Philadelphia students’ take on activism and social justice 

College campuses became hubs for protests and free speech in the 1960s. Since then, there has been a snowball effect in high schools and other educational institutions. Specific events of injustice are also major contributors to student protests.

“So BSU started in the summer of 2020. Right after everything went virtual and George Floyd's lynching, there were students that came together for a series of, I want to say, basically teachings at the end of the year,” said Janelle Moore-Almond, a history teacher and faculty advisor for the Black Student Union at G.W. Carver High School. 

A big issue affinity groups and other student-organized school activism clubs deal with many logistical and funding issues. A large portion of students’ activism is on their own and outside of their respective institutions, however, school-organized activism clubs make up another lump sum of how many students partake in activism. 

“They did cut some of our funding for advisors. So a lot of impact impacted what we were able to do, because, you know, at one point, we had advisors for different committees and lots of students doing lots of things, but, you know, with the limits that the district has on funding, a lot of that went away,” said Moore-Almond.

Students also deal with issues on the protesting front. When pushing for issues, students are often met with dismissals by officials and law enforcement, who are actively shutting down peaceful protests or ignoring pressing issues in their city.

“When it comes to activism, it's like, never done peacefully, in a sense, like, it's never done without a challenge… We had to deal with police going there, and then, I guess when it came to my event where we did the youth talking to, like city officials, there was a bunch of city officials that just did not show up or did not want to show up,” said Adiba.

“We were assigned the task of starting climate hubs, or sunrise hubs, as they call them, essentially clubs at our school. And with that, we would do small initiatives within our school,” said Ayan Ali, an upcoming freshman at Drexel University.

Although there are a lot of young minds who are passionate about issues plaguing their communities, they sometimes feel powerless without the strength in numbers. Students in the Sunrise initiative push for community and try to combat this issue.

“It was kind of hard because everybody's like, ‘Well, I can't defeat climate change.’ But if everybody changes their mindset bands together, then you have like 100 people who initially thought that, but there's power in numbers truly. So getting that was kind of like the block in the road,” said Ali.

Philadelphia students, like students across the nation, prioritize advocating for the things they are passionate about, both inside and outside the school environment. These students give back to their communities in more ways than one and are often advocating for the world at large.

“They [students] are representatives on Student Council, for the districts. They are, you know, creating art shows for other student artists, they are running their own businesses… We have a lot of people who are active outside of that. And what you find is that students who are active in one area tend to be active in multiple areas,” said Moore-Almond.