This is a speech that I gave in 2008. It interesting to see where I am now in relation to my thoughts in 2008.
Good morning young planners! I am happy to be amongst some of the best and the brightest youth and adult allies in the United States, all coming together for one common goal: Youth involvement. As mentioned earlier, my name is Cornell Carney. I am a member of the New Orleans chapter of the Young Planners Network. I am involved in a number of organizations which includes: the New Orleans Youth Leadership Council, the Katrina Leadership Project, CNN/Spike Lee “Children of the Storm” Documentary. I’ve met and continued to meet with the Mayor of New Orleans around youth involvement, I’ve been to Washington, D.C. to meet with Louisiana’s national leaders, I am the President of my school’s Student Government Association, I was a youth delegate for the National League of Cities, and a panelist for PolicyLink’s Equity Blog 2008 National Conference. I say this not for vanity purposes but I say this because a lot of people discount us being youth. They do not believe that we can effect change because were too young or not smart enough. I believe that I epitomize the characteristics of a youth wanting to make a difference and you do too.
Today I want to speak to you today about the importance of youth and why we should be involved in a lot of the planning processes such as: how to rebuild a city, how should the next skate park be designed, what should be added to or taken out of the city’s budget, etc.
Hurricane Katrina exposed many realities, one of which being that we cannot trust someone else to do doing something on our behalf. This was a lesson learned for both adults and youth. I have made a pledge to myself to never again let someone speak or do anything on my behalf because sometimes things do not get done. Too often do we entrust our situations to another person and too often do we get disappointed.
Next week I will be transitioning from the youth phase of my life to the young adult phase. We need to develop youth and adult allies to continue to do the powerful work that I’ve been doing with the help of others. I can tell you that it is not all fun and is not always easy but the feeling that you get when you know that you have made a difference is priceless. You are going to need to be tenacious and determined because there will be a lot of distractions especially from people who see us as useless.
In my endeavors, I have discovered many barriers that often got in my way. Those barriers included the lack of commitments from both adults and youths. If we want to make a difference and change the perception that some adults have about youth, we absolutely must be committed. Some adults are not allowing us to grow. They do not realize that making mistakes are apart of the learning process and they intervene too early instead of letting us figure out a solution on our own. We often get discounted because we are our ages. Just because we are 14, 15, 16 or 17 years old does not mean we cannot do positive things. Unrealistic expectations are often being imposed upon us. Here is an example of what I am taking about: I remember a tornado hitting a city near New Orleans. My Student Government Association wanted to recognize a full week of dress down to adopt a family and to donate the proceeds to. We thought that because we were taking an interest in other people that the school would be ok with it; that was not the case. They, instead, wanted us the draft a proposal giving specific details about how we planned to donate the money, so we did. We submitted the proposal and were told that it was not sufficient and were told to write it again. The problem was, in our opinions, was that we did not know exactly what their expectations were so we did not know exactly what to include or not to include in the proposal. Another barrier is that rules are constantly being made on our behalf but we are not being included in the process of making those rules. And last, professionals do not find ways to involve youth in their work. But your success will be measured by your ability to break those barriers and remaining focused. Here is an example of when youth played an important role in the planning process: Consistent with the city-wide rebuilding program, a group of developers held a planning zone meeting for my district. One of the proposals for my neighborhood was to demolish my high school to make way for a transit circle. Had it not been for two of my friends at that meeting to explain how we felt about that scenario, that plan would have been submitted and considered by the city.
To end, I would like to leave you with a personal story. I am one of nine children. My father died when I was only three years old, leaving my mother to provide for me and my siblings on her own and the only source of income that she had was from the military because my father was in the Army. I have five sisters and three brothers and out of my male siblings I am the only one who has not been involved in the justice system. I have one younger brother who is in the seventh grade and even he has been involved in the justice system. They sought excitement by doing things that were illegal while I sought excitement by going to our city council meetings or staying after school sometimes until two in the morning. The main difference between me and my brothers is that I found people who wanted to invest their time in me like Mr. Eric Jensen who I call Uncle E and Mr. Tom Hayes, who I call Uncle Tom, Mr. Davis my school's Positive Behavior Support Facilitator, Ms. Lobdell, my school's Social Worker, and Mr. Gibson, my school's assistant principal, all of them are with us here today. How is this relevant? Well, for two reasons: (1) You, I, we need the support of adults. We cannot go this alone and (2) I have come from a family where I was often criticized for doing the right thing. I could have given in, but I knew that it is my calling to make a difference in my community. I hope this message was well received, and thank you for listening.
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