Marcus Alston, activist and organizer for Teens Take Charge in New York City, speaks to Hands Down, Voices Up summit attendees about the issue of racial inequality. His short speech, designed to persuade learners to join him in finding solutions, explored the intersectional nature of race, and how it affects wealth, education and even the right to vote. “We all have a role in this,” he explained.
Marcus Alston is pretty comfortable with a megaphone in hand. For him, student voice is second nature. As part of the public action team for Teens Take Charge, a group that empowers students to become civic leaders, he organizes rallies and protests as part of the group’s push for integrated schools across New York City’s five boroughs.
“We have the most segregated school system in the country, and we are a coalition of high school students who work to fight and combat segregation in the New York City public school system,” says Marcus. “Most of our work is planning civil disobediences on behalf of the organization. So, rallies, protests, walkouts. All of those things run through my team and we do most of the organizing.”
Late last spring, he and his four-person team set out to plan a rally at New York City Hall in just two weeks, a seemingly daunting task. But by the time June 6 rolled around, 800 people amassed on the city hall steps – students, teachers and even school principals – all calling on Mayor Bill deBlasio to support school integration. For Marcus, it was a proud moment.
“You can’t get people to learn together if you can’t live together.”
The movement is gaining momentum. This month, Marcus was one of two teens featured on The Weekly, a TV series for Hulu and FX produced by The New York Times. As of October 29, the trailer for Episode 16 on Instagram had nearly 100,000 views.
“It started to get a lot of traction because I think people are starting to realize that this is an issue, specifically in New York City,” Marcus explains. “New York City has always prided itself on how diverse it is and how it’s the Big Apple and has all of these cultures. Yet, we have schools where literally it’s predominantly white or predominantly African-American. We want to figure out how to get the schools to look like the city’s actual demographics.”
Marcus believes the rally’s success was largely due to the collaborative nature of his public action team. He shared their experiences with Hands Down, Voices Up attendees during a session on collaboration, explaining how his team worked together to pull off such a big event in a short amount of time. But although he spent a lot of time sharing his activism experiences at the summit, Marcus also came to Hands Down, Voices Up to learn how to be a better leader. Specifically, he says, he wanted to learn more about practicing good on a daily basis.
Marcus Alston, third from left, and the members of a breakout session on creating good at Hands Down, Voices Up on October 25, 2019. The group brainstormed ways to create a 12-year curriculum on racial inequality in America and how it affects all areas of life.
“I think often times as an activist, I’m always trying to inspire people or I’m trying to just get things done. The practice of actually being good to people you’re working with sometimes gets lost because you’re focusing on 10,000 other things. But that’s really what I want to do, I want to value the people on my team and the people I work with every day,” says Marcus.
By the end of his Hands Down, Voices Up experience, Marcus headed back for New York City with a new mission: plans to create a 12-year curriculum to educate students about racial inequality in America, and how it affects daily life – from the cars we drive to the schools we attend. Marcus and seven other students met to brainstorm this plan as part of the Create Good day at Hands Down, Voices Up, which empowered learners to select important issues and seek solutions, then take those missions for good out into the community or the world at large. For Marcus, his group’s plan to create standardized education on racial inequality is a mission that closely aligns with his activism on the streets of New York City.
After all, education is empowerment. Marcus hopes to lift his peers up by leveling the playing field for every student in New York City. As he puts it, “You can’t get people to learn together if you can’t live together.”
