HOT TOPICS

Rachel Lane Massachusetts

Speaking Out on the Issues

With the 2008 Presidential election in right around the corner, it seems like everyone is talking about the “issues.” Whether they want to reduce crime, end poverty, legalize gay marriage, or challenge the Pledge of Allegiance, teens are speaking up. Even if you can’t vote yet, you can still have your say. Activism and change doesn’t just happen at the ballot box!

Mr. Mayor

McKenzie Banas, 15
Pennsylvania

Dear Mr. Mayor,
I would like to invite you to my house for dinner.
I live 23 blocks away from your office building.
I have a riverfront home
Under the 9th Street bridge.
Dinner is not formal,
So come in your most casual clothes.
I hope you don’t mind leftovers;
It’s all I could find in the dumpsters.
I would say, “Bring a guest,”
But there isn’t enough food to feed three.
Please come early;
The neighborhood is dangerous after dark.
I hope you can make it;
I don’t get much company anymore

One Nation, Under All

Jennifer Louie, 19
New Jersey

The “average American citizen” works in a white-collar, corporate environment inundated with paperwork and business meetings. He works five days a week, and returns home every evening to fret over bills and at-home demands. He lives an illusion, too preoccupied with his rat race to see the true problems underlying society.

Upon closer inspection: amidst society’s turmoil there slowly walks a girl obscured by the majority throng. She has lost her voice; the sack she carries is overridden with problems accumulated from time past. As the crowd tramples over her, she is sinking, sinking. Who is that girl? Do not underestimate her. She is a three-dimensional figure...

She is the child of today, who faces constant pressure to do drugs, who is bombarded by money-grubbing media, who sits alone for her dinner. She is the girl who collapses on her pile of textbooks, exhausted by college demands for higher grades. She is the girl who is confronted by two choices—to abort, or to keep her child. She cannot think, cannot keep up with this world of social demands. She dreams of a place called freedom.

She is the girl whose voice is hushed by society’s hear-no-evil, see-no-evil idea of conformity. Yet she cries: the mother whose breast carries a swell far more profound than cancer, the girl who reawakens night after night to the moment she was raped, the businesswoman whose job opportunity was cut short by the invisible corporate ceiling. They are living mannequins, holding back bitterness behind plastic smiles. They wish so hard to breathe again... Yet we, oblivious to their plight, turn our heads from the epidemic. If we remain silent, our problems will dissipate.

She is our nation. From her, millions of voices are struggling to break free. Hate groups rise from seats of tolerance to stomp out unwanted diversity. Newcomers while away their hours sewing buttons in sweatshops; one dollar an hour seems an outright defiance to America’s pledge for equality. Society reeks of injustice, but this the average American cannot see. He screams for freedom overseas while ignoring the girl who waits quietly for freedom back home, who clutches her overburdened sack as she sinks into the ground. She gasps for air...Yes. Sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing...

And so she plows on.

Because

Davonna Douglas, 17
Ontario

I was called a babymama for the first time
Because I was the only black girl standing in line.
I mean, so what, mistakes do happen,
And you pray you make it through with Jesus’ blessings,
But I didn’t say a word; I just walked away.
God only knows what would have happened if I stayed.

Because he’s black, he hustles and steals,
Because she’s black she has to strip for a meal.
I have to admit, I have it good.
Momma decided to move us out the hood,
But back to him and his pants hanging low –
People automatically think that he sells dope.

I get criticized for how I walk and talk.
I get called a hoodrat who ain’t worth a buck.
Little do they know, I got myself a job,
So when it comes to what I need, I don’t have to rob.

I’m only trying to show you how it is.
Not every black girl has a kid
And not every black boy sells drugs –
Sometimes they’re the ones getting robbed.

Which brings me to a new topic: black-on-black crime.
Someone please tell me where we can draw the line.
We kill ourselves each and every day
Over nothing, in cruel and brutal ways.
We’re all trying to prove something, but to who? For what?
So all those hearts can break when the caskets drop.

Growing Up With Two Moms

Kinsey Bryant-Lees, 17
Ohio

“My mom says you’re not allowed to have two moms,” says the little girl with the neatly-braided pigtails and cute pink shirt, her five-year-old mommy-says-so logic shining through. I can only stand there, speechless, terrified, not knowing what to do or think, my whole world crashing down on me. At age five this is all I know and all I have. I have not yet been acquainted with society’s unspoken rules and wrong vs. rights; I have not yet been confronted with the normal conformity.
The girl in the pink shirt, realizing I am not going to reply, runs away to play on the swing set with her friends. I am left standing alone, in my unmatched socks, wondering, why am I so different?
At age eight, I moved to Mason, your traditional, conservative, suburban community, for the better school system and gifted programs. But I was not the typical Mason student. I was brought up very liberally, taught to judge everyone only on his or her character and integrity. Now, walking through the hallways, I heard the words “gay” and “fag” being used as an insult, even in the third grade. Every time I heard it used in a derogatory way, a rush of hot anger would spread through me, but I would say nothing. I kept it all on the inside, letting it build the walls between those I deemed closest and me.

