The winners of the Black Education Matters Student Activist Award are some of the most dynamic leaders in the struggle for racial justice in Seattle area.  Learn more about these young powerful changmakers below.

JHBLM•16

2016 Awardees:

Image result for marci owens

  • Marci Owens has been fighting for universal healthcare since the age of 7, when her mom died from a treatable condition. She has been an outspoken supporter of the movement for Black lives for and for transgender rights.
  • Image result for Ahlaam IbraahimAhlaam Ibraahim  founded Global Islamophobia awareness day.  She writes for the Seattle Globalist and loves to discuss politics and religion in her free time.
  • Ifrah Abshir helped lead the Transportation Justice Movement for Orca Cards (fare cardImage result for Ifrah Abshirs for buses and trains in the Puget Sound area) in Seattle Public Schools. The two-year battle culminated in the city providing Orca Cards to low-income high school students throughout Seattle.

 

JHBLM•172017 Awardees:

  • Jelani Howard, a GaImage result for Jelani Howard seattlerfield High School football player helped lead discussions about institutional racism and police violence with his teammates. With his leadership, and others, the Garfield football team decided to take a knee during the national anthem at every game last season in the spirit of NFL players Colin Kaepernick, inspiring other student teams around Seattle and across the country to do the same.
  • PPreciousrecious Manning-Isabell has been a student activist since her first year at Chief Sealth International High School.  She has organized to defend Muslim students, led actions for Black Lives Matter at School day, and produced a short documentary about race and racism called “Riffing on the Dream” that won an award at the 2014 Social Justice Film Festival.
  • Image result for Mahala ProvostMahala Provost has been an activist for food justice and has won seven gold medals statewide in the NAACP’s Afro-Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics. She has also worked as a research assistant at the Seattle Children’s Research Institute and won an award for her contribution to that project. Mahala won the “Pennie Bennett Black Education Matters Award” presented by NFL star Michael Bennett in honor of his mother, a lifelong educator.

JHBLM•NY2018 Awardees:

  • LaylaLayla Mohamud is a leader of the People of Color Alliance at the Center School. under Layla’s leadership, POCA has planned and led the center school’s MLK Day assembly, which was originally planned for January. When Layla and POCA members
    solicited questions about race and racism from their peers in the days leading up to the assembly, they received blatantly racist comments in the form of an online survey. A few days later, the MLK assembly was canceled because of rumors of hateful threats against the community. Scared but undeterred, Layla led the movement to make sure the assembly was rescheduled.  Victorious in her struggle, they carried out the assembly and In the end, the assembly was expertly carried out, pushing the staff and students to explore institutional racism in their society and their own school–as well as how to fight it.

Lalya is also a founding member of the NAACP youth coalition.  Watch her powerful testimony to the Seattle City Council about increasing funding to services that meet the needs of our city’s most vulnerable population (starts 18 minuets into the video): http://www.seattlechannel.org/BudgetCommittee?videoid=x84639

Ha_aheo Auwae-Dekker
Photo by Melissa Hellmann
  • Ha’aheo Auwae-Dekker is one of the outstanding young founders of the NAACP Youth Coalition (NY-C) that is dedicated to pushing Seattle Public Schools toward racial justice. Ha’aheo helped lead the successful campaigns to demand ethnic studies programs in the Seattle Public Schools and to get the school board to officially support “Black Lives Matter At School Week.”

Watch their powerful testimony to the Seattle City Council about increasing funding to services that meet the needs of our city’s most vulnerable population (starts 18 minuets into the video): http://www.seattlechannel.org/BudgetCommittee?videoid=x84639

  • New GenerationIMG_2578 is an activist organization founded completely by Seattle Black high school youth. New Generation formed in 2017 in the wake of the police murder of Charleena Lyles.  These student leaders led a walkout/speak out at Garfield High School about her death and have continued to organize in their school and community for racial justice.  Uniting students with Charleena Lyles’ family on the one year anniversary of her death, New Generation held a powerful assembly that launched the hashtag #RememberHerName to make sure that people don’t forget her and the police violence that led to her death.

JHBLM•NY2019 AwardeesRenaMWB

Rena is an NAACP Youth Coalition leader  and one of the most outspoken leaders for ethnic studies and the Black Lives Matter at School movement.

