Announcing the 2023 Black Education Matters Student Activist Award (BEMSAA) winners: Marta Sisay and Joyin Akinola. These two exceptional young people have done extraordinary work in the struggle against structural racism in education. The BEMSAA provides a $1,000 award, public recognition, and connection to a community of other young changemakers.
“Joyin has displayed an unwavering commitment to justice utilizing an intersectional lens,” educator Renna Harb explained. “She understands the nuances and interconnectedness of race, class, and gender, and actively works against oppressive institutional systems by using her voice as a call to action.”
Joyin has been an active member of the Student Justice Collective where she helped develop and facilitate a workshop for her high school peers on the importance of educational diversity at Northshore’s annual Student Justice Conference.
In addition, Joyin has organized with her peers to ensure that Black History Month was properly recognized and made relevant to students’ lives. Joyin has not only worked to educate her peers about issues of race and social justice, but she has advocated for change in her school district, including testifying to the Northshore School Board in support of racial equity policies.
Marta Sisay’s work in the Seattle Public Schools has demonstrated, once again, the power of young people’s activism. When the tragic shooting at Ingraham High School stole the life of a student this school year, Marta Sisay grieved. But then she took action. She understood that powerful forces in the city and the school district would use the violent act, not to flood the schools with school psychologists and wraparound services, but to call for reinstating police.
Marta quickly joined the Seattle Student Union (SSU) in calling for more counselors, not cops, at Ingraham and across the district. She attended organizing meetings at her school and with the SSU to make her voice heard on this issue. Less than a week after the death at Ingraham, Marta played a vital role in organizing a student walkout from schools all around Seattle to protest gun violence and demand increase emotional health supports at school. Hundreds of students left their schools in the middle of the day and rallied in front of City Hall.
Then during Seattle’s Black Lives Matter at School week of action, Marta joined the organizing effort to ensure the public schools remained free of police. At a panel held at Roosevelt High School during the week of action, Marta said, “When there are police in schools, you don’t know their intentions. There are bad cops out there and you don’t know what they are going to do and I think that’s just going to increase violence and make the students of color feel unsafe.”
Marta Sisay and Joyin Akinola have only begun their work for a better world, but it’s already clear that we will get their sooner with these two dynamic young people.
Black Education Matters 