The sound of fingers snapping in appreciation echoed across the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library auditorium.

On the stage was Jasmine McNeill, a student at Capital City Public Charter School. Giving a speech on teen suicide, she paused, overcome with emotion.

“People need to know that teens don’t want to die,” McNeill said. “We want the pain to stop. And we want people to listen to us.”

At her left sat a group of local officials and advocates, including At-Large Councilmember Elissa Silverman and student rights activist Mary Beth Tinker.

“We have tools that we can use to work on this issue. We have school-based therapy that needs to be expanded to more students around D.C., and nationally,” McNeill said. “This is something our city needs to improve on now.”

McNeill was one of 10 D.C. area students chosen to speak Wednesday afternoon as part of Project Soapbox, an annual event held by the Mikva Challenge. They are a youth civic engagement organization that operates a chapter in D.C. The organization also influences local public school curriculum, integrating its “Action Civics” curricula into U.S. government, D.C. history, and sixth grade English language arts courses.

The nationwide program, now in its fifteenth year, is an opportunity for students in different parts of the country to talk to local officials about issues close to home, like mental health, racism in maternity health care, and child poverty.

It was the first in-person public Project Soapbox since the COVID-19 pandemic began. Leading up to Wednesday’s “mainstage” event, there were 75 students participating from across 13 D.C. area schools. Gabrielle Lamplugh, director of communications for the Mikva challenge, said some of the students have participated in Soapbox before, but this was their first time speaking on stage in front of a large audience.

“They haven’t had that opportunity to speak out in front of an audience or to interact with their peers about these issues that are important to them,” Lamplugh said. “To connect with other students that are concerned about the same thing.”

After each speech, a mic was passed around to members of the audience. They weren’t there to offer critiques or ask questions; instead, they talked about what they loved about the speeches, what resonated with them, how they related to the students’ experiences.

Jessica Sutter, a State Board of Education member representing Ward 6, one of the local officials on stage, told McNeill that her message was “incredibly important.”

“Your confidence in the face of your own emotions really inspires me,” she said.  “We’re the ones who need to fight for the resources that you’re telling us that you and your peers really need in order to be successful…thank you for making that clear today.”

Cary Tran-Trong, from the Edmund Burke School, spoke about the lack of access many transgender youth have to medical care. While her family has been supportive and she’s gotten the gender affirming care she needs, she said many others are not so lucky.

“Some people see me as a 15-year-old boy who’s mentally ill, a criminal and whose parents are abusing him,” she said. “Does that sound right to you?”

She urged people to donate to organizations supporting transgender youth and to vote for politicians who fund those organizations.

“I think your speech did a great job at showing all the work that we have left to do,” said a student in the audience. “We need to learn to love each other and accept each other for who we are.”

One of the younger students, Zeinab Dembele, a student at Ida B. Wells Middle School, gave a speech on colorism, and the discrimination Black children with darker skin face within their own communities.

“Family members often say, ‘I don’t know what happened to you. You used to be so light when you were younger.’ I’m used to it, but it still hurts. At school, kids do not realize how colorist they’re being when they call other children burnt,” Dembele said. “I do not blame them. I blame the colorist society we grew up in and continue to live in.”

“You’re really brave for sharing your experience,” a student in the audience said after her speech. “Thank you for that.”

Jermaine Smith, a student at Phelps High School, spoke about the racial inequities that lead to violence in some of the city’s Black communities.

His speech, as one student in the audience put it, evoked spoken word poetry. “Shots, shots, shots,” Smith began, are all young boys might hear — because they don’t have the “shots, shots, shots” — the opportunities.   

“Usually in our communities, we end up choosing violence because we have no other option,” Smith said in an interview afterwards with DCist/WAMU. “I wanted to speak for those kids because I was one of those kids that could have went down the wrong road.”

Smith said that D.C. needs more public platforms for young people where they can effect change in their own communities, and that he hopes local officials present at Wednesday’s event keep him and his peers in mind.

“I just hope that we are heard, that we’re not talking just to talk,” Smith said.

Wednesday’s event concluded preliminary local rounds, and selected students will soon be heading to a national round to be held in D.C.

This story has been updated with the correct spelling of Jasmine McNeill’s name, to remove some details about her speech, and to clarify the format of this year’s presentation.