CLEVELAND — In a room full of changemakers, some young men and women want to see change is what affects them the most.
“There’s a lot going on, a lot of drama, and the first thing a lot of people do is pick up a gun and kill someone,” said Zhariya Phillips.
High school students are Civic 2.0 students at Garrett Morgan Leadership Academy in Cleveland. This after-school course addresses voting rights, U.S. law, and the important role students play in shaping the communities around them.
These days, the conversation centers around gun violence in our streets.
“I don’t want to take the bus, I don’t want to go home,” Phillips said. “I don’t want to leave the house and I don’t want to go anywhere with my friends. I get very paranoid when my friends say I’m walking alone.”
Gun violence is an epidemic plaguing their age group, and it’s easy to check it out with shooting after shooting, but these students are checked in.
“One of my close friends died from gun violence. I take it so seriously that it made me want to fight even more,” said Arderyk McCullough.
McCullough is talking about his classmate, 16-year-old Jayden Baez.
“Honestly, it was really painful.
Just four days earlier, an 18-year-old John Adams High School student was shot dead just a stone’s throw from the schoolyard while he was waiting for a bus.
Related: Student shot dead at bus stop near John Adams High School in Cleveland
“It irritates me. It makes me wonder what anyone could do to someone so bad, especially in front of school, that you feel the need to go and kill them,” Phillips said.
Civics 2.0 answers all those questions and more. Students hear from survivors of gun violence, parents who have lost a child to gun violence, and some of the city’s organizations advocating for the fight to keep young people safe in Cleveland.
According to the instructor, the course is a grant-funded CMSD after-school program with more than 370 students enrolled in 22 high schools and 11 middle schools.
“Let’s get the students together and ask them how they can change things, how they can put the guns down on these kids, how they can stop the violence when it comes to living here, living there,” said Mercedes. Said Bell.
The program encourages students to participate as citizens in their communities, find their own voices and learn how to use them.
And so far, the students seem to be passing on all that knowledge as the change they want to see in their communities.
“A lot of people here don’t know what I have, the knowledge I have, and what I can offer to other communities and what I feel. Don’t try to learn what you can. That’s very important,” said Tatiana Williams.
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