Well, as you may already know my name is Erin Martina Johnson and I’m 17 years of age, turning 18 on June 24th. My life is kind of hard to write out on a piece of paper because there is so much that has occurred in my 17 years of living on this earth that has lead me to where I am today. I was born in Quincy, and I lived there until I was 5/years of age, and then we moved to New York where I was pretty much raised. For most of my life, the only family I’ve had is my mother and my little brother, so I never really had family that I was involved with or had family gatherings with. Growing up with my little brother, I did a lot of moving from different neighborhoods, and switching schools, so my brother and I never really had a set place we could call home, because before you knew it, we were moving to a different apartment. Life was really difficult for us. My mother was and still is a single parent so we struggled a great deal because my mother was trying to do things that required both parents. My little brother wasn’t doing anything my mother said, and you can tell that he needed his father around but my father didn’t want to be around us. After a while things go to the point where my mother had to make some changes for the better for her children, and we were just in luck to come across an apartment where we felt comfortable living, and settled there for a while, until I started doing better in school. Once I finally got adapted to the whole school thing I was making honor roll. My mother was doing better financially, and my little brother was listening to my mother more. From there things started to get better for my family, and as I started to get older,  I realized that if my family and I had not struggled the way we did, then we wouldn’t have so much drive, and determination now.

 The best thing that ever happened to me was when I applied for BCLA and got chosen out of many kids to begin as a freshman. From there things went up hill, and there were many changes happening. Things were somewhat hard for me at first, starting this high school where they set high standard for students, but I took that risk and did my best, and look where I am now. A hard working senior about to graduate in two months, and go off to fashion school in New York City to become the next big fashion designer. Growing up, I was a young girl always into fashion, and clothes. I always wanted to go shopping or go to the mall to see the latest outfits that were in the stores. Fashion has always been a major aspect in my life growing up. I always thought about designing this or being apart of this fashion show, and I feel BCLA has opened that door for me, and pushed me to strive to be a leader and never to give up.

             The story of Boston today from the Youth perspective is quite a hassle, because teens have been though so much especially, in this past year.  This year, my partner and I from my class by the name of Jasmine joined together to work on a major project on the topic of violence. This topic was not so much as a difficult topic but more as a lesson learning experience. To complete the project, jasmine and I interviewed young males and young women to help answer some of the questions that we created that focused on the hard times youth go through and the issues we want people to understand on why we are looked at as ignorant individuals. We thought it would be better to interview young males and females to answer these questions, because we felt that youth have a better look on what’s going on with society.

 The story from the youth perspective is that we never have a voice in anything and when we do speak our minds, and say how we feel about different things we quickly get shut down, and no one wants to listen because were young and we don’t know what’s going on.

All the violence that’s going on today is mainly with teens, and there are so many memorials on the streets corners, and many are all young males, and who gets blamed?  the youth. There are many programs out there but because of the bad reputation that the youth have, teens don’t want to go to the programs. With all the data we collected, we came to the conclusion that most young people have either been affected by violence or engaged in violence, and their to the point where they don’t even want to leave the house, because their in fear of losing their lives. This was not a big surprise because we know how difficult it is to walk down, and it is very heartbreaking to know because you’re not safe in your own community, and can barely do your activities because of the fear of something happening. Understand this we as individuals do not hurt our brothers and sisters to make the news but it is more of a cry for help. All of those who were interviewed voices should be respected and is very important because it tells the truth of the youth and what we are faced too deal with in our everyday lives. We all need to respect that youth want to say things, and speak there minds, and seeing that were trying to make an effort is a beautiful thing. This interview should break the mold of the youth not speaking and a large majority of those who gave information noted that we are the victims or the cops help at times but they are not smart enough. A question that was asked that we felt was useful information, not only for us but to tell others is ,  what do you think about the stop snitching term was asked. The responses to this question were surprising, because all of them said they don’t believe in the term, and it depends on the type of situation their put in. The interviews said they would definitely tell the police any information that that could help that victim, and bring the criminal to justice. I personality think that snitching is a very ignorant term, and it shouldn’t have even been thought of, because it’s a lose- lose  situation, and it sucks when young males are put in the situation where they need to help out a friend, but then they don’t want to put themselves in danger. All-in- all I just really want this gang violence, and revenge stuff to stop, because it’s only hurting us teens, and the teens aren’t the only ones that need to make change it’s the adults as well.