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John Lewis taught us that "Freedom is not a state; it is an act. It is not some enchanted garden perched high on a distant plateau where we can finally sit down and rest. Freedom is the continuous action we all must take.” For youth justice advocates, what does acting for freedom look like right now?

On a daily basis the actions of the new administration threaten our identities and ideals and challenge our faith in the law. Though the administration has changed, our values have not. Our resolve to continue to fight for children who are overpoliced, surveilled, separated from their families, and incarcerated has not diminished.

The top show currently trending on Netflix is Adolescence, a British crime drama mini-series centered around 13-year-old Jamie who is arrested for the murder of a classmate. This program is truly like nothing I have ever seen. It starts with a shocking, cortisol-rush inducing scene of police breaking down the door to a home in an English town, ordering the family to get on the floor, and searching until they find Jamie, a slight boy in bed with a teddy bear. With guns aimed directly at him, they order him out of the house and place him under arrest to the horror and confusion of his parents and sister.

Today is the 20th anniversary of Roper v Simmons, a groundbreaking United States Supreme Court decision that ushered in a new framework for analyzing children’s rights to be free from cruel and unusual punishment under the 8th Amendment. Roper banned the death penalty for youth who were convicted of murder before they turned 18.

The 2019 Teen Vogue article by Juvenile Law Center and Girls for Gender Equality titled “The U.S. Has Been Silencing Black Girls’ Voices for Decades” captured the experience of the stockade where young girls were arrested and put in harsh conditions while their parents were strapped with fines and fees just for speaking out about segregation and discrimination. We know these practices still happen today.

Five decades of advocating for children behind bars have taught us that we must be unrelenting in protecting young people from harm and bold in imagining a better world. The horrors children face when incarcerated require us to uncover and confront abuse.