Khalea Edwards and Brianna Chandler

Occupy City Hall STL and Rise STL

Khalea Edwards didn’t just take up activism this past summer. As she sees it, her life itself is a form of protest. “There is no start date to a movement you’ve been a part of your entire life,” she says. “Black existence in this system itself is resistance.”

Edwards, 21, grew up poor with 17 siblings on the south side of St. Louis and a mother working multiple jobs. She took an interest in actively fighting against these systems after Trayvon Martin’s death, and later, through her brother’s activism in Ferguson after the police killing of Michael Brown. So when Mayor Lyda Krewson doxed activists who were calling for the city to defund the police, Edwards helped form Occupy City Hall STL. Edwards is now focused on advocating for the homeless. “We need to be investing in each other and our communities,” she says, “because we know the politicians won’t.”

Fellow St. Louis activist Brianna Chandler,

19, began organizing with the Sunrise STL climate group in 2019, and last spring recentered her focus on racial and indigenous justice, forming Rise STL. “I think change always comes from young people,” she says. “I think adults sometimes get desensitized, and understandably so, because the system wears you down.”