Dear Community
Dear Community,
The youth leaders at IntegrateNYC have always moved with intentionality and purpose, united unapologetically by the 5R framework as the rubric for an equitable school system. Youth leaders at INYC connect, collaborate, convene, and create space to amplify youth voices. It’s standing on the steps of Tweed with other coalition partners to say Black Lives Matter at schools. It's collaborating on a testimony on school admissions for City Council with NY Appleseed. It’s showing up in person at the City Council Budget Hearing on Education to show electeds that NYC’s youth are paying attention to their schools and their future. Youth are prioritizing relationship building and vision casting with organizations like Brotherhood Sister Sol and National Coalition for School Diversity. INYC youth directors present with The Peer Defense Project (PDP) and Coalition for Asian American Children and Families (CACF) here is an excerpt from the webinar, Facing Segregation and the Model Minority Myth.
Our youth leaders are moving in alignment with advocates for real justice and equity in New York City schools. The Mayor stripping away over $460 million from the school budget is not justice. Youth are thinking about solutions and working with community to create liberatory spaces where real youth power is present in the movement for #CareNotCuts and the People’s Budget.
On May 20th the youth of IntegrateNYC will host an event that centers youth power.The youth are ready to set their goals into action, and strategy into practice. “The Function”, as it's affectionately called, is INYC’s first Youth Justice Fair. It answers the call for a youth-led space to convene ideas, come together in panels,workshops, creative practice, and empower participants with a space to implement actions. Creating an embodied and interactive vision of community control of schools, winning youth voting power, and Restorative Justice in school districts.
The youth Executive Directors describe the Youth Justice Fair as, “a liberatory space where real youth power lives, grows, and thrives. There are no barriers to working collectively in order to manifest change; rather, communal interactions and conversations are encouraged. Students can deconstruct their education experiences through a series of exhibits/presentations and alongside other youth activists. All youth (both new and old to the movement) that come will be celebrated for the work they are doing to bring transformative change to the inequities in NYC public schools.”
Wema Ragophala
Adult Executive Director