It\u2019s 8 pm, and I\u2019m leaving the Dollar Store in University City, Missouri. It\u2019s a magnificent June evening: the sun is setting and a refreshing breeze weaves through the branches of the trees that line the concrete islands of the parking lot.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis would have been a great day for a bike ride,\u201d I think to myself. \u201cOr for swimming. Or a barbeque\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
As I continue to tally the many uses this day could have served, I see a group of about 20 high-school-age kids hanging out in the back of the parking lot. They seem to be enjoying themselves. Some are on bikes. One dribbles a basketball. All are laughing and joking around. I ask myself, why would a group of teenagers hang out in a grocery store parking lot? As I get into my car, a police car pulls into the parking lot, shooing the kids away. They oblige, not taking offense to the officer\u2019s warning and go on about their evening, still laughing and joking. The officer stays in the parking lot until the kids are far enough away that he knows they won\u2019t return once he\u2019s gone.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m still confused about why a Dollar Store parking lot would be a teenage hang out as I make my way home, when I realize that perhaps these kids are the aftermath of the new curfew for the Delmar Loop, an eclectic, six-block entertainment and shopping district in St. Louis.<\/p>\n
Mayor Shelly Welsch stated in an article on STLtoday.com<\/a> that U.City officials are up to the challenge of finding suitable activities for the 16-and-under crowd. A reader commented that the kids who city officials want to keep out of the Loop after hours are the same kids who \u201cterrorized\u201d (his word, not mine) the Metro-Link stations last summer, before Metro Transit increased security presence on platforms. It seems that Mayor Welsch and company need to find something to occupy these adolescent \u201cterrorists,\u201d before they become too attached to their grocery store parking lot.<\/p>\n The Delmar Loop curfew change is only one small contributing factor to the potential issue of kids being disruptive and finding other places to hang out. By the end of summer, they\u2019ll migrate west and become a nuisance to Centennial Commons, a recreation center recently built in University City. St. Louis needs to take a cue from other cities and address its lack of opportunities for youth activism.<\/p>\n In 2008, a group of Chicago business owners recognized that the violence in Chicago was not only becoming increasingly deadly, but for the most part caused by the youth population. They organized a youth-driven and youth-directed social action group that aims to help divert potentially violent energies toward working for social change on a local and global scale. Youth Struggling to Survive<\/a> also provides an online forum where members can discuss and find solutions to issues in the Chicago area as well as organize community events to promote social change.<\/p>\n Seattle\u2019s Young People\u2019s Project<\/a> (SYPP) is a youth-led empowerment organization that provides students with a voice to catalyze social change. Since 1992, SYPP has organized social justice education where youth have the opportunity to voice their experience and solutions to issues of inequality.<\/p>\n