UMOVE Youth Symposium
October 27, 2008
Participant Report Back
At the beginning of the United Mother’s Opposing Violence Everyone (UMOVE) Youth Symposium the Executive Director, Audette Sheppard, made a speech thanking everyone for attending while expressing her hope that more events like this would be held to create opportunities for young people and adults could come together and break down stereotypes and barriers of all kinds. After Audette spoke there were speakers from the city council, including Pam McConnell, who spoke about the great importance of youth voice and its connection to the future of the city of Toronto and how nice it was to see the council chambers and seats filled with young people. Both Councilor Michael Thompson and representatives of the Toronto Police Service spoke to the same effect with Police Chief William Blair talking about some of the struggles and victories that his officers have had working with, and for, young people.
As a young person who has been working with UMOVE to help them plan this event, and knowing who was in the audience (young people who are or have been going through some of the same struggles that I lived with), I felt it was appropriate to share with the audience parts of my life story. I wanted to share with the young people in the audience, and the adults who were there as well, as much of what I have learned through my own struggles; from living life without a lot of positive support from the adults and relationships in my life, to being someone with a long history of being in conflict with the law. It was important to me to make a point of expressing the importance of staying positive and always trying to move forward. Doing this has helped me become the person I am today, and though it can be difficult to stay positive when things get rough, it will help you get through those times.
After we had a snack break, we started back up with a presentation from Mary Birdsell from Justice for Children and Youth who is a lawyer and community development worker. Many questions were asked about what is legal and not concerning our rights as young people (under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child) and the breaching of them; many youth told stories of police brutality and breach of conduct and asked questions that were very hard to answer. After this there was a presentation from the Director of Pardons and Clemency National Parole Board, Corita Harty. This was pretty straightforward and not a lot of questions were asked; some around timelines and what to do if you have been turned down for a pardon. These were answered directly and clearly, the young people seemed to be satisfied with what they heard. Lunch was after this; we had pizza from the City Hall cafeteria. It was pretty good. Then Dr. Peter K. B. St. Jean showed us his film “Lessons from Homicides a Buffalo story”, this is a documentary about the senseless murders that are constantly happening in Buffalo and also the importance of looking into why we have such a lack of respect for life these days. At the end of the day we had discussion around ways to intervene in situations that could turn very volatile but this ended up to be more of a venting session which I think was also needed so that the participants could feel listened to.