On Thursday, the 12th my Social Justice group went to Staten Island for an interview with a worker at the Staten Island Pride Center. First we made sure we would have plenty of time to get there, so we left early from school. We went to take the 1 train to the ferry station to Staten Island, and from there we went to the ferry. We took the 1:00 ferry which took only 25 minutes to get to Staten Island, then we walked for a while till we got to The Center. It was a nice looking building from the outside, and we walked in to take the elevator up to the 3rd floor where we met our interviewee; Elysa Fein-Cunningham. She showed us to a big open room where they hold most of their activities and programs, and began the interview. These are the following questions we asked her:

1. Could you tell us a little bit about the programs that are run here?
2. What is the mission of the Pride Center?
3. We know the topic of the LGBTQ community is big in the news these days for various reasons such as the president elect and bathrooms. What are your views on some of the topics making headlines? Is the Pride Center doing anything surrounding those topics?
4. How do you support the kids that come here? What do you do to help them feel more comfortable?
5. What are your views on Donald Trump becoming president? Is it going to be harder to gain justice for the LGBTQ community?
6. In this difficult time for change, and with so much hate, how has it affected your program?
7. Do you think because of the election the treatment of people in the LGBTQ community are going to become worse?
8. Are there any events that your organization plans supporting LGBTQ rights? What are they and how do people react to them?
9. Do you think there are ways that teens can make change? If so what are they?
10. Where do all the proceeds and donations go toward?

Eylisa was very nice and gave us many inspiring and well thought out answers. She also introduced us to one of her coworkers, Lisa. Both of their opinions and answers are similar, but Lisa added on to what Eylisa was saying before when she answered our questions. Here are their answers:

They’re the only LGBT youth program place on staten Island for 13-24 year olds and it’s free. They have yoga cooking Social activities, as well as a Girrrl power program which is a weekly empowering program. They have a self defense class, and people come in to run them. They have free HIV prevention services with individual help and Senior programs for people 50 and older. They have free counseling services and if you don’t identify as LGBT it’s fine and you can still go as long as you’re still and ally. Their mission: to provide a safe place for LGBT community. Their community has different ideas and they’re mainly concerned for the country because of the election of Donald trump. They know that Donald trump and his elected officials don’t support LGBT people, but they hope for the best and if they need to get more involved with politics then they will. But they’re not extremely politically involved here even though NYC has laws against discrimination towards LGBT people, it’s still happening like in the Staten Island ferry bathrooms. The staff is really helping and warm for all the kids here, they try to help them be safe and have physical activities. They only want allies in the space for safety and welcoming, and there’s no parental permission to be there. Everyone’s opinions are valid but they have to be respectful of one another. Mike Pence is really into conservative therapy but they don’t want funding to go away so they want to make a bill to ban conversion therapy, they also want more states and laws to protect LGBT youth. They also gave us great advice, they said that teens like us can make a change, and if you’re younger than voting age politicians don’t want to listen but we influence voters. They said we can do letter writing, something with social media, Making videos for support, write petitions, and to speak out if we feel that something is not right. Lisa said, “It’s ok to be afraid about the changes that are happening but we can’t let that fear paralyze us.” They were both so inspirational and they answered all of our questions really well. I hope my group inspires the middle schoolers during the teach-in like Lisa and Eylisa did for us.