Howdy folks!

My name is Christina, and I’m a junior studio art and biology student at Wellesley College. Outside of class time, I research reproductive biology at Whitehead and organize social and educational events for the Chinese Student’s Association and (BC)^2, the biochemistry and biology club. I’m looking forward to learning about more inclusive and varied approaches to activism, especially those with an artistic spin, this semester in the co-design studio!

I was born and raised by my single, working mom in Montgomery County, Maryland – a county known for its wealth, diversity, and high quality of public education. Though MoCo is generally seen as a ‘progressive’ county, many microaggressions toward the growing PoC communities in the area fly under the radar. While being so close to the nation’s capitol made discussions of politics and race common both in and out of the classroom, issues of classism and ableism were often overlooked.

In the past I always felt that activism (as I knew it) took up too many spoons that I was already struggling to spend on being a good student. Though I am usually an active and enthusiastic organizer of events, when it comes to sensitive or personal topics, my confidence in my abilities plummets. I write my thoughts, revise, rewrite, but everything ends up in the bin! My tendency is toward privacy, and I generally err on the side of caution when it comes to social media interactions. However, I feel much more comfortable expressing myself through painting and other traditional fine arts – because of this, I am eager to learn more about ‘artivism’ and to explore what kind of contributions I can make to issues I care about, while remaining true to myself and my limitations.

WAAM/SLAM is a historically significant Wellesley asian & latinx movement I have become aware of recently. About ten years ago, students protested the college and made demands for multicultural resources for asian and latinx students. Eventually, the movement spread out to include latinx sibs, and they were able to move the administration to increase recruitment of minority students, appoint advisors specifically for asian and latinx students, and to expand asian and latinx studies. I am still experiencing the after-effects of WAAM/SLAM today – we just got a new multicultural center, where the asian and latinx advisor’s offices are located. The WAAM/SLAM movement continues to inspire many current on-campus advocacy groups, such as Pan-Asian Council and Raiz. https://waamslam.omeka.net/about

My name is Chris Kitchen. I am currently attending NuVu studio for eighth grade, and have been home schooled for most of my previous education.

Although I focus most on the sciences: engineering, design, and innovation from NuVu, as well as the more academic sciences, like physics, and Chemistry (personal favorites). My education has also been heavily influenced by the arts (mostly music). My parents are both professional musicians in the Borromeo string quartet (Dad: first violinist Mom: cellist) and I play violin myself. Due to that, music plays just as large a roll in my life as the sciences, and is inseparable from anything I do. I’m almost constantly listening to music while working at NuVu, but unfortunately am usually too busy to practice violin. At NuVu, I am currently working on an educational visualization of binary communication between computers. In the visualization, I have a two way, full duplex, serial communication between two computers, where I replace 0’s and 1’s travelling through wires with oil and purple water travelling through a clear tube (water: 1’s oil: 0’s). The visualization sends full ASCII binary, and follows standard ASCII protocols, essentially creating a large, extremely slow, and colorful wire. This will eventually be a temporary exhibit at the Boston Science Museum (hopefully).

An example of activism in the youth that I find inspiring is the Affordabili(T)/Mobili(T)/Youth way by the MBTA movement. This 8 year long youth movement was started to improve affordability and accessibility for youth on the MBTA. The main goals of the movement were to reduce restrictions on student passes on weekends, as well as adding what’s called a “youth pass” which would give free transit for youth, charging $10 a month, rather than the $27 that a normal student pass charges. Where I found the story: http://youthactivismproject.org/success-stories/ . Main sources: http://dailyfreepress.com/2014/03/16/activists-hold-rally-to-fight-for-reduced-fare-student-mbta-passes/ , http://www.mbta.com/uploadedfiles/About_the_T/Board_Meetings/YouthPassPilotfinalpresentation.pdf . I also have to warn that my understanding of the movement is a bit jumbled, and is partially based upon assumption, but I am still trying to find more information on the movement, and the progress it has made.

