Winner
Daniel Wei, 15, from Marvin Ridge High School in Waxhaw, N.C., chose an article from the U.S. News section headlined “One Small Step for Democracy in a ‘Live Free or Die’ Town” and wrote:
What happened in Croydon, N.H., is happening all over America — people are realizing how little their voices matter. My civic literacy teacher has always urged us to get involved, to encourage our parents to vote, to actively support issues on social media and, eventually, to vote ourselves.
Many of my classmates, however, do not care about politics — but the parallels to Croydon reveal the perils of this approach. Croydonites passively allowed an outspoken political minority to make all decisions for them, leading to a halving of their school’s budget and the slashing of extracurricular activities. Today, we are seeing similar trends unfold on a national scale.
Take the recent Supreme Court decision to curb the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to check emissions for power plants, which goes against the wishes of 80 percent of Pew-surveyed Americans. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that one of the most conservative courts in American history would make a decision pandering only to its billionaire stakeholders rather than considering ordinary citizens.
So, how can we galvanize ourselves to rectify this mistake? Protesting could work, but it may not be enough. Instead, we must emulate the people of Croydon — who, through targeted community activism and patient participation in local government, were able to reverse their school’s budget cuts.
This E.P.A. ruling must be next on our list.