Youth leading local movement to racial justice

Two thousand in Phoenixville, 3,000 in Pottstown, 5,000 combined in West Chester and Coatesville, and hundreds more in protests throughout Berks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery counties.

The outpouring of activism demanding racial justice in our towns has continued unabated for the nearly three weeks since George Floyd died in Minneapolis with a police officer’s knee on his neck. The video that captured Floyd’s final eight minutes and 46 seconds of pleading and gasping for breath has sparked protests and cries for reform throughout the world, as well as murder charges against former police officer Derek Chauvin.

In this region, those protests have a common thread: They have been organized and led by youth, some in their teens and not yet out of high school.

In Pottstown, last Sunday’s massive march was organized by four young people — Troy Rivera, Nate Smith, Xiomara Cosme and Shakira Skipper — with help from Pottstown NAACP and YWCA Tri-County Area.

A week earlier in Phoenixville, a group of Phoenixville Area High School students — Glidera Garner, Nailah Green, Nakialere Beasley, McKenzie Hodges and Isaiah Pelzer — had a flyer, a social media presence and an idea and succeeded in gathering a crowd of more than 1,000, marching that crowd peacefully six blocks up Main Street to Reeves Park where they held a rally.

In Kutztown in Berks County, 16-year-old Marlon Creech, 16, a junior at Kutztown High School, was among the speakers alongside public officials and Kutztown University educators at a march last weekend. “I am here to just say that I think everyone is equal, everyone, no matter your skin color,” he said. “We are all equal.”

Among the speakers at the Pottstown event was Emanuel Wilkerson, a student at Temple University who has become well-known in the borough for his involvement and leadership in community events. Elected to the Pottstown School Board while in high school, Wilkerson was the youngest person ever elected to public office in Pennsylvania.

“Look around you and see the young people standing amongst you today,” Wilkerson said to the crowd last Sunday. “That’s what we need, we need to empower young people.”

Wilkerson said we must depend on today, not yesterday.

“Depending on your today is what will safeguard tomorrow,” he said.

Pottstown High School teacher Na’imah Rhodes challenged the crowd: “When we leave here, everybody out there — every officer, every congresswoman, every community member — ask yourself this question, what’s next?”

“What’s next” may be the next generation.

The message running throughout the protests, speeches and signs of the past two weeks is that change must come. The passion driving that call for change is coming from youth trying to find their way in a culture that seems to be increasingly fraught with prejudice and a lack of fairness.

In town after town, we witness the need to acknowledge the failures of adults to create a society where everyone is treated equally. But without dwelling on that message — without hurting or tearing down in violence the institutions that have wronged them — the youthful leaders look to this time as a turning point toward a better future for themselves and all of us.

Our security and our sense of normalcy have been uprooted by a pandemic going viral — literally — across the globe. And in the middle of this seismic upheaval to health, education and economy, we are forced in another direction to examine our core beliefs about being created equal and treated as such.

Change will not come from the generation that bred this distrust. Our children — the young adults at the front of these marches — are leading the way. The horrific death of George Floyd sparked a long overdue turning point in race relations in this country.

What comes next after this season of pandemic and protests? Ask the next generation. They may not have the answers yet, but they’re on their way to find them. Godspeed.