Our Generation: Enveloped in Grief, Entrenched in Terror, and Enshrined in Fear

Canyon Crest Academy student Sydney Chan delivered a powerful speech at a July 9 abortion rights march and rally in Del Mar. Her speech excerpted below.

I would like to thank you all for coming and supporting. As many of us live in the Del Mar area, it is important for us to show that though we live in California, where abortion rights are protected, we will stand up for people in the other states that have abortion bans and abortion restrictions that are being instated. We need to stand up for those in the foster care system, that is massively underfunded and overcrowded, and is used as a be-all, end-all solution that justifies denying people the rights to their bodies. We need to stand up for the right and accessibility to contraceptives, and for the right to queer intimacy and queer marriage. These are all interconnected rights –⁠ to fight for one is to need to fight for all, because our lives and futures depend on it. 

My next message is for all of you here who are youth, who have had your adolescence ridden with news of tragedy, of restriction, of threat, of violence, of fear, and of despair, one case after another. This is for my friends and peers and all of you who are living in a time where our future feels bleak, uncertain, and doomed. I see us –⁠ I see our generation, enveloped in grief, entrenched in terror, and enshrined in fear. I see our generation, seething in rage, wielding our rage because it’s the only resource as many of us cannot vote. Our rage is the only thing we have, it is our uniting force. But the rage tears at our souls.

The constant fight to ensure we are safe and have some semblance of a future leaves permanent scars –⁠ we are teenagers, trying to exist, trying to survive. At this point, we have aching arms, hoarse voices, dried tears on our faces.  We keep showing up. Sometimes we win, many times we are turned down, invalidated, called slurs, yelled at, told we do not know enough.

We are used to it at this point, we watch as tragedy hits the headlines again, we despair in more fear and more rage as children are shot in their classrooms, as children and people become victims to police brutality, as our rights to our bodily autonomy are taken away, as our voices and existences are silenced in classrooms. Parents lose their 10-year-old children. Teenagers are forced to carry pregnancies. Kids are outed by their teachers to their homophobic and transphobic families.