Youth Protest Crime Emergency Cap

By Taaq Kirksey
WI Staff Writer
Thursday, August 31, 2006

District youth held a rally last Wednesday at Freedom Plaza to protest the restrictions of the recent emergency crime bill, aimed at keeping kids younger than 16 at home after 10 pm.

With a month passed after over a dozen people were murdered in the District in as many days– including a prominent British lobbyist in Georgetown, prompting poorer residents to cry foul–some youth advocacy groups are charging that the legislation reeks of racism, if not “adultism.”

According to various teenagers from the Justice for D.C. Youth Coalition, adultism ensues when grown-ups make decisions that affect children, typically without any input from the kids themselves.

Tawanda Davis, an 18-year-old at Friendship Collegiate Academy student, says that youth make an easy target for pressed government officials because “they think that young people aren’t going to stick up for themselves.” 
 
With the Wilson Building looming in the background, Davis and others scrutinized the political element of the legislation as being a concession to predominantly White elites in Northwest.

“The City Council, after someone was killed in a certain part of town … criminalizes all of you,” said Jonathan Stith of the Youth Education Alliance. Criticizing the priorities of Mayor Anthony Williams’ outgoing administration, Stith added, “There was an emergency when it was time to get the stadium built.”

Williams (D) called the Council back from summer recess to sign the bill last month after a spike in violent crime rocked the District. Along with an earlier curfew, the legislation allows for surveillance cameras to be placed at strategic points in the city and gives the Metropolitan Police Department greater access to juvenile records. Arja Nelson, outreach director of the Justice 4 D.C. Youth Coalition, said that the use of surveillance cameras gives investigators “a reason to be lazy and not do police work.”

Youth of all ages banded together at a rally at Freedom Plaza in Washington D.C. to protest the restrictions of the recent crime emergency bill.  

Rally participants (l-r) Jacinta Wood, Tiffany Jones and Cornelius Price displayed
signs protesting crime emergency curfews. 

Mayoral hopeful Michael Brown–who has made youth issues a focus of his campaign–spoke briefly at the rally, although organizers made it clear that the Coalition was not endorsing any candidates. Calling youth crime the result of “a job emergency,” Brown pledged that youth employment would be unfettered under his watch. “There is no reason in the world you should not be able to work all year long.”
   Stith suggests that both election-year wrangling and race issues also factor into the legislation. “It was about politics … half the City Council is running for some position.” The advocate found it unlikely that the bill would be carried out equally on opposing sides of the Anacostia River. “You know they’re not going to be doing sweeps in Adams Morgan.”

Davis added to Stith’s analysis, giving an unflattering portrayal of Council Chairman Linda Cropp, who she said “lied to my face.” The youth criticized Cropp for allegedly making promises to not authorize the most restrictive part of the bill, but acting on the contrary. “She says she cares about us, but then she signed … the curfew part.”

Adding his slant on the phenomenon of “adultism,” 17-year-old Kevin Ashton, a student at Anacostia High School, noted that the two suspects charged with killing lobbyist Alan Senitt on a July night in Georgetown were in their early twenties. “They’re blaming youth for something that an adult did.”