Palo Alto High School students take advocating for a better world seriously, but as a younger generation sometimes their efforts are dismissed by adult activists due to inexperience. We asked some members of the community to share their thoughts and experiences on the matter.
“Parents or an older generation can make it very easy for a child or a teenager who’s an activist to just completely shut down.I feel like this goes beyond just [activism], it also plays into how will you feel [when] you can share with your family, so I feel overall, the older generation harms more than just your voice.”
— Kaitlyn Gonzalez Arceo, junior
“Sometimes I feel like people are so attached to being very, very liberal or very conservative on one side or the other. And it can get in the way of the cause that all of these people are fighting for, because activism is about good change for humanity as a whole. Not good change for Democrats or good change for Republicans or good change for independents … It’s good change for everybody.”
— Brendan Giang, sophomore
“I think that once people’s minds are set, it’s a little bit difficult to change them. So it’s important to hear the opinions of [youth] that are kind of still deciding what they stand for. And with a lot of youth, there’s a lot of stuff that comes in the news that we see and we hear, but a lot of it is influenced by the older generations and what is being put in front of us. So I think it’s important to hear the opinions of what younger people have to say…And they’re the ones being affected.”
— Leilani Chen, freshman
“I feel like youth activists tend to care less about the political ramifications for climate action and more about bigger existential problems. I think we see it as like, this is our adult life that we’re fighting for, and then older people tend to be like, yeah, it’s an issue, but I don’t know if they see as much of a threat with it.”
— Lucy Kristofferson, junior
“As a new Social Justice Pathway teacher, I have to imagine that these connections and these considerations … and these sort of deep set understandings around social justice issues will carry through to students as they pursue whatever career they pursue. One of the things we’d like to emphasize is whatever position of power you have, the point is to use that power to elevate others and to elevate these issues and to make headway on these issues wherever you can.”
— Keith Tocci, AP Language and Social Justice Teacher, Cohort 9