another newspaper called La Raza. And we distributed them all over East Los Angeles but mostly we talked to the kids. And the comparisons we showed them of how other kids got treated, what other schools looked like in affluent parts of Los Angeles, and how that  was a contradiction to the Bill of Rights, that there's equal treatment under the law. And they would go talk to their friends. This was our way to spread the word...

And so it was time. And I walked right onto the campus and I walked inside the school building, and it was time. And I started yelling, "Walkout, walkout." And we were worried because we didn't know if the students were going to follow because they didn't get up and walk out right away.

It seemed like an eternity, 30 second went by, 40 seconds went by and then they started to get up. And then they started to stream, and then it was a river of students storming out of the doors, out to the front lawns and onto the sidewalk and picking up the signs that we had prepared for them and marching up and down the street, yelling, "Brown is beautiful. Education, fairness, and freedom for all.”

20,000 high school students walked out and shut down the LA USD, Los Angeles Unified School District for almost two weeks. Massive marches and presentations of our demands were made.

We knew that what we were doing could be dangerous. And in fact, the second day of the walkouts, instead of honoring our right to protest, instead of honoring the bill of Rights, freedom of speech, freedom to assemble, the police came and beat us up and arrested kids and sent kids to the hospital.

We went to our parents and we went to the clergy and we asked them to march with us when we organized the next day of strikes. And then the police stopped and we got the attention of the school district. And then they agreed to go to our campus, our community, and listen to our grievances, and the world changed.

There is now a professional class of doctors and lawyers, entrepreneurs, engineers, nurses, professors, who were able to achieve that in their lives because of what students did in March of 1968, which was to risk their lives to stand up for their rights. The walkouts let us know that we had power, that the Civil Rights, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution was ours as well, that the promise of the United States was a promise to everybody.

And it changed me. It made me a lifelong activist.

Protest is how the Unites States was born. We were all taught that the Boston Tea Party was a protest. To be American is to stand up for your rights.

Christian: So, my name is Christian Dykson. I'm from Fort Collins, Colorado and was the founder in high school of the Custodian Service initiative at Fort Collins High School.  So I was homeschooled for most of my life, for about 14 years of my life. It was an interesting time. I think it was a very formative season in my life. And Fort Collins High School, I just remember when I got there, I remember the idea of being surrounded by 2000 people all at once, and the vibrancy that that brings. I think it was challenging and encouraging for me. I love people. I think I've been put on this earth to bring people together and to build bridges.

So, I noticed a couple things in our school. There was this mindset, when people would walk by trash, where they'd look at it, and then they'd keep walking. And they'd say something in their head, along the lines of, somebody else will take care of that. Somebody's paid to do that.

And so that was one major issue. This turnover that we were seeing with our custodial staff was profound. Every month, they'd lose a custodian, and they'd have to bring on another. Train the custodian, I wanted to know what was going on, because I figured there was something deeper to that phenomenon.

And what I identified that as, was a divide between the students, the staff, and the custodians in our school. This general culture of, the outcast. That we don't really engage with them, we don't really talk to them, we don't really hear their story. They're just sort of here to clean the building. They're just a custodian.

And I wanted to challenge my school and say, "Let's discover that and not fit them into the box of, 'Oh, they're just here to clean, right.'" They're the backbone of the school. I think when we get to school in the mornings, there was this mindset of not really realizing that when you get to your science class in the morning, the room is spotless, and it's prepared, and it's ready for learning to take place. There were steps that went into that happening. There were hours and hours of time invested from custodial workers, who, most of them worked until midnight or 1:00 AM.

I sat down with the head custodian the very next day, the basic principle there, the first person that you should go to is the person who you want to serve, and asking that question, "How can I serve you? How can I support you? How can I share ensure that this initiative doesn't duplicate existing efforts or make your job even more difficult, and we mapped out all of the issues that her team was facing 

Immediately, I brought it to my team, to my Key Club. And then we built the document where we built a lot of language around the policy of our actions impact people. If you value the relationship with your custodians, "Get to know your custodians," that's where I dived in deep. I mean, I would interview every single custodian. I'd take a picture of them and I'd say, "What are the three things that you want to communicate to the student body that they can do to help?”

And then, I paused and I said, "What better message than thank you?" That's all that's needed. That's all that's needed is to say, "We see you and we appreciate you, and we stand with you." And we all signed that banner that said, "We are kicking off this initiative to take on some of these challenges that you're experiencing."

