It’s a Summer Jawn!
Real Talk Made Fresh by a New Cohort of Youth-Vote Arts Advocates
On the first day of #VoteThatJawn’s Summer Jawn program, one of nine high school interns observed that they’d grown up under a Black president, and learned that their country was proud to have moved forward. So, he said, they assumed the country would keep moving toward, rather than away from, racial and ethnic discovery and social innovation. Another young person wondered why we as a society did not decide to fund public transportation adequately. Like, why not?
These young people are not naïve. What they value is the idea of a governance structure that supports a thriving populace. A structure that updates itself, manages conflict and corruption, argues honestly about which problems to try to solve, and then works to solve them. Key to thinking and writing and designing content about this is, as the Buddhists say, to start where you are, build a community here. In the first week, they get to know each other as a working group: who talks, who’s quiet, who’s funny, who’s poised, who ‘splains, who doesn’t.
We started in my UPenn Creative Writing class after the 2018 Parkland shootings and the young people’s D.C. March For Our Lives, and grew through the masked 2020 summer of outdoor everything. Now VoteThatJawn is coming to shelter under banner of the Committee of Seventy, begun in 1904, a year after journalist Lincoln Steffers called Philadelphia “the most corrupt and the most contented” of a bad lot of city governments. C70 describes itself as “an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization which advocates for the improvement of government in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania” with a board made up of “70 business, legal, and civic leaders.” The young #VoteThatJawn contributors, their youth leaders and directors are rooted in this legacy.
It’s a brilliant branch of the American tradition of self-inspection and correction practice that led the First Congress in 1789 to check itself. Old-school updating. Hence, the Bill of Rights, beginning here:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Mostly, my own writing has lived outside of the Founders’ Enlightenment world-building we studied in school. That’s because I inherited, well, we all did, America’s simultaneous sabotage of its own ideals. The corner of that territory I’ve studied most is African enslavement, but since 2018, #VoteThatJawn’s young people have shone light into others that they’ve inherited: Native peoples’, women’s, LGBTQ, imigrants, even children’s points of view and hidden histories. Their work has focused on telling other young people that they are not excluded from civic life and should not withdraw from it, but step into and claim it.
Amplifying other young voices, like PA Youth Vote, and older wisdom, like C70, they look for ways that city, state, and federal government entities can be better, more fair, more responsive, more forward-looking. Without those wide-ranging perspectives, and without young cool and humor, their idealism and strength, would-be fresh voters might just think that everything from potholes and bus routes, gun violence and the climate, to all three branches of government are beyond their control. The VoteThatJawn interns, youth leaders, and directors understand that withdrawing from the vote undercuts their future.
What a gift to watch them walk across Broad Street in 100-degree weather, so hot the asphalt feels soft under our feet. They squint against the sun until we walk into the shade of the statue of Octavius Catto on the south apron of Philadelphia’s City Hall and into his legacy. Catto organized a Black troop for the Union Army, graduated as valedictorian and taught at the Institute for Colored Youth, later Cheyney University, founded a Black baseball team (the Pythians), and campaigned for the ratification of the 15th Amendment to allow Black men to vote. He was shot, at 32 years old, for insisting that they be allowed to exercise that right.
Here’s how the Washington Post tells the story:
Catto exhorted Blacks to register as Republicans because the party had supported the amendment. In 1870, Blacks voted for the first time in Philadelphia and elected Republican candidates. Democrats were determined to keep Blacks from voting during the following year’s election. White thugs menaced voters outside polls. Dozens were injured. One man was murdered with a hatchet blow to the skull.
When Catto learned that African Americans were being attacked as they attempted to vote, he dismissed classes at his school and ran toward the violence. He was confronted by a mob. A scuffle ensued. Catto, unhurt, continued on South Street. He passed Frank Kelly, a white Democratic Party operative, who recognized Catto. Kelly raised his pistol. A passerby yelled out a warning to Catto, who began to run. A bullet caught him.
Kelly fired again and again. Catto collapsed, dead in the street.
The interns drape themselves under the statue, and I lean back against a stone-and-metal replica of a ballot box to get them into the frame. Catto’s words form what might also be the inscription for our summer:
“There must come a change which shall force upon this nation that course which providence seems wisely to be directing for the mutual benefit of peoples.”
Over the next six weeks they will write articles, create and perform spoken-word poems, draw and paint, photograph and videotape images to convince other teens in Philadelphia (and beyond) to register and vote. They’ll do it in real time with each other, in person, online — and with ArtPhilly for the city’s 250th celebration next year. Can’t wait to see what they’ll produce!
