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June 30, 2005

Jeremy Schwab

Fifteen year-old Alex Robinson of Jamaica Plain applied for summer jobs with the city and three community-based groups this summer — Action for Boston Community Development, Urban Scholars and Upward Bound — to no avail.

Robinson is not alone; most of his friends have no jobs and little to do in the hot months between now and the start of school.

“Most of us don’t have nothing to do,” he said during a rally for youth summer jobs last week. “Just basketball and seeing friends. I am not able to help my family as much as I would like.”

But Beacon Hill lawmakers gave job-hungry teenagers in Boston hope last week when they included $4 million for summer jobs in the budget they sent to Governor Mitt Romney.

It was the first state appropriation for summer jobs for teenagers since the recent economic downturn, when tax revenues plummeted. Revenues this year should finally rise above the 2001 level, according to the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, a sign that state spending that was cut to smaller programs such as summer jobs could return.

The appropriation, if it is not vetoed, would likely add around $2 million to the city’s reported $4.6 million summer jobs budget. Currently, the city plans to fund 3,300 jobs through nonprofits, summer camps and other organizations, but with the proposed increase the city could offer far more employment opportunities.

City Councilor Chuck Turner, who spoke at last week’s rally outside the State House, told the youths in attendance that without their lobbying efforts over the past year the state might not have acted as it did.

“If you had not organized, it is unlikely that $4 million would have come through the way it did,” Turner said at the rally, which was organized by the Roxbury Environmental Empowerment Project, a program of the environmental justice group Alternatives for Community and Environment.

Since the fall, youths and youth outreach workers with support from City Councilor Felix Arroyo, Turner and others have been meeting to discuss how to fight violence in the city by increasing summer jobs and youth workers’ salaries.

Adults who fail to find work elsewhere are increasingly taking retail positions normally filled by teens.

Many of the teens at last week’s rally were among the fortunate – they had summer jobs, often thanks to their connections to youth organizing groups like the Hyde Square Task Force and the community group Team Mita.

The teens gave varying reasons as to why summer jobs are important for young people – something to do, career experience, a deterrent from violence and drugs, supplementary income for themselves and their families.

“I feel we need money, so we can support not just us but some of us need money for our families,” said Madison Park High School student Deandre Reid, who will be a senior in the fall.

English High School student Eric Avalo said that more job opportunities would deter some from violence and breaking the law.

“Yesterday, I was outside Academy Homes [in Roxbury] and almost got robbed,” said Avalo, who will be a junior in the fall. “A group was going to ambush us that does that a lot, but a shop owner said, ‘Get inside.’ I think if they had jobs, they might not do stuff like that.”

Avalo himself plans to either work with Team Mita on a project on boys’ sexual health or do an internship with state Rep. Jeffrey Sanchez, with whom Avalo was put in touch by his supervisor at Team Mita.

Many youth advocates say summer jobs reduce street violence and crime. Teens at the rally chanted slogans such as “more funding, less gunning” and “Life is hard; why cut jobs?” At one point, a large minority of the teens held up red pieces of paper to indicate that they had lost family members or loved ones to violence.

Arroyo, who along with Turner, City Councilor Stephen Murphy and state representatives Linda Dorcena Forry, Kevin Honan and Mike Moran and state Sen. Steven Tolman attended the event, told the youths that providing them job opportunities shows that society respects them.

“I strongly believe that it does make a difference for us to respect our young people,” he said. “If we can’t do that, what are we as a society about?”

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