The International Liberation Reference Person for Allies to Young People
I’m Jenny Sazama, the International Liberation Reference Person for Allies to Young People, and I love my job. I want to talk to you about four things that I think young people need from us:
First, they need us to be alive. They are alive, and we need to come out here and match them and not just enjoy the lives they have.
Second, they need us to be connected. They reach for us, and they want us to be connected with them. They also need us to think about racism, because racism is the main thing that stops people from being connected to each other.
The third thing they need from us is a planet. (laughter) And we have a lot of work to do. Last month we went to 406 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and 350 parts per million is what is sustainable. We are not too busy for this. We feel overwhelmed in dealing with the oppressive society, but we’ve got some work to do. Young people are leading us here. Let’s stand by their side and have a planet.
The fourth thing they need is for us to use RC well for ourselves and to share RC with them.
I want to end with a story. A few years ago, a good friend of our family got murdered. At the funeral I was playing with his niece and nephew, a three- and five-year-old, and people thought, “Oh, they must not understand if they are playing at the funeral.” I took the young people aside and asked them how they were, and they cried with me. They knew exactly what had happened; they had seen the casket in front of the church.
I think that’s how we would be. We would pay attention to present time, except when there was resource.
Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, USA