Here is the Facebook Live video from the Youth Mayoral Forum at Provine High School on Monday, April 17, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Supervisor Robert Graham had confirmed, but did not show up. The questions are below this post in the comments so you can follow along.
Video #1:
Video #2 (closing statements):
WJTV coverage:
WLBT coverage:
MSNewsNow.com – Jackson, MS
Teenagers took center stage at Jackson’s first Youth Mayoral Forum on Monday, April 17, in the Provine High School auditorium. Seven candidates appeared at the two-hour forum, including Mayor Tony Yarber, Sen. John Horhn, attorney Chokwe Lumumba, Ronnie Crudup Jr. and Hinds Supervisor Robert Graham.
Jackson Council PTA and the Mississippi Youth Media Project are hosting the forum with a 15-year-old Jim Hill High School student, Maisie Brown, as the moderator, and a four-student YMP panel asking questions. Those students are Shakira Porter and Dartavius Archie of Wingfield High School; Kenytta Brown of Lanier High School; and Maggie Jefferis of Murrah High School.
UPDATE: We just learned that The Clarion-Ledger featured the Youth Mayoral Forum prominently on its front page Tuesday.
Here are all 10 questions that YMP students edited and asked of the candidates from topics and draft questions provided by JCPTA ambassador students from various JPS schools. We urge you to weigh in below in comments and tell us what you think on any of these topics or how the candidates answered them above:
1. Kenyatta: I heard you ask a group of young people once how many want to stay in Mississippi, and barely any hands went up. What specifically are you going to do as mayor to help young people decide to stay here?
2. Shakira: Last year, a police officer helped someone else hurt me. What will you do to make sure that police respect and do not abuse young people in Jackson?
3. Maggie: Aside from police, how will you lead the city to break the cycle of crime for young people? What can the city do for kids in trouble other than sending them straight to juvenile detention?
4. Archie: Many Jackson teenagers do too many adult things and even get in trouble because we don’t have enough places to go and safe things to do. What can you do to kids get involved in their communities and to have good activities within reach so opportunities are right in our neighborhood?
5. Kenytta: At schools like Clinton, Madison Central and Jackson Prep, kids are expected to do better than students at many of our Jackson Public schools like Lanier and Wingfield. How can you as mayor help overcome these stereotypes, low expectations and the unequal opportunities we get?
6. Shakira: I used to live next to an abandoned house in Wood 2 where young kids smoke and do bad things. Those houses give our neighborhoods a bad reputation and studies show they make crime more likely. What are you going to do to tear down or renovate all the abandoned houses?
7. Maggie: In neighborhoods without sidewalks, kids have to walk and play in the streets. What will you do for sidewalks within a mile radius of JPS schools for students who walk to school?
8. Archie: One student saw on Twitter that a lot of white people from outside the community were cleaning up around Callaway. How can you lead and inspire communities to take action to fix up our communities ourselves?
9. Kenytta: We need more local businesses in our neighborhoods to help the economy and hire young people. What is your plan to help get more resources to black-owned businesses, train people to be better entrepreneurs, and get people in the neighborhood to support them?
10. Shakira: A future college student wants to know what the city will look like for her family if she decides to stay in Jackson. If we elect you mayor, how will Jackson look different 20 years from now?
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YMP has a number of groups and people to thank for support for the Youth Mayoral Forum. First, of course, we are so grateful that the Jackson Council PTA invited us to join as the media team to moderate and ask the questions. And the JCPTA student ambassadors from all the JPS schools — THANK YOU for brainstorming such wonderful topics. You did the heavy lifting, and we’re thrilled to collaborate with you. (Let’s do it again on another project!) We especially thank Roseline McCoy and Michelle Henry who helped us from the PTA.
We also thank Emily Henderson of Mississippi Public Broadcasting for asking us tough questions during the YMP brainstorm session on Good Friday and helping organize the event and bringing extra microphones. We thank Provine High School for hosting the forum, and all the people who turned out and filled out the questionnaires. We thank WLBT, WAPT and WJTV for doing news segments on the forum, and The Clarion-Ledger for featuring us on the front page the next morning. We thank the JFP for providing free advertising and technical help with the Facebook Live video above, and Inga and Meghan for helping set up the forum at Provine. And we thank the seven candidates who turned out and sat in hard chairs for two hours to answer questions that matter to the teenagers of Jackson.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. We can’t wait to do another event to talk to the public, so let us know if you have ideas.