Young Writers Project is a creative online community of teen writers, photographers and artists, which has been based in Vermont since 2006. Each week, VTDigger features the writing and art of young Vermonters who publish their work on youngwritersproject.org, a free, interactive website for 12- to 18-year-olds. To find out more, visit youngwritersproject.org, or contact Executive Director Susan Reid at sreid@youngwritersproject.org and 802-324-9538.
It is an irrefutable truth that the choices the aging members of today’s Congress and Supreme Court carry on making will have the greatest impact on our younger generations, with so much life stretching out before them. Climate change, reproductive rights, gun control: These are all issues that gravely concern Gen Z — because they will no doubt be taxed with correcting mistakes already made. In a call to action, this week’s featured poet, Beatrice Garvin of Peacham, prepares her peers for the fight they will soon have to take up as they come of age.
It starts with us
Beatrice Garvin, 14, Peacham
I’ve heard too many times
the excuses of our nation
that change would be too hard,
too frightening,
that it would take too long.
But why are we arguing
about something so necessary?
Change is no longer one of the options –
it is the only one.
So why? You may ask,
Why is nothing changing?
And I will ask you the same.
For change is what is needed,
and it is up to us.
The members of Gen Z,
the young and opinionated –
it lies in our hands
to undo the damage
and repair what is left.
We no longer have a choice,
for things have gone too far.
So no longer wonder why
but wonder how,
how we can change the world
one person at a time.
It starts with us.
