Yelani

"The power of organizing and working as a community for something better, especially when it’s going to affect us ... that was really cool."

By Students of NYC

December 19^th, 2025

"There are a lot of blue chairs near downtown Brooklyn, and my friends and I — we'd want to sit, eat, chat and hang out after school. But there was always pressure to go home. There's a strained relationship between police and youth in downtown Brooklyn. We noticed the tension from both sides. As much as there were police telling students to keep it moving, sometimes there would be youth getting into altercations. We were in this weird middle ground like, I'm not causing the problem, but I’m still viewed as a part of the problem. At home, on the phone with each other we'd be talking like, man, why can’t we just hang out?

I started seeing flyers for the YLC in the staircase going to class. At the first meeting, I quickly realized that it was not just us seeing this problem. It was collective. So we brainstormed. I knew it would take time. Being in that room with like-minded peers, coming up with ideas — it was really empowering. Even if we can't solve it, how can we work toward making it better? The power of organizing and working as a community for something better, especially when it’s going to affect us ... that was really cool. I hadn’t had an experience like that beforehand. Ms. Kelly runs the club. But it's like, she brings us together, and then during the meetings, she kind of steps back. Lets us do the work.

If we were going to improve the relationship between police and youth in our neighborhood, we knew we had to educate people on both sides. So we created one-pagers. For students, the one-pagers explained why this was an issue, what they could do, how they could help themselves. We presented them during the study hall periods and learning lab periods. For the police officers, we made a different version — it gave results of a survey showing how students felt while they were outside, as well as suggestions for how to connect with them. We brought the flyers to the 84th precinct in the morning during roll call and also after school. It was a really cool first step.

To just ask the youth in our school, 'Hey, start building relationships with police. …' That’s too hard. We knew we needed to think of how we can connect people in a fun, engaging way that would get past preconceived biases. So we thought — let’s do a field day. Everybody loves games. We came up with the Bridging the Gap event and held our first one in March. We invited the local precinct, and we advertised and worked hard to get members of our school community to come. A lot of kids were reluctant — like, field day with cops? We knew getting them to come was just half the battle. We would need a way to get people to have fun and participate once they were there. We came up with a punch card system. Each time you played a game, you got a stamp, and if you got three stamps, you got a T-shirt or another prize. Six stamps, you got a gift card. We spent so much time planning that first event, and we were nervous. Would people come? What if we don’t have a good turnout? But it worked out better than we could have imagined. The games were fun. And to see all those officers show up, and the youth, then to hear from friends after the fact saying, 'this was actually fun.' It was like seeing the predetermined biases being squashed. When a cop and a student are trying to play head, shoulders, knees, and toes, there’s no difference between them in the moment. That was community. I hope even after I graduate, Bridging the Gap will be a thing.

Officer Council was a huge help to us. He helped get us into the precinct to give our presentations. He would come to our YLC meetings and listen to what we said about what needs to be amplified — he was meeting us halfway. As youth, talking to stakeholders is already nerve-wracking. But having someone listen to you and say, 'Yes! I want to make that happen' — that changes things. Officer Carmona too. She came every Thursday, listened to us, watched us, went into our breakout groups. Now outside, I see them and I say hi! If you ask me a few years back, I don’t think I would be able to walk up to the police and say hi. But now I genuinely can, and it’s not uncomfortable or anything."