On September 20th, our New Orleans community met with candidates vying for our city’s top leadership positions. The Youth Connections Festival and Town Hall at McDonogh 35 Senior High School offered the opportunity for community members to listen to and ask questions about the candidates’ policy goals for youth.
Among those who participated: Mayoral candidates Royce Duplessis, Oliver Thomas, Eileen Carter, Renada Collins, Frank Janusa, and Frank Scurlock; and City Council candidates Freddie King and Delisha Boyd.
LCCR was in attendance, as were the voices of the incarcerated youth that we work with. Weeks in advance of the event, LCCR’s Strategic Storyteller, Cierra Chenier, hosted a storytelling circle with the Juvenile Justice Intervention Center’s Youth Council. This was an informal discussion where the council, made up of incarcerated children, were asked to define the challenges young people face today, their experiences growing up in New Orleans, and what they think city leadership should do to better support its youth.
Together, they outlined topics for discussion, including mental health, the school system, and the lack of positive youth programming in the city. Youth Council members asked several hard-hitting questions: Why did I have to go to prison to receive the resources I should have gotten in my community? Why haven’t I met my councilperson before now? Why did it take going to jail to receive mental healthcare?
Additionally, the Youth Council drafted an essay for the event. In it, they shared how their experiences with trauma and racism shaped their early lives. They described struggles with mental health, becoming disconnected from school, and how dehumanized they felt going through the legal system.
“The way they verbalized their experiences and systemic issues in New Orleans, I thought they communicated better than some adults,” said Cierra. One of the teenage boys created a verbal recording of the essay, giving voice to their work. During the event, its audio was played throughout the auditorium and was met with applause from the audience. Further, it helped the candidates fielding questions better understand the emotional impact of what the incarcerated youth had to say.
Inspired by the essay, Cierra has returned to JJIC every week since the event to continue the conversation. “Every time I go, I learn more about their hopes and dreams, about what they want to accomplish and create,” said Cierra. “LCCR has a great opportunity to elevate the voices of the children we serve.”
Each Youth Council discussion has had common threads: they all felt the impact of the negative perceptions surrounding Black youth in this city. And yet, every young person Cierra spoke with is proud to be from New Orleans.
Incarcerated youth, just like any other child, want the opportunity to work collaboratively to create, to see something positive come from their efforts and experiences. Incarcerated children often feel shut out from conversations and efforts to improve their communities; they feel held back by the negative narratives of Black youth perpetuated by the media.
In one line from the essay, the kids shared: “Time and time again, children do wrong, which gets broadcasted to the media and on the news, but when they do good, it’s hardly ever noticed.”
For this to change, we as a community must take every opportunity to amplify youth voices and understand they have valuable, firsthand experience to offer. By continuing our narrative change work through storytelling circles and our efforts in the community, LCCR is fostering new, positive narratives for the youth of New Orleans.
Be a part of this effort! Join us by taking our community pledge at www.ittakesavillagenola.org.
Many thanks to our friends at the New Orleans Children & Youth Planning Board for hosting this Youth Connections Festival and Town Hall event.