KWKhabirah founded the Black Student Union at Madrona Elementary School and has served as the Garfield High School BSU president for the past three years. She has been a relentless advocate for Black students in advanced classes and has lead many struggles for racial justice and initiatives to promote Black excellence.

Cece serves as the Nathan Hale’s representative on the NAACP-Youth

Coalition and has been a leader in the struggle for ethnic studies and for the Black Lives Matter at School week of action.

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JHBLM•NY2020 Awardees

  • Angelina RileyAngelina Riley is a Rainier Beach High School student and incoming president of the Seattle King County NAACP Youth Council. Angelina helped write a petition asking the district to no longer allow police in the schools that garnered some 18,000 signatures in a few days and led to the Seattle Public Schools announcement that police would be removed from the schools for a year.
  • AzureAzure Savage is a queer, trans, Black student graduate of Garfield High School. He is the author of You Failed Us: Students of Color Talk Seattle Schools, an exploration of the experience that students of color have in the schools they attend around the Seattle area. It incorporates direct quotes from interviewed students, as well as the author’s own personal experiences from when they were in elementary school, to now, about to enter their senior year of high school. Azure’s book helped ignite a discussion about combating institutional racism in the Seattle schools.  Azure has also organized BLM rallies at Garfield and participated in BLM rallies throughout the city.
  • Kidist.MainPictureKidist Habte, is a co-founder of “Black and Brown Minds Matter,” and is a junior at Rainier Beach High School. As Parent Map wrote, “She helped conceive of and organize the group’s inaugural Sept. 4 rally to raise awareness of funding inequities across the district, many of which are caused by the under-projection of school enrollment numbers that results year after year in budget cuts and under-resourcing of Seattle Public Schools serving students in South Seattle.” She also helped organize the petition to remove police from schools that received over 18,000 signatures in a few days and led to the Seattle Public Schools announcement that police would be removed from the schools for a year.

JHBLM•NY2021 Awardees:

  • Mia Dabney is an activist and organizer with the NAACP Youth Council.  Seattle Educator Jon Greenberg said of her, “Mia has emerged as one of the primary leaders of the WA NAACP Youth Council (N-YC), one of the most influential youth-led groups in the Puget Sound area.” One tangible win that Mia led is the creation of Seattle Public Schools Board Policy 1250, which puts youth on the Seattle School Board was passed unanimously in the spring.
  • KyRi Miller is a student leader of the Garfield Black Lives Matter at School mural project and rally.  Seattle educator Alekz Wray said of him, “KyRi has the rare skill of being able to blend hard and uncomfortable truths with an unwavering sense of urgency and love. His words are powerful and demand attention, as I most recently experienced when he helped serve as a leader and organizer for our Black Lives Matter at School Week assembly and mural painting.”
  • Aneesa Roidad is an activist and organizer with the NAACP Youth Council. She has been a leader in the struggle for Ethnic Studies in Seattle and helped to get the school board to pass a resolution in support of Black Lives Matter at School. Seattle Educator Sooz Stahl said of her, “I was dazzled by her ability to galvanize her peers’ collective energy toward solutions to these [social] issues.”

JHBLM•NY2022 Awardees:

Alexis Mburu
  • Alexis Mburu helped organize the Black Lives Matter at School week, and for two years running, and has emceed one of its signature events: the Young, Gifted and Black Talent Show. She was a member of the Bridge Committee in Tukwila, and is working to develop a series of student panels at Foster High School next year. Mburu’s writing and activism has been featured in Real Change, “Stop punishing students, because your thoughts and prayers are not enough,” and South Seattle Emerald. Mburu is the vice president of the NAACP Youth Council and leads an internship program at the Seattle MLK Coalition.

Kaley Duong
  • Kaley Duong is the secretary of the NAACP Youth Council (NYC) and helped organize the Teach the Truth protest in Seattle during the Spring of 2022–and even helped lead the march through the streets of the Chinatown-International District, megaphone in hand. She helped plan the annual Martin Luther King Day Workshop event in January of 2022 and participated in the annual ethnic studies Praxis Youth Organizing Conference. As well, Kaley joined an effort to educate teacher candidates about issues of racial equity, and taught a workshop at the Unity in the Community event at Nathan Hale High School. She was also part of a group of students selected to train Seattle Public Schools board members ahead of Policy No. 1250, which was approved in May and which entails students sitting on the board starting in fall.