And so, we got together 200 people. We got our acapella group. We've got this giant banner that said, "We appreciate you." We got matching t-shirts and we were rolling this cake on a cart down the main hallway of our school, and we brought in the custodial staff to surprise them. 

And we turned the corner and we made eye contact with the custodial staff, and I do remember that look in their eyes, where there was this of uncertainty of what's about to happen as they see these 200 teenagers coming down the hallway and we stopped.  And I remember, I took a deep breath in that moment.   

Christian (recording from event at Fort Collins High School): 
We are Custodial Service Initiative-CSI. And we’re here to support you guys and show you how loved you truly are. We’re so grateful for everything you’ve done day in and day out to support us as a school. 

Christian: In hindsight, I think every person walked away with a newfound respect for our custodians and a recognition for our collective power to celebrate them, to celebrate our custodial workers. And it probably helped that there was a giant board right above their heads that had all of their names and their faces.

I remember speaking with the district custodian. And she said, she'd never seen anything like it. I mean, in 30 years that she's worked in the district, she'd never seen students publicly thank custodians, let alone kick-off an initiative, and have a march that specifically designed to center their stories and put the spotlight on the custodians for all of the contributions that they've given.  

There's an opportunity here, others will see the impact and will be inspired and will want to join, knowing that they can have a role in shaping the vision. 

And so I would say, take that small step, like picking up trash. That is such a small and yet powerful way to impact your community, right. You may not think this has an impact. But I assure you, it does. It does where you put your trays, where you put your trash, if you straighten your desks at the end of the eighth period, if you ride on the table or stick gum under the seat, every decision you make has an impact on other people.

CASH DANIELS: My name is Cash Daniels and I'm 14 years old, from Chattanooga, Tennessee. And some things I like to do: I'm an active swimmer, I love to swim, and I'm a certified scuba diver. And ever since I was six years old I've been on this path of conservation. And so far, I've removed 30,000 pounds of trash out of the river, recycled two tons of aluminum cans, and also recycled 2,000 miles of fishing line.

CASH: I've always been interested in animals, fish, ever since I can remember. So, the moment I got interested in conservation, I learned that the Tennessee River is the most polluted with microplastics in the entire world. So that's a big problem. What I did next was do research. So, that's when I knew I could help.

CASH: I kept finding fishing line. Well, fishing line is a really big problem because it can wrap around animals and choke them. And so, I decided to fix that by making monofilament recycling bins. They're made out of PVC.

CASH: And at the top there's an elbow piece so it can't rain and fill up with water and it's harder for snakes to get in. The fishermen are putting the fishing line in these. The ones closer to home I do remove all the fishing line from them myself.

CASH: So, this is a one gallon jar of fishing line and this is just a little bit of the fishing line I've collected out of the Tennessee River.  The amount of fishing line I've collected, I'd say about 2,000 miles of fishing line. And so far, I put a hundred and eight of these out now and I recently just put fifty up in Michigan and I have been in nine state parks and a bunch of public boat ramps. How I get people to check on them is just state park the rangers they are amazing and they tell everyone there to put the fishing line in there.

CASH: We’re here at Jack’s Bait & Tackle and you know you’re making a difference when you got to bring a bucket instead of a jar.

CASH: I'm one of the co-founders of the Cleanup Kids.  It's an organization I founded with my best friend Ella who lives in Canada to teach kids all around the world about the importance of keeping our environment clean.

CASH: A couple of days ago I was cleaning up trash, just me. And let me show you what you can do when it’s more than one person.

CASH: I started doing river cleanups. I do not do all this alone. Well, some of the people I’ve recruited are my youth group, my trail life group I've done several cleanups with my church. It's actually fun cleaning up trash when you get your friends out there. I mainly work with Keep Tennessee River Beautiful, and I go out with them on their boats. We've cleaned up tons of trash with them, thousands of pounds.

CASH: If somebody says you can't do what your dream is, then go out and prove them wrong. What keeps me going and motivated is just the fact that I'm inspiring other people, because we have to take care of our planet. 

CASH: So, we’re out here on the Tennessee river. You don’t have to plan a clean-up that’s super big and elaborate, as long as you leave it better than you found it.

CASH: I have found my purpose in life. I know why I'm here on earth. I know that I'm here to protect the environment. And it's just an amazing feeling that I know that I'm making a difference.