You have a Right to Life

Dear community,

As we awake on yet another day with headlines that fill our youth and ourselves with confusion, fear, and dread; where do we look to for our light, where do we go when it feels like there is nowhere to go, when everything we know continues to slip through our fingers? Where do we look when it feels like everything from their rights to access, and power to their rights to joy and community are being taken from them? 

We look to where the light shines bright and never dims. We look to the community and the spaces that still carry the light of our world. We look to one another and we continue to gather in opposition to this world that would rather see us broken and twisted before it sees us free and united. In a time where it’s easier to find division and misinformation versus to rise in togetherness and support, we must not waver in our commitment to be that unmoveable force that stands between the systems of oppression and our community. We must commit to together in service of our future both in our youth and ourselves. We must remind them and ourselves that we have every right to life, that we have an inalienable right to our existence in all of its inherent beauty and power. 

It is in this guiding spirit that we foreground this year’s Youth Leadership Academy, set to take place Saturday, November 15th, 9 am – 4 pm at 1100 Market St, San Diego, CA 92101. This year we focus on recentering and reminding both our youth and ourselves that even when things get tough and feel scary and confusing, that we have every right to life. 

So remind yourself always that you have the right to: 

Joy – which can not be taken away even in times of strife and struggle. In the midst of this world and the changing landscape of what it means to grow up in this time, joy is your right to do those things that bring you joy, to stay tethered to the places that bring you joy and the people who refill you with joy. 

Access – while it feels like this fleeting notion of something we no longer have passage to in a changing landscape that can feel as though it is focused more on increasing barriers rather than increasing pathways, we have every right to access the spaces and tools that continue to empower us to build our own pathways.

Community – when the world we see begins to feel like it is closing in, it can make seeking support seem so much more difficult and make us feel as if we are unworthy of community, but you have a right to the love and support of community, especially when you begin to feel like it’s harder and harder to see ways to find them.

Rage, Reaction & Action – with everything that is happening to the world we see and in our own personal worlds, it may bring us to spaces of rage and reaction which we have every right to feel, and of which we can transform into opportunities for action.

So remember you have every right to be the light, so go forth and shine bright.