Drawing on energy that built up since a national march in Washington, D.C., Miami teenagers on Tuesday evening presented a list of solutions for gun violence and challenged elected officials and community members to join them in bringing about change.
“Tonight is a night that we are going to affect change,” said Miami Times reporter Janiah Adams, a co-host of the event.
The session May 8 at the Little Haiti Cultural Center, titled Beyond the March: a Youth-led Town Hall on Violence, brought together students who have continued small group deliberations on the subject.
Among their demands: safe spaces in and out of school, funding for innovative youth programs, free mental health services and respect for Black youth after a violent event because a “moment of silence is not enough.”
The cause brought together students from throughout Miami-Dade County. Most of them traveled to Washington, D.C. to participate in the national March For Our Lives.
Other students came because they’re interested in social justice and change. Valencia Gunder, a local activist who has worked with the students, said the young people have done their homework, and now it’s time for the adults to do their part.
“This is to discuss solutions we came up with and open up the conversation with community members,” Gunder said. “We want to discuss what the solutions look like and what can be implemented. We’re asking the community at large to commit to solutions.”
Gunder said the students polled 750 of their peers about the effects of gun violence since returning to Miami. More than 70 percent said they had been affected by gun violence.
Another 87 percent said police officers at school don’t make them safer; 61 percent said metal detectors don’t make them feel safe. The students are looking to elected officials to implement solutions.
“I want to have a real conversation and find real solutions about violence. I want there to be a call to action,” said Jonathan Janvier, 16, a junior at Miami Edison Senior High School.
He is a youth leader at Power U Center for Social Change.
“I’m hopeful that our community is going to be safe. We don’t have the tools to end violence. Before we can end violence, have to build power. I don’t believe we have done that yet,” Jonathan said.
Students slowly streamed into the Little Haiti Cultural Center Tuesday. They huddled in small groups and giggled about the day’s activities. Others were immersed in their phones as they waited for the event to start.
There were no elected officials in the audience of about 100. Several rank and file officers from the Miami-Dade Police and Miami Police attended. Miami-Dade Assistant Police Director Stephanie Daniels took the stage after a student-led panel discussion.
“We need youth at the table. We have no clue,” she said. “We need them involved to tell us what solutions are out there.”
The May 8 town hall is the third large-scale discussion by the teenagers who want violence to end in their community.
The students started formal discussions on March 15, when a group of Black inner-city teenagers and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School alumni came together at Liberty Square Community Center in Liberty City for a two-hour rap session and town hall about gun violence and how deadly weapons have shattered their sense of safety.
The two groups normally live in different worlds. But they landed on common ground after a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that left 17 students and faculty members dead.
A lone gunman, a former Marjory Stoneman Douglas student named Nikolas Cruz, 19, is in jail on murder charges in that incident. That shooting triggered an anti-gun violence campaign that went viral via social media and led to the March For Our Lives rally held March 24 in Washington, D.C.
At the Liberty Square meeting, several of the youth had complained they had raised similar concerns as those voiced by the Stoneman Douglas students, yet could not garner the same type of attention.
ICARE, Inner City Alumni for Responsible Education, arranged a five-day trip to Washington, D.C. trip because the members didn’t see support for students who live with gun violence daily to go to the march.
After returning home, 36 of Miami’s inner-city students hoped to use the national platform to share their stories about gun violence in their neighborhoods. However, many of them felt they did not get what they came for.
Now Gunder is working with Black students at Majory Stoneman Douglas High to have a similar town hall in Broward County.
“The whole goal was to one, stand in solidarity with Stoneman Douglas, but also expand the narrative,” said Gunder. “The simple fact that we have gun violence in our communities almost every day, and when it finally hit the national platform, our communities are not discussed, is problematic.”