My Voice is Our Voice
Told by Alexiyani Williams
Written by Laurie Grobman
“We’re angry because people die every day. You never know when it’s going to happen. We’re all hurt by this.” Alexiyani Williams, 17, and her peers in Reading are suffering. Alexiyani moved with her family to the Schuylkill Valley school district two years ago and her life has changed in many positive ways. But the violence in Reading impacts her deeply. She lost many people close to her from violence. And today, “It’s affecting my people and I have to deal with them grieving and just because it’s their people, they’re my people – everybody got to be here for each other.”
Alexiyani considers the people of Reading her family. She says she’s learned something from everyone she’s met there, “no matter if it was bad or good.” She goes to Reading all the time to be with her friends, to visit her favorite stores, and to work at her part-time job at DTLR (shoe and sneaker store).
Alexiyani is in 11th grade at Schuylkill Valley High School and doing well. She thought it would be harder to adjust, but she found that she could still be herself in the much quieter and less stressful environment of her new high school. And she feels safe there.
Even so, when she’s not in her high school or her home, Alexiyani is on “high alert”: “No matter how safe my school is or no matter how safe this place is or how safe this party is going to be, I’m always going to be at the edge of my seat in my head. I’m still waiting. I’m waiting for something to happen, always. Because if it does and I’m not prepared, then what? I don’t have time to be lacking on that.”
Alexiyani remembers it well, and she knows her friends are still going through it. In Reading, “you really don’t know what’s going to happen. You don’t know what you’re facing. You don’t know what you’re waking up to. You have to be alert.” She and her friends knew that not everybody would survive. But they just had to keep going, and even become accustomed to that feeling of waking up in the morning and being worried about “if I’m going to get hit or if something’s going to pop off.” In Reading High School, her stomach always hurt: “I always had this really bad feeling all the time because something was always about to happen. I hate feeling like that.”
Now, Alexiyani loves going to school. She didn’t realize what it would feel like to feel so comfortable in school: “the fact that I know nobody in that school is going to touch me. So the fact that I’d have that in the back of my head that nobody’s going to do anything to me and I could chill, then I’d chill.”
Alexiyani has grown a lot since moving. Alexiyani admits that she didn’t behave well in 10th grade, her last year at Reading High. She and her friends sat in the hallway, chatting it up, chilling, playing Uno cards, just having a good time. The security guards asked them why they weren’t in class, and Alexiyani and her friends had simple replies: “Our parents make us come here. We’re just trying to get out of high school.”
There was also a lot of fighting, but for Alexiyani and her friends, that was part of the fun. There were no guns in the school that year. “Fighting everybody, it was just stupid drama. Like you say something to me, I say something to you. If you don’t fight, you don’t really get respect or you get called weak. Me, they never even had the chance to call me weak or any of that because I always was just, ‘We can talk it out, or I’m jumping.’” Even the teen who lost the fight was respected because they fought.
Now 17, Alexiyani calls 10th grade her “young and dumb moment” but also a time of learning about herself. She’s also very aware of the different school environments. Schuylkill Valley High School is peaceful and quiet compared to the “craziness” of Reading High and it always feeling “hectic.” But within that calm she is and will always be Alexiyani: “Nobody comes in the morning with my energy. I want to spread the energy. I want people to feel what I feel. Like I’m happy. I’m a happy person, so I need everybody else to be happy with me.”
The school’s quiet and more structured atmosphere has given her the time and space to learn more about herself and what she wants for her life. She’s learned to be more open minded, and she learned about herself that she’s quite smart. A calmer life has enabled Alexiyani to plan out what she wants to do after high school. She woke up one morning in
her new home and thought, “I don’t know why I was living like that because my brain is not like that- I wasn’t built to not be going to class.” She realized that watching everybody fight and getting into fights herself “was messing up her mental health.” She realizes now that
she’d been thinking with her feelings, not her head. Now Alexiyani has a 2.3 GPA. “So we’re getting somewhere. That’s what I’m saying.”
“Getting somewhere” does not mean leaving Reading behind. Reading has too much violence, but it has a lot more than that. “There are certain moments in the city where we come together, like the Puerto Rican parades or parades. We all come together at the end of the day. And I love my people.” Alexiyani’s connections to her city are strong, and it’s the people, old friends and “all the kind souls” she meets each time she visits, that remind her of the city’s goodness.
That’s why Alexiyani continues to “give back” to her city, even though she no longer lives there. She’s been involved with the RIZE program, founded and directed by Edna Garcia Dipini, Alexiyani’s mentor and “like a second mom” to her, for many years. She helps out with the programs and also brings her very “social fun vibe.” She loves the kids there. Now,
Alexiyani is training to be a Peacemaker with the Not One More Youth Lost to Violence program to help her city because she wants to be a person who changes the city for the better.
Alexiyani learned about unconditional love from her mother, Jennifer Cabrera: “I would have not known what deep love is if it wasn’t for my mother. No matter what me and my mom have went through, like it’s always been me and her.”
Alexiyani is also sharing her kindness and commitment to others in Schuylkill Valley high school. Recently, she saw a peer with a worn-out book bag struggling to keep his things inside it. She had a gut feeling that he didn’t have the money to replace it. All night long, the situation “stuck in her head,” keeping her awake. When she got out of bed in the morning, Alexiyani emptied out her book bag and later gave it to this student without anyone seeing. At first, he told her, “Oh, I just ordered a new one.” She replied, “Bro, no, you didn’t. Just keep it. It’s not that serious.” He kept it. That’s Alexiyani’s heart at work.
Alexiyani tells her story because youth voices matter. She encourages her peers to tell their stories. “We’re the youth. Not everybody wants to share their story. Not everybody wants to be heard. I want us to start somewhere. I want to see more young, vocal influencers, things like that.”
And Alexiyani very much hopes that adults will listen and, like her, work toward change so all youth can have a peaceful life.