Editors Note: This week’s opinion piece comes to us from the young people at Youth Action Research Group in Washington, D.C. A youth membership based organization, YARG organizes young people in the city to change policies around issues that affect the city’s under represented youth population. Currently, they are working on improving D.C.’s youth employment training and placement programs. The following editorial was written by Jose Andrade, age 19, Nancy Cruz, age 16, Adriana Reynoso, age 18, Victor Benitez, age 16, Jacinta Wood, age 18, and Tiffany Jones, age 17.

We are youth organizers from the Youth Action Research Group in Washington, D.C. YARG is an organization mostly staffed by youth. We have one adult that works here and there will be another adult starting this fall. We have 6 youth staff and 50 members.

This emergency crime bill that the mayor passed was a shock. Why was a crime emergency called after someone was murdered in Georgetown? Not that it was good that someone was killed, but people in other D.C. neighborhoods deal with friends and family being killed every day and it’s not considered a crime emergency.

To us, It seems like only youth were blamed for what D.C. police are calling a sharp increase in crime when it is mostly adults who commit violent crime in D.C. Only one youth has been charged with homicide in D.C. this year. We feel, it’s easy to blame youth and put all these rules on us because we can’t vote. Besides, the things they put into place aren’t going to work. They haven’t yet; it’s almost been 30 days and people are still being killed in D.C.

The curfew of 10 p.m. wrongly punishes all youth. Young people who are out on the streets late at night and doing wrong are going to be out even if there is a curfew. The youth the curfew affects the most are the majority of us that are not out doing anything wrong. A 10 p.m. curfew means that we can’t go to an 8 o’clock movie without adult supervision. We are on lock down in our own city.