DESTINÉ PRICE, 20

Destiné Price, from Kalamazoo, Michigan, is a ground shaker, an organizer, a big sister, a friend, and a community member. She has a love for words because of the reflection and power they bring. Price spends a lot of her time reading, writing, and conversing with others about change and growth. Her passions involve working with youth, learning about systems of oppression, and organizing to dismantle through unlearning, healing, and restoration.

From the summer of 2016 to winter of 2018, Price worked for Read and Write Kalamazoo, a non-profit organization, and engaged a multitude of meaningful projects with staff and youth. She has been a featured artist at Fire in Kalamazoo where she shared her poetry with the community. Price is a youth leader with Kalamazoo’s Truth Racial Healing Team and was recently a part of a Bias Review Committee to review Social Standards of Michigan’s proposal to changes. Her hope is for youth to hold on to the moments in which they are reflected, keep growing, keep loving, and to stay strong in movements because they are the change they all need.

Price is an advocate for the abolishment of the prison system, specifically youth incarceration. The youth juvenile system, life without parole for youth, and the school to prison pipeline are issues that continue to affect everyone in the United States, especially Black and Brown people. Price’s childhood was in a community where she saw the effects of incarceration on family members, so the issue of incarceration has compelled her to equip herself with knowledge in order to analyze and fight against it as strongly as possible.

Price attends Wayne State University pursuing a major in Sociology and a minor in Criminal Justice. She plans on continuing her work in organizing and dismantling systems of power. She hopes to someday found an organization that offers rehabilitative justice to juveniles.

I am Angry

by Destiné Price

I am angry
I AM
I am deprived
IAM
I am minuscule
I AM
I am limited
I AM
I am silenced
I am lonely
I am using my words slowly because sometimes my tongue is disabled by your system and you only
I am scared
1 AM nights conjure unforgettable scenes that permanently bind my arms as far away from my heart
I am
I am
I am
Angry
I am Black women
I am not light skin I am not fair skinned I am not mixed skin I am Black
I return to my reflection to remind me just of who
I AM
Triumphant woman
Carrying the weights of thoughts of families, friends, myself, my world
I Am heavy woman
I don’t have time for play dates or bedtime I have to return to my mission things but be done there is no time
I Am loud woman
I let my tongue slither and lick my teeth after every declaration and I am never finished talking
I am crazy woman
My personalities scream all at once so I LET THEM SCREAM
I am driven woman
My hands are glued to the wheel and I don’t recall a time they have reached down to shift gears but there have been crashes
I am intentional woman
Hold me to my word, I will
I will
I will
I WILL
.