Portion below; whole thing here: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2004392642_kidstalk05m.html
Sonja Frajman, 16, a 10th-grader at Chief Sealth High School, had written her question for Nickels on a card, but she never went up to the microphone. She didn't see the point. This is her third year attending the town hall.
"They're the same answers this year as last year," she said.
But what Frajman wanted to know was this:
"You care about having new schools, but that really is not the main point. ... If we have a new school, how come we can't have new books and have a good education as you want us to have? In my class we don't even have enough books to go around."
One of those attending was Nahom Zekiros, 15, a Garfield High School student. He lives in Yesler Terrace with his aunt and hopes to attend college.
"I want to be working hard like my mom. She works at a factory. I won't be a rich person, but I'll be a decent person," Zekiros said.
After the mayor left, the kids could drop into various discussion groups. One of the groups talked about gangs.
Zekiros, who came here in 2002 from Ethiopia, told about walking with three friends to a community center.
He said it was about 8:30 at night and he was bouncing a basketball on the sidewalk when a police car went by them slowly and put a spotlight on them.
"They were looking at us really deep," Zekiros said. "They would never stop somebody on the same street if it was four white people and they had a skateboard. But four black people with a basketball, they'd stop them."
Officer Adrian Diaz, of the Seattle Police Department's Demographic Community Outreach program, told the kids that in situations like that, they need to be calm and "go along with the program." He said many incidents are videotaped and that the tapes could help with a complaint made afterward.
"But if you're combating right then and there, the situation can escalate," said Diaz.
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