On May 18, NextGen members and supporters gathered to discuss safety and violence in their communities. The meeting had an air of poignancy and urgency. One of NextGen’s founding youth members from South Carolina, Na’Zae Baltimore was killed less than a month prior, in an act of senseless gun violence.

After a tribute to Na’Zae, students and adults wrote and shared their responses to the following prompts:

• Where or when do you feel most safe and unsafe in your neighborhood, school, community?
• Write about a time when you felt safe or unsafe in your neighborhood, school, community.
• Do you feel as though measures are being taken to prevent or help lessen gun violence within your community?

After a moving sharing session, youth moderators shifted the conversation to what actions we could take. Youth comments passionately underscored the urgent problems that violence and fear have been normalized and within that overarching theme…

• that there tends to be a lot of talk and not a lot of action among adults;
• that many have become desensitized to violence;
• that we have a lack of safe community spaces for young people to hang out with one another;
• that the issues are intersectional with drugs, food insecurity, poverty, housing, and sometimes toxic law enforcement practices;
• and that guns are everywhere in U.S.— in contrast to other countries where many of our youth have lived.

NextGen Youth began to identify action items, and will continue to refine these themes in our final meeting of the year in June.

Focus for action:

• Influence the influencers (especially music industry).
• Focus on 5th grade age.
• Invest in community spaces.
• Interrupt access to drugs.
• Make space / support individual relationships with young people and adults in schooling–identify the trusted adults.
• Get more help with negotiating hard feelings–support more counselors. 
• Support programs that buy back guns to get them off the streets.
• Join national organizations like Students Demand Action which work to get out the vote, support red flag laws, etc.

NextGen Youth and Site Mentors invite your participation in these critical conversations. Contact us if you have ideas or resources to help our young people make their communities and schools the safe places our young people deserve.