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Shania Bennett, the 26-year-old challenging Mayor Cherelle Parker in next year’s Democratic primary, brought her campaign’s focus on young Philadelphians to North Philly on Wednesday evening, hosting a listening session at Kingdom Boxing Gym.
Since announcing her candidacy, Bennett has been hosting public listening sessions focusing on various topics including mental health and wellness, public safety, and political strategy. She said she plans to hear the concerns of Philadelphians before releasing a policy platform.
Bennett addressed concerns over large gatherings of young people that are often organized through social media, sometimes referred to as teen takeovers. In Philadelphia, a teen takeover in Center City over Labor Day weekend resulted in multiple arrests and citations as well as injuries to a Philadelphia police sergeant. Bennett argued that the city’s response to teen takeovers has relied too heavily on policing rather than addressing the reasons young people gather in the first place.
Bennett said the issue with the city’s response to teen takeovers “simply put, [is] over-policing.”
“Philadelphia has not taken an approach that’s comprehensive around youth engagement, right? We don’t even have a rapid response plan for when young people are gathering except for police presence,” she said.
To tackle the potential for such gatherings to become violent, Bennett said she wants to focus on “taking back our community”.
“We all say it takes a village to raise a child. But we also negate that there’s people that have to step up and actually be the village,” Bennett said. She called for adults to take responsibility for investing in young people, including those labeled as “bad kids.”
Bennett, who previously worked as the director of youth engagement in Parker’s office, placed particular emphasis on the importance of city officials regularly visiting schools, recreational centers and neighborhoods to hear directly from the young people.
During her time in Parker’s office, she said she led school safety tours where she spoke to young people about civics. She said she was the only city official present at the events, adding that “these visits should absolutely have every single official there.”
When the conversation opened up to audience members, education quickly emerged as a central concern. D’nell Booker, an 18-year-old student at Randolph Technical High School who is studying construction, said he is frustrated by the environment in his high school and what he sees as a lack of meaningful engagement with learning.
“I sit down, everybody [is] on their phones … As you sit down, we get on the phone. As soon as we get our assignment, everybody is straight to their phone. Everybody [is] cheating on their phone,” he said.
“I’m not stupid. I really want to learn,” Booker continued. “Education is something that I really want to do and I feel like it’s just so different when you’re in the class and you see everybody doing work and you’re the only one [who doesn’t know what to do].”
