Kim McGill

Kim McGill

Youth Justice Coalition

I don’t think I knew what was a human rights standard for a long time. I did know early on that we weren’t human and we weren’t seen as human. I think my first lesson was in elementary and junior high school when the police would stop us—I was the only white youth in my community, at least that I ever saw. And so they took me aside, and they’d be frisking and patting down everybody else and they asked me questions like why was I with these people, why was I in a dangerous area, did I want a ride home? I had two felonies—by the time I was in early junior high school, I had my second felony, and yet I was the one who was always treated as a victim. My friends—they’d be searching their backpacks, patting them down, sometimes detaining them, twice they asked me if I’d been kidnapped… And then similar experiences followed me in school and in courts… I’m sure many of us have gone to way more funerals than graduations—of young people and of elders in our communities.