San Mateo County youth use their voices to advocate for change

“We were all super hyped up and everyone there felt super empowered to enact change,” said 15-year-old Iliopoulou. “So many people cared about this cause. I was so shocked because we were expecting 500 people max.”

Despite modest expectations, a couple thousand attended the San Mateo demonstration held at City Hall followed by a march to the police station on Franklin Parkway. Just the day before, a few thousand attended the Redwood City demonstration in Courthouse Square, a far larger turnout than 14-year-old Martinez expected. 

“It was scary at first and I didn’t think much of it but it only got scary when I got up to speak,” said Martinez. “At first it didn’t feel like that many people would come but seeing that thousands of people came, it was crazy.” 

She expected the crowd to be as small as 50 people when sending out a flier to her close friends but once it was posted to social media platforms like Instagram and Snapchat the event grew substantially. Social media played a key role in all the organizers’ planning process, enabling the young leaders to think up the idea and have a flier widely spread the same day. 

“I was watching TV and wanted to go to a San Francisco protest and [my parents] said it was too dangerous. I told them I was going to plan one here and had a meeting with the Coalition Z team. They said yeah and when I told my parents they were so surprised,” said Heath, the 15-year-old president of the local chapter of Coalition Z, a national political youth organization. 

Heath said she and her team gathered on a Saturday and had a flier up that same night promoting their event for the following Wednesday, June 3. With a little guidance from a history teacher, the girls set out to connect with the local police department and to find speakers for the event. 

“We thought about people we knew personally and reached out to them first. We dedicated that time to searching up different black community leaders in the area that would be willing to speak,” said Heath. “I liked the list of speakers we had because they all came from different backgrounds. Some were lawyers and some were students. Some were in high school and some were 50, 60 years old.” 

An interest in attending protests in larger cities such as those in San Francisco and San Jose also motivated Foster City’s organizer, Julia Streeter, to plan her own kid-friendly demonstration as well. At 11 years old, she presented her parents with her own flier after they sided against taking her to the larger protests in neighboring cities due to concerns for her safety. 

Streeter and her mother, Vy Vo, worked to keep the two events they organized small to cater to families with similar safety concerns. Both events attracted a crowd of 200 to 300 participants. 

“The speech was nerve-racking but I was proud of myself when I was done. I’m happy I could help anyway I can for the Black Lives Matter movement,” said Streeter. “I’m hoping to inspire other people to organize and start their own protests and marches. I hope to inspire other people to do something.” 

Following the events, many of the organizers harnessed the momentum of the demonstrations to continue pushing for change. Martinez has partnered with other local organizers to plan a series of demonstrations including one Friday, June 19, as an extension of the “defund the police” movement. 

The Coalition Z team is working toward implementing policy changes and has multiple ideas members are in the process of researching. Like Martinez, the group has focused on police budgets and hopes to start a dialogue on how funds can be better distributed toward education and mental health. 

“After the protests we’re all like OK this is cool, now we need to use the moment to effect change,” said Yu, the director of outreach for Coalition Z. 

Both the Redwood City and San Mateo protests were considered to be largely successful but did have some trouble. A Redwood City protester was arrested for concealing a machete inside a poster but was quickly detained allowing for the demonstration to remain peaceful. Participants of the San Mateo demonstration felt the event was also peaceful until officers appeared at the end of the march in what witnesses called riot gear. The heavy uniforms are under scrutiny as part of a nationwide movement to demilitarize police forces, a conversation also being had in Redwood City between officials and community members. 

Despite the incidents, the organizers felt proud of their events and have used the experiences as motivation toward future organizing efforts and their careers. Both Streeter and Heath hope to become lawyers while Yu hopes to combine her passion for activism with marketing, a lesson she learned was possible from organizing the San Mateo protest. Iliopoulou and Martinez plan to continue down the path of activism, and said they are hoping to use their privilege to enact change however they can. 

“We have to keep advocating for justice to be served. This isn’t a once a week trend. We have a lot of momentum and time. I’m in it for the long haul,” said Iliopoulou.