Hello everyone! I am Sam Daitzman, a student currently enrolled at NuVu Studio and Harvard’s Extension School Program. I left high school in under a month because I wanted a more relevant, modern education. I’m in my fourth year at NuVu Studio now, and I’ve worked on projects from fashion to prosthetic design to filmmaking and programming. I’ve organized a local youth civil rights group and a protest with the ACLU of Massachusetts, along with StudentRND’s CodeDay Boston event (which I am an evangelist for). I love the idea that design (in all media) can be guided by a moral and ethical purpose, rather than profit margins alone. I’m currently working an a completely reimagined treatment for Seasonal Affective Disorder at NuVu.

For my youth organization, I’m choosing Girls Who Code because I think it’s both an excellent example of effective youth activism with clear goals, but also because I see some excellent ways that the organization could be improved. They recently ran a series of campaigns that were overly focused on traditional notions of “biological sex” that detracted from the intersectional nature of sexism in the technology industry. They also tend to emphasize wage/career-centric benefits of programming over the experiential benefits or the empowerment of creation, which makes them less accessible to young women. Despite these issues, Girls Who Code has introduced programming to a generation of girls, many of whom have showed up to events like the one I organize in Boston.

https://girlswhocode.com/

Hi everyone! I’m Jade and I’m currently attending NuVu this winter term. I am a Junior in high school at Beaver Country Day School and am so excited to be apart of this Civic Media CoDesign class at a school as great as MIT. A little bit about me… I was born in Colombia but adopted at a young age and now live here (a little outside of Boston) My favorite sports to play are field hockey and softball. Although I do love frisbee, football and soccer to play for fun with friends. Music is my go to source for studying and just hanging out. I do not have a favorite type of music. As hard as it is to believe, every genre of music I have heard, I have liked. I want major in marine science or creative writing in college. Although, I have started to enjoy different types of design I’m doing at NuVu and in this class. I love young activists and empowering people in general so being in a class where we will all act as those people is amazing. It’s honestly pretty cool just being a high schooler and getting to join a college course.

This is Katherine Figueroa. She was 9 years old when she was pushed into a life of activism. Her parents were deported in a worksite raid leaving her on her own. She was on T.V trying to reach out the president at the time (Obama) … 🙁 and asking for help immediately. She marched and rallied until her family was finally released.

Hi, I’m Kobbie (Cubby) Ofori-Atta. I’m a Ghanaian-American sophomore at MIT, and I’m majoring in Computer Science and Molecular Biology. I hope to use this class to discover ways to instigate social change in order to improve the world around me, addressing my duty as a global citizen.

When I was in high school, I heard about this cool program called Codi’s Hats. I found out that the program was actually a non-profit organization centered around creating specialized hats for children undergoing cancer treatment. It was inspiring to see my peers show care for people they had never met before. The link to my school’s division of Codi’s Hats is below:

https://www.facebook.com/oaktoncodishats/

Hello,

My name is Asme & graduate student.
I like reading and trying my best to support youth activists everywhere and particularly in Ethiopia.
I aspire to be a journalist who could bring positive changes to different communities.

Here is the link for one of my inspiration at this time https://qz.com/909614/a-cameroonian-17-year-old-won-the-google-code-in-after-the-internet-was-shut-down-in-his-hometown-of-bamenda/

Hi, my name is Alex and I am fifteen year old high school student currently at Nuvu. I play a lot of sports like soccer and swimming however, swimming has become more of chore for me. I also recently just completed my first half marathon which is super exciting. Drawing is another one of my passions. Many members of my family are involved in art; my dad is a proffesor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, and my Granda is still an active painter. I, myself, have been drawing and working with art since I was three and I’ve had plenty of time to hone my skills. I recently found out that I also really like video editing. Sometimes I will spend my free time making funny vines, or just random silly videos which will keep me entertained for hours.

This is a link to the chinese democracy movement back in the 80s. I relate a lot to this because I am Chinese myself and my mom was actually at this protest: https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/chinese-pro-democracy-movement-1987-1989/