Hoping to spread camaraderie, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) brought students together from Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey for their annual Youth Leadership Conference on November 13 in Philadelphia.
The conference featured keynote speaker Pastor Carl Day, as well as time for students to break into groups and discuss their own personal experiences and ideas about fighting bigotry in the school setting and the greater community.
Day’s speech focused on this year’s theme of allyship and how his past influenced his work, bridging black and Jewish communities and mentoring young people to rise above and work against hate.
Day believes that hateful environments are bred from the systems in place and the ideologies from historical social hierarchies that persist today.
“A hateful environment looks like it [has] always looked like historically in America, particularly for Blacks and Jews,” Day said. “The things that I’ve seen and become a product of in my environment were due to systemic racism—redlining, leaving blacks disproportionately poor, lack of resources, lack of opportunity.”
Day thinks this hate is rooted in the history of American culture.
“Those are the seeds that America has sown for decades, for centuries, and all we see is the fruit of it, the ugly fruit of it, continuing to manifest,” Day said.
Day said this hate, normalized by the systems in place, cannot be fought alone, and therefore, oppressed groups must come together instead of competing in an “oppression olympics.”
Day said that in order to come together, people must be aware of the hatred others face, even if not experiencing it in their own lives.
However, awareness alone cannot fight against racism, opportunity is needed.
“I make people aware of what’s going on, but then also give opportunities,” Day said.
Going to protests, meetings, and being active in the community are all opportunities to show unity and allyship, but Day believes that there are opportunities to fight hate everywhere.
As long as people can connect and build friendships, they can create allyship.
“If we have neighbors, we have opportunity,” Day said. “Let them know that they’re seen.”
Social studies teacher Nicole Harner believes that Day’s message was impactful and resonated more than speakers from other years.
Harner has attended the ADL conference with students for the past 10 years.
“I think it was a little different,” Harner said. “Usually people come, and they tell their stories of survival …[Day’s] was more of a discussion about how we can be better people, [and] the students can be better people and be more accepting of each other.”
For Harner, the ADL conference is a great opportunity for students to learn how to have productive dialogue with one another.
“I think [allyship] was more of a practical message for students this year,” Harner said, “and they could really relate to it.”
Both the keynote speaker and the group discussions with other students help individuals call attention to issues occurring in their schools and communities.
“I think that in our society, we’ve become less accepting of our differences,” Harner said. “I think we’ve lost that dialogue and that communication, and that was spoken about at the conference.”
Harner believes that although Souderton does have many organizations in place to build allyship, such as Unified sports and Link Crew, “We could always do more.”
Junior Marie Alleman found the conference to be beneficial for educating not only students, but staff and administrators as well.
“It was a way for us to really bring attention to issues that we face to our teachers,” Alleman said. “It was important to get both students and staff thinking about how to stop hate within our school by being aware of issues.”
For Alleman, the discussions with other students were impactful.
“It really opened my eyes to what different types of people go through,” Alleman said. “It also helped me recognize things that I’ve been through in my life by sharing with others.”
Junior Xen Morgan agreed with Alleman about the disscussion groups.
“The conference was able to connect me to other students,” Morgan said. “I felt seen in a way, other people were going through the same problems in their school as me.”
Morgan hopes to return to the conference again in their senior year.
“I liked having an outlet to discuss problems we faced due to inequality and feeling unsafe in our communities,” Morgan said.