| On Sunday August 21st, the 482Forward Youth Collaborative began our trip to New York City to gather information about youth organizing from organizations that have been organizing for a long period of time. Although the trip was long I think all of us in the Youth Collaborative agree that it was well worth it. Even the night we arrived we went from assigning rooms immediately into dinner, then to looking over our packets with our schedules and information, and splitting up into meetings addressing the upcoming meetings. | |
The next morning it was nonstop from the moment we left the house for the subway, which was a new experience for most of the Collaborative, to the moment we arrived home at around 11pm. The day started with a tour of the Ford Foundation, which was a lovely building with incredible views, where we received a lot of information on the building and the foundation itself. We headed straight from the Ford Foundation to Central park where we ate lunch, caught plenty of Pokémon and had some downtime. Next we headed to our first meeting of the day which was with the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, the Coalition for Educational Justice, and the Alliance for Quality Education. This meeting was very informative in teaching us skills and organizational structures that may help our coalition last longer and also produced some very good and empowering advice about how youth shouldn’t give up on fighting for their beliefs. Next came our meeting with Make the Road and Urban Youth Collaborative (UYC) where we had our meeting in a nearby park. The change in scenery and amazing new energizer the group introduced to us definitely helped us get back on track after an incredibly busy day day. Also during the meeting, we learned a lot about some educational and community problems that UYC are working on which were very similar yet slightly different than some of the things we will work on. For instance, the school to prison pipeline was a relatively new idea to us and not many of us had before considered the weight of suspensions quite like the youth at UYC had. Along with that we also received excellent advice on how to recruit more young people towards our collaborative and, more importantly, our cause. After the meeting we rode the subway to Times Square where we explored through many of the stores and shops there before going to dinner at Applebee’s. Finally, we went home for the day completely worn out.
The next morning, we woke up to drive down to the docks. When we arrived we waited until a ship came to take us to Ellis Island, where we got to explore the historical building where millions of immigrants had come through to start a new life for themselves. Afterwards the ship came back around to sail us around the Statue of liberty, the view was absolutely breathtaking. That was the last we saw of New York, because after exiting the ship our long journey home had begun. Although we had only spent roughly 48 hours in New York we had done so much that it felt more like we were there a few days.
The next morning, we woke up to drive down to the docks. When we arrived we waited until a ship came to take us to Ellis Island, where we got to explore the historical building where millions of immigrants had come through to start a new life for themselves. Afterwards the ship came back around to sail us around the Statue of liberty, the view was absolutely breathtaking. That was the last we saw of New York, because after exiting the ship our long journey home had begun. Although we had only spent roughly 48 hours in New York we had done so much that it felt more like we were there a few days.
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