Difference maker Aaliyah Murray: ‘Let’s put kids to work’
Minnesota Teen Activists was started because students were fed up with the adults in their lives not taking action. That’s something 17-year-old Aaliyah Murray wants to be clear about.
“I was 14 and I had a cousin who was experiencing racism, but the administration at her school wasn’t doing anything about it,” Murray said. “We decided to stop waiting for a seat at the table. This is affecting us — let’s put kids to work.”
It was May of 2020, and Murray, then a freshman in high school, had been stuck in distance learning for weeks. In texts, chats and Zoom calls, she started gathering friends online and brainstorming ways to support students of color like her cousin.
Just days into their planning sessions, George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer.
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Aaliyah watched her friends join protests against racism and police violence. She and her friends began posting on Instagram about staying safe while protesting, and sharing stories from students or people of color about experiencing racism.
“After George Floyd was murdered, you've seen a lot of teens out there on the front lines … protesting. A lot of teens were spending their summers getting hit with rubber bullets, instead of you know, going out to the gym as they should have. They were fighting for their life,” Aaliyah said.
The mass protests were a turning point for Aaliyah. She believes they were a turning point for many students in Minnesota.
“After they see that they can make change, and when they see that they can go on the front lines and when they see that their voice made change, then they're like, ‘You know what, we can do this,’” she said.
Aaliyah began using the Minnesota Teen Activists Instagram page to highlight stories from students who talked about racist experiences at their schools and called on school leaders to do better, to take students’ experiences seriously.
In April of 2021, when Daunte Wright was killed by a white police officer in Brooklyn Center, Aaliyah and her friends organized a statewide walkout, attended by thousands of Minnesota teenagers. That protest and some of the others that followed were, Aaliyah thinks, a turning point for many students in Minnesota.
“I think when we started doing the walkouts, I think students really believed like, this is our school, and there is not a school without the students.”
Aaliyah and her fellow Minnesota Teen Activists leaders have organized other walkouts. They’ve rallied students to cast their votes in elections, and they’ve testified at the Minnesota Legislature in support of bills they think are important.
For Aaliyah, taking a stand for what she believes is right has been one of the most formative and powerful experiences of her high school career.
“I remember being like a little girl and not really sticking up for myself. And I look at myself now and I really wish that there was an older person, or at least someone who could have done that for me. So I believe in doing it for myself and for others,” she added.
This story is part of a series produced with support from the Education Writers Association Reporting Fellowship program.