The last time high school student Jamesha Corker felt safe in her community was when she was 8 years old.
“Although I was living in the projects, it was like, very family-oriented, so if I had a birthday party, I would invite all my friends from the neighborhood, and we see each other as brothers and sisters – we were real close,” Corker said. “None of us had to really worry about somebody coming by shooting or a fight or anything.”
The voices of Miami’s inner-city youth swelled during a youth-led town hall held last week to shed light on the violence youth face.
Four students, Jamesha Corker, Jeremiah Johnson, Jonathan Janvier, and Aliyah Blackmon sat on a panel to share their view on violence through a guided discussion at Beyond the March: A Youth-Led Town Hall on Violence.
The common thread: The students see too much death, mostly as a result of gun violence.
Jeremiah Johnson, a 16-year-old sophomore at Miami Norland Senior High School, said when he thinks about violence, gun violence is the first that comes to mind.
“I know it’s all types of violence, but I’m known to gun violence because I know so many people that have actually gotten killed by a gun personally and friendship, family members and other people that I know,” he said May 9 at the Little Haiti Cultural Center. “I just see it on the news where somebody is dead.”
Jeremiah traveled to Washington, D.C. with more than 30 inner-city high school students to attend the March For Our Lives rally. During the trip, he said he had the opportunity to hone his speaking skills and gained a pathway to a platform to speak against gun violence.
Jonathan Janvier, a member of Power U Center for Social Change, said gun violence is different for students in the Black community.
“I think lately, it’s been focused on gun violence inside the schools, and that’s not really what I think about it in my community overall because, in a Black community, we don’t experience gun violence inside the schools. It’s outside the school when we’re walking home, and we’re going to the store,” he said.
Janvier is originally from Haiti. He grew up in a neighborhood where violence was prevalent and thought moving to the United States would be unlike his experience in Haiti.
“When I first came to the United States, things seemed to be better because I didn’t watch the news, so it was like, oh, there’s no shootings, none of that,” he said. “Then, when I got in middle school, my whole perspective changed because some of my friends suddenly started dying out of nowhere. So, that’s when I realized, wow, this is not as safe of a place that I thought it was.”
Aliyah Blackmon, a student at Miami Norland Senior, said getting older can be rough.
“You want to do more stuff, you can’t really do nothing because of gun violence or the violence in our streets,” she said. “You don’t want to go to the park because the park not safe anymore.”
Kimari Thompson, a senior at Miami Lakes Educational Center, was friends with the Forshee sisters, victims of a gun violence incident that gained major attention in 2015.
Tequila Forshee, a 12-year-old girl, was shot in the head in a drive-by shooting while getting her hair braided by her older sister, Alize Forshee. Alize was grazed by a bullet.
Thompson said ever since she lost her friends, her perspective on life has changed.
“I’ve never truly gotten over it,” she said. “I have this really bad phobia of windows now, and it just makes me realize how precious life is, and how it easily can be taken for granted, and you just have to appreciate it.”
Mei-Ling Ho-Shing, a junior who attends Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School – the site of a Feb. 14 mass shooting that left 17 students and adults dead – said talking about gun violence nationally is not enough.
“Gun violence has always been a thing, but now my own peers who always said that all lives matter are now out there in the forefront talking on behalf of gun violence,” Mei-Ling said. “You know, it’s ironic and it’s a national slap to the face not only for everyone that’s here but also for the Black 11 percent and 40 percent of minorities at Stoneman Douglas who’ve been trying to talk about Black lives matter, but it was a controversial topic.”
Mei-Ling said there’s more to gun violence than mass shootings. Still, the massacre at Stoneman Douglas led to Florida Gov. Rick Scott, in March, signing the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Public Safety Act, which raised the legal age to purchase a gun to 21, allows for a three-day waiting period to receive a purchased firearm, and puts guns on campus to be accessed by school staff who are not full-time teachers.
“There’s other things to it, and we’re talking so much about nationally, but when we talk about nationally, we forget about the little people and then they want to pass these laws, but these laws aren’t for us and people that look like us,” she said.
More town halls are being planned. They will give voices to law enforcement, local officials, parents and community organizations. Miami-Dade County Public School board members were not present at the town hall.
The majority of the students who helped to organize the event are within school board member Dorothy Bendross-Mindingall’s district. Bendross-Mindingall said in an email that she was informed about the town hall but had multiple events to attend that day.
“I have been quite visible at numerous town halls, forums, marches and other events as it pertains to our children,” she said. “I will absolutely continue to attend and participate in any student-led events in the future. This has been my mission and passion my entire adult life.”
Students felt that the aim of the town hall was a success. Jeremiah said the outcome was great.
“We got to express with the questions being asked, and we had others to express themselves,” he said. “The turnout went well. We just need to invite others out to these events and progress will continue to grow.”