Taylor Snowden, 17, has already tasted leadership. A few years ago, Snowden and some of her friends started "Stay Woke Day" at Greene Street Friends School, where they were students. "We wanted more diversity, so we planned the program and lined up a speaker," says Snowden, now a student at Philadelphia High School for Girls. Greene Street still holds the event, though the title has morphed into Diversity Day, Snowden says.
At Girls' High, Snowden lives and breathes math and Spanish, and also runs track. She aims to become a lawyer. "We must find ways to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline," says Snowden, who's already working toward that goal through a program at the American Friends Service Committee. She also took part in a workshop on criminal justice reform at the University of Pennsylvania this summer. "We must find alternatives to incarceration for young people of color," she says.
for Grid Magazine
September 13, 2019