In high school I started making the changes that I knew I should have made a long time before. I was tired of living in fear. What was I scared of? Being stereotyped. Being rejected by my friends. Being an outcast. Being an individual. It was time for me to stand up for what I believed in, who I am, and where I come from. In the words of Emerson, “Imitation is suicide.” And I have way too much to live for.

Poem about Vanity in Our Patriarchal Society

Milagros Del Toro
New York

A flower may be beautiful
But if growing in poor soil
Refusing to work towards change
It will wither

A flower may be pretty
But if not allowed to seek sunlight
Knowledge and truth
By a neglect in education
It will wither

A flower may be lovely
But if elements do ravage
Through misogynistic laws
And presidential nominees
It will wither

Flowers of the world
Do not allow yourselves
To be entangled
Within the weeds
Grow
Strong

Pledging Allegiance

Maggie Druschel, 18
Massachusetts

“I pledge allegiance to the Flag, of the United States of America.” Every morning we all stand up and drone out in sleepy tones the same statement, but how many of us take the time to think about what we are saying? Each day we pledge allegiance, without realizing that we are willingly promising our entire selves to a flag and a country, that by pledging allegiance we make a contract with the government and with the country to support and honor it.

I do not know about anyone else, but for me, pledging allegiance to an abstract ideal of Republican Government (as in the type of government, not the political party) seems unwise when I do not even agree with many parts of that government. Allegiance is a strong word that carries responsibilities. According to Microsoft Encarta Dictionary, allegiance is defined as “a subject’s or citizen’s loyalty to a ruler or state, or the duty of obedience and loyalty owed by a subject or citizen.” By pledging allegiance every morning, each of us is promising to be loyal and obedient to the United States government.

Pledging loyalty is not something to be taken lightly, and yet by making it habitual to state the Pledge every morning, students no longer consider what they are saying and make a conscious decision to accept the responsibility of the Pledge; rather, they say it because that’s what they have done every morning since Kindergarten. By making the Pledge such a mundane occurrence, schools have devalued it until it is reduced to nothing more than a distraction in the beginning of every first block class.

In the past few years I have begun thinking about what I am saying as I speak the Pledge, and I have chosen to stop saying it because I feel that I cannot honestly promise to be completely loyal and obedient to the American government. The First Amendment of the Bill of Rights guarantees the right to question the government and speak out against it or disagree with it, and yet if one says the Pledge and still goes against the government, one is no longer being loyal or obedient, thus breaking the bond of allegiance.

I personally have chosen not to say the Pledge anymore because I do not want to make a promise that I will subsequently break as soon as I disagree with or question the government. I see my allegiance as something important and not to be handed out lightly.

The teachers at our school send varied messages about the Pledge. Some do not care what students do, if they continue to talk to their friends throughout the Pledge or stand and place their hands over their hearts and solemnly swear allegiance; other teachers ask students to be quiet during the Pledge or require students to stand up but not necessarily say the Pledge; and then there are also the teachers who demand that all students stand and say the Pledge every morning. It seems reasonable to me that the teachers expect students to stay quiet during the Pledge so as to be respectful towards those who choose to say it. If teachers require their class to stand, that is all right to me. When a teacher begins to demand, though, that students not only stand but also speak the Pledge every morning, I become frustrated. Respecting the Flag and respecting the country is a fine expectation, but we students have a choice in whether or not we choose to say the Pledge. When a teacher demands that students recite the Pledge as a class, the First Amendment right to free speech (or lack thereof) gets trampled. Because the Pledge should be respected as a weighty decision to ally oneself with a government and all that it stands for, every student should be allowed to decide if she/he is able to or would like to make that commitment, and if she/he decides not to say it, it should not be a requirement.

I will continue, every morning, to stand in silent respect during the thirty-seconds of the announcements in which the Pledge is recited, but, until I can honestly make the commitment to my country and to my government to swear my full allegiance, loyalty, and obedience, I will continue to refrain from Pledging Allegiance.

I hope that my fellow students might also consider exactly what it is they promise to uphold every morning, and once they have thought about that, I hope that they will make a well-thought-out decision either to say the Pledge to be loyal and obedient and mean it, or not say it, but still stand respectfully until they believe they are ready to make the Pledge and not break it.