TRUST THE YOUTH: A MANIFESTO
THIS IS MORE THAN A CAMPAIGN. WE GOT SOMETHING TO SAY…
Photo by Ike Abakah
Every new generation receives the same rhetoric,
“WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOUR GENERATION?”
“YALL DONT KNOW NOTHING YET”
“WHEN I WAS YALL AGE, BACK IN MY DAY…”
It is always that same ideology toward young people that we don’t know anything, that we’re all in our phones, that we’re just detached. Despite how absorbed in our phones you may think we are…
We are seeing, feeling, hearing and understanding everything. Strictly so that we don’t repeat it.
You’ll say - we have so much time, your young - but not recognize that time is made up, that earth is dying, that it is either now or never for us. Trust us, we know we’re young. We know we just got here and that’s why we’re living life now.
It was 70 degrees in November and you’re asking us why we’ve chosen to drop out of school and sprint after our dreams?
Folks gettin more trigger happy by the day and you’re concerned with dishes getting done, hell I got a life to go live before it’s—
cut too short
These radical acts of self expression, self love and happiness are not only out of a lust for life but a fear of not having enough time to reach that stage where we can look back and say…
When your young you have the whole world telling you what you could and should do and be. Trying to control how we move and breathe, helicopter over our every step wondering why we’re all asthmatic.
Trust us, we know we are young.
Photo by Bizzie Ruth
We know we are loud but it is so the universe knows we appreciate being here.
We know we laugh a lot, but we recognize joy as a necessity to a healthy life.
We know we see the world differently, we’ve just acknowledged it’s time for a change.
We know we have so much of the world left to see, but we also have to make sure there’s one left to do so.
Photo by Bizzie Ruth
Greta Thurnberg is 19.
Alena Analeigh McQuarter is 13.
Haile Thomas is 21.
Thandiwe Abdullah is 16.
Trayvon Martin was 17.
Zoe Dowdell was 20.
Ma’Khia Bryant was 16.
Nika Shakarami was16.
Whether is or was there is a message there. There is so much worry about us finding our path as young people, but we realized, our path is not found…but made. The tables we want to sit at…we’ve been working on building our own. The words we want said we learn to shout them from the capitol steps. The images we want seen we paint, photograph and project them onto worldwide platforms. The change we want to see in the world…we be that.
Trust us, we know we’re young…but that doesn’t mean we don’t know shit. We know far more than we let on. We've been born into a time of crisis, against our will and with the odds stacked against us. Rarely given a silver spoon to eat from. Trained in factories sorry, taught in schools, that are still processing…pushing out worker bees, not freedom writers; useful drones not universe designers. We’ve been trying to show that since we were able to pick up a pencil to draw. But you’ll see, that as we get older, the crucible of our conditions and conditioning can curve in conjunction with our own cause. Turning our curses given from birth, into blessings bestowed by none other than our selves and our chosen circle. We can be the generation to stop the trauma just as you could've been. If it is our duty to write centuries of wrongs then so be it. We will see the future that we forge in the wildfires that you set a blaze and blaze the trail that we trust, not the one just given to us.
TRUST US
To live our lives how we in-vision within our inner vision, because some of us were never even given the opportunity.
