On youth, freedom and summer
by: Lauren Fardig Diop, Edyn Henton and Ta’Nya Leatherwood-Ford
One of the things I learned as an educator for 25 years is that in American culture we love to control and punish kids (school to prison nexus, anyone?), and then wonder why they’re disengaged from our civic, educational and societal systems. The longer we see young people as “an issue” and not human beings worthy of joy, investment, support and loving connections, the further we are from understanding why the teen takeovers are happening, both locally and nationally, and how we move together toward letting young people live into their freedom. In Detroit, we have many examples of young people who are moving freely with purpose, clarity, vision and style.
The kids are alright, and NOT ALRIGHT at the same time. I taught English and restorative practices in a high school until 2025, so I’m acutely aware of the combined pressures of school, home and friends, as well as this generation’s growing up through perma-crisis: COVID and virtual school, grief, loss, the George Floyd protests and racial reckoning of 2020, war, multiple genocides, one of which we’re funding, & the everpresent doom of climate change. Our bodies are not meant to hold all of that, much less see death and violence everyday while scrolling on our screens. Mental health symptoms of anxiety and depression are skyrocketing amongst both adults and teens: 1 in 5 adults and 1 in 7 teens now struggle with mental health issues, according to NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness, 2025).
As the teen takeovers started gaining national attention, adults kept asking “what do we do about teens?” in various forums and earlier this summer, media hysteria took over, as if our young people are problems to solve, instead of humans to nurture. Fear of teenagers is something that we have culturally held for a long time, though young people have been at the forefront of social movements throughout our country’s history of resistance. Instead of seeing the takeovers as inherently violent in majority Black cities like Detroit, which reinforces racism and a carceral narrative of control, we ask, how are we supporting our young people, through year-round employment, support and programming that is building stronger relationships with others in our community? How are we providing mentorship and support? As of late August, we have arrested more teens in 2026 than during the previous administration’s curfew program in summer of 2025, including 180 teens trying to enjoy the fireworks on June 22, many with family members who are adults, but not legal guardians.
Paolo Freire reminds us in Pedagogy of the Oppressed why we’re being so harsh on our teens when he says, “The oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom.” Adults in your 40’s and 50’s, some of whom are parents today, I invite you to remember… Belle Isle nights. Boblo fights. Northland and Fairlane’s 6pm curfews. Skateland’s security guards. All sorts of shenanigans after Hart Plaza concerts. No venues would allow hip-hop shows, so we took over public spaces with skateboards, graffiti, loud music and our right to take up space, to be seen (and not watched, says Tawanna Petty). Our collective amnesia for what it was like to be teens on the hunt for something, anything to do, or just to BE somewhere, anywhere else than home — we should know this story very well, because we lived it not long ago. Can you close your eyes and remember what it felt like to taste independence for the first time? Can we reframe takeovers as opportunities to connect and enjoy their city, too?
We’re working with an old narrative here when we bring out the fear of Black teens, in particular, in a rapidly gentrified downtown Detroit. The harkening back to the “Superpredator” myth of young, Black men of the 1980s and 90s, which resulted in the criminalization and incarceration of many Black teens then, who are now adults with their own children, reminds us that these narratives are old, cyclical and evergreen in our mainstream media. In his July 21st article in the Metro Times, “Detroit’s ‘teen takeover’ panic revives an old racist media playbook”, Eli Day points out that the incidents are few and far between, and crime is down all over the country, and yet this narrative persists. He says, “there is zero evidence that the few incidents at these events are out of step with the rate of violence in the city on any given day. And when you think about it for two seconds, that’s not surprising. Coverage has focused on the same handful of fights spread across six to eight events over several months, two of which escalated into needless shootings.” We cannot continue to participate in our own dehumanization, by calling for more police and surveillance when evidence shows that they do not keep us safer.
Yet, we can move past these racialized myths and fears of our teens when we center their innovation, their joy and their needs. In a conversation with Julia Cuneo of Detroit Area Youth Uniting Michigan, we discussed the developmentally appropriate drive for independence and autonomy that many young people experience. Julia said,”Instead of problematizing, criminalizing, and punishing these young people into compliance and disappearance, we should create a city that nurtures and protects this precious stage of growth. At DAYUM, we believe young people are not the leaders of tomorrow, but the leaders of today. These takeovers demonstrate that young people are not waiting for us to create youth spaces or programs, but are doing so for themselves. If we follow the lead of young people, we can see the changes our city needs to be truly inclusive and welcoming of all.”
Unlike the previous administration, which took a “more punitive” approach to curfew enforcement, Mayor Mary Sheffield’s new office of Community and Neighborhood Safety rolled out an Occupy the Summer campaign, with a six-point plan:
1) Safe Gun Storage
2) Neighborhood Safety Action Teams
3) After Hours Venue support
4) Detroit Police Summer Safety strategy
5) Restorative Practices Taskforce and
6) a year-round strategy for youth engagement.
While we appreciate the city taking a “restorative” approach in some areas of the plan, and we recognize that we do need accountability for weapons – surveillance, and increased police presence are always a part of the answer, and that’s not keeping us safe – only responding reactively to incidents. Police cause harm in many cases, like the case of Alonzo Lee-Perkins, an 18 year old young man who was shot by a DPD officer at the fireworks on June 22. We cannot normalize that in order to keep teens from harming each other, police firing on our young people is acceptable conduct, in Detroit or anywhere.
The June 22 incident, and campaign to support Alonzo Lee-Perkins’ healing and accountability for the officer involved calls into question if and how adults can bring or return safety to teen-organized situations without violence. We wonder if instead, teens need to be empowered with skills to manage these situations using conflict resolution strategies like restorative justice, conflict transformation and mediation to understand harm, impact and have relationships that can help de-escalate situations, so criminalization is not necessary or available as an option.
We are daily deluged with a lot – and our young people are using technology in new ways to live, work, connect and socialize. We have much to learn from them. Rather than celebrating their ability to organize, we are entrenched in fear and a need to control them, when we can work to better understand their needs and motivations, building better relationships and not just providing new programming.
And as we said last year in Riverwise, criminalizing parents into “better parenting” is not helping Detroiters either. We are in a national economic crisis, and many people in the city are choosing between paying rent and eating. Parents can be good parents and not be able to provide 24/7 supervision for their teens, many of whom are working themselves and supporting their families by providing childcare for siblings; Detroit teens deserve access to their own city, and all of the amenities that downtown has to offer. Even as an Ann Arbor kid desperate for access to a “real city”… could we afford anything downtown when we were younger? No. Did we still want to be there to find joy and experience life? Absolutely.
Furthermore, enforcement of parents overlooks a subsection of teens who do not have adults in their lives. Due to death, incarceration, being in foster care, some teens don’t necessarily have an adult who is available to counsel them, to drive or accompany them to an event. Black families in Detroit are beautiful because everyone is a cousin, and we take care of each other – but curfews tied to needing legal guardians present are unintentionally targeting Black families who may not look like a traditional nuclear family. How are we showing up for all of our young people, and working to build stronger relationships with the young people in our lives?
Parents, aunties, grandmas & gramps, uncs and caregivers of Detroit, I want to know: where do you go to be free? Where do you take your kids + grandbabies (locally) to remind them of their greatness, and to be in awe, find whimsy and joy? Tomorrow isn’t promised, so how are we centering our youth today, and trying to make an impact in our own families? This is how we will make a larger, sustainable change in our community.