Stephen Samayoa begins his first summer as an intern with the Summer Youth Organizing Academy.

As an intern for the Bus Riders Union, working with Summer Youth Organizing Academy is a welcoming, but different experience. I am working closer with the Community Rights Campaign which is something that I wanted to do for a while. The bulk of my work revolves around the BRU. Whether it is organizing on the bus or data entry, this practice is helping me become more familiar with the logistics of organizing. Not all aspects of revolutionary work are earthshattering. During the first Organizer's Exchange, I was given a brochure with the CRC's line of thought. I found many similarities within the brochure with my personal thoughts such as investing more in education rather than "policing" us. Although our ideology runs parallel, my lack of practice is evident during every organizing morning. I have yet to find my voice on the bus. Speaking of buses, my task as an intern is to recruit more youth into the BRU. This is a bit difficult due to my reserved nature. To defeat this, I am organizing with a different mentality: without the LCSC organizing on the bus, conditions will become abysmal and the police will run rampant while schools like Manual Arts become prisons.

SYOA has been a fantastic outlet for me to put into practice the theory that I have accumulated over the years and synthesizing the conditions we face on a daily basis to the systematic oppression inflicted upon us from the US imperialist war machine. I am getting to know my comrades better through SYOA. I have a sincere feeling that these bonds will last through various struggles and campaigns that will last lifetimes. The organizers facilitating the program are of Revolutionary class; these captains know their ideology and present it through their good example and bulletproof organizing skills. I'm grateful for this opportunity given to me and I will try my best to utilize the skills taught to me to better the conditions of the working class and any oppressed people clamoring for overdue change.