Videos of kids gathering and, in some cases, fighting at Bayshore Mall in Glendale went viral this spring as hundreds of young people met up for a so-called "teen takeover."
It was part of a national trend on social media where users shared AI-generated posters encouraging kids to show up at the mall during the popular week of spring break.
In Glendale, police showed up to the event and ultimately arrested 14 people between the ages of 12 and 19 years old. It's hard to track whether the minors who were arrested were charged or instead just released to their parents.
The incident sparked reflection for middle school teacher and former Milwaukee state Rep. LaKeshia Myers about where and how teenagers, particularly Black teenagers, are able to congregate.
She wrote an op-ed in the Milwaukee Courier titled From the Edmund Pettus Bridge to Bayshore Mall: What We Owe Our Young People.
In the piece, she begins by sharing that during the teen takeover at Bayshore, she was on a tour of historically Black colleges with a group of students from Milwaukee. The group also visited the Pettus Bridge, which was the site of a violent attack on peaceful civil rights marchers on March 7, 1965.
WUWM education reporter Katherine Kokal spoke with Myers about her op-ed, and began by asking why she chose to compare the social media reactions to the teen takeover with the reactions to the Civil Rights movement.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Katherine Kokal: You tie these experiences together, why is that?
LaKeshia Myers: Because I think there are a lot of similarities when it comes to Black existence in what are perceived [to be] white spaces. And I think when you look at history, the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the reason the bridge had to be crossed for voting rights in the 1960s, was because there was open defiance from Black people during that time to exercise their right as citizens. That caused chaos and outrage from people who said, "How dare you?" A lot of the racial comments that I saw online [after the mall incident,] a lot of the "Oh, this shouldn't happen in our community." Well, these kids are part of your community. So how are they not allowed to exist in their community?
There were people who said, 'Look, I live here and this is not how I want my public spaces treated. and this made me afraid.' What would you say to that?
It made you afraid of what? Or of whom? That's the retort that I would give to those people who said it made you be afraid. Because if the faces of the children who were there were white, would you still be afraid? And that's the question that we have to reconcile within ourselves. And I think that's the question. I mean, we talk about this all the time.
As an educator, it is statistically known that Black and brown children are "adult-ified" more than white children. That the sympathy value of a Black or brown child is very different than that of a white child. I think when we check our own biases, that's when you start to do the real work. Were you afraid because it was mostly Black kids at the mall, or were you afraid because they were teenagers in general?
How do we approach this in a way that helps people understand how to respond to things going on in their community that they may not like?
I think you have to be proactive in policy. I think you have to be proactive in community response. I think you have to be proactive as a community that embraces young people.
Okay, these are kids. What is in place for them? School calendars come out around February or March of every year. School districts know when their spring break is going to be. So most of the school districts are on the same spring break. Looking at that, what does your community offer? If the mall is a community hub, and you think about the American teenager, it's like the mall was made for the American teenager. You know, where do teenagers go to see and be seen, to spend their recreational dollars, to spend their time, you know, going to movie theaters, eating at food courts, doing all of these things. I think you have to understand that this is gonna be a location that is going to be popular with teenagers. So what type of foresight and thinking ahead goes into planning certain things?
Are there conversations around making those available to teenagers and their families, to make sure that they have an outlet and places to go? So I think you have to think ahead and work together to actually provide some programming, especially if you're like, "Oh, we don't want everybody collecting at the mall." So if we're not gonna be open to embracing young people, what do you have to offer them?
Do you have a question about education or how schools work in our area? Submit it here to WUWM education reporter Katherine Kokal.
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