Please take a few moments tomorrow to call Senator Scott Brown and let him know that you’re willing to invest in our future and save kids by authorizing $1 Billion in youth jobs for this summer. Not only is this money that will be pumped back into our economy, but it will literally save lives. On Memorial Day, Ivol Brown, a 17-year-old youth leader was murdered on the way to a cookout that had been organized to celebrate and plan the upcoming trip to the US Social Forum that youth leaders from throughout New England will be taking together later this month. Those organizers are now saying that the best way to honor his life is to finish what he had been tirelessly working on- getting money for youth job to give more young people an opportunity that he had. According to Senator John Kerry,

“Ivol Brown was living proof of what can happen when you give a teenager a shot,” Kerry said in a statement. “He paid his debt to society and was given a job when he got out of prison. It turned his life around. There are a lot of kids just like him and we should be standing up for jobs for them now.”

If you can still spare a moment after calling Senator Scott Brown, call Senator Kerry and thank him for making our young people’s lives a priority. This year in Boston, 27 people have been murdered. But this is not just a Boston problem. As a youth worker and organizer, it is startling and heartbreaking to me how many young people that I work with in Boston, Worcester and some smaller cities and towns are resigned that losing friends and loved ones is just the way it is.

For those of us that work with young people, especially in urban communities, the violence is cacophonous, and so much more so for the youth themselves. As disheartening as it is to have a sixteen-year-old tell me that she feels that it’s better to get used to it, I’m encouraged by how many young people have been fighting for access to jobs and opportunity over the past several months. Young people from Boston, Worcester, Chelsea, Holyoke, Lowell, and other cities and towns across the state have converged on the State House multiple times to lobby policy makers to save youth jobs. More recently, the Roxbury Environmental Empowerment Project sold “Sour Scott Lemonade” to raise money for youth jobs and deliver a message to the Senator.

On March 19, Senator Brown voted down an amendment sponsored by John Kerry that would have funded approximately 6,700 teen summer jobs in Massachusetts. Teens have estimated that it will take nearly 25 million cups of fresh lemonade at 50 cents per cup to recoup the funds from Senator Brown’s “No” vote.

But young people are often the first on the chopping block and last to be heard or taken seriously in matters of policy. That’s why I urge you to make a call and let the Senator know that you vote and you support youth jobs. We can save youth lives, taxpayer dollars (yes, in the long run, investing in youth jobs will cut costs of public assistance and incarceration), and our communities from being held hostage by senseless violence and hopelessness.