Uniondale students spend summer with ERASE Racism

While most of their peers were working summer jobs or sunning themselves at the beach, two Uniondale High School students — sophomore Kayori Robbins and junior Cyniah Alder Laguer — spent their summer working with ERASE Racism.

The organization, based in Syosset, aims to “expose forms of racial discrimination, advocate for laws and policies that eliminate racial disparities, increase understanding of how structural racism and segregation impact our communities and region, and engage the public in fostering equity and inclusion,” according to its mission statement.

The girls were two of eight interns working with the group for six weeks, ending on Aug. 16. This is the third year of the internship, and it was the largest group so far.

“We talk about structural racism on Long Island and its impact on housing, education, health care, the environment and leadership,” Laura Harding, ERASE Racism’s president, said.

The interns worked on a variety of projects throughout the summer, including “zines,” or small booklets, which showed off what they learned.

They also heard from six guest speakers. One was Skyler Johnson, 23, who, despite his loss in the June Democratic primary for the 4th Assembly District seat in Suffolk County, will remain on the Working Families line for Senate District 1 on the November ballot. Robbins said she enjoyed his presentation.

“He talked to us about how he wants kids to get more involved,” she said of Johnson.

The interns were also required to complete personal projects, apply what they learned to their own school districts, and Harding said they had free rein, based on their personal interests and goals.

Robbins’s project was based on “Tale of Two Schools,” a 2009 video that chronicles the funding differences between high- and lower-income schools on Long Island. She created an updated version of the video with facts and testimony from the Uniondale district, and sought information from other districts that receive higher funding. She outlined the differences between the districts in her video.

“I also want to show just going throughout the school and what it looks like in a classroom,” she said. “We have a lot of classrooms and a lot of different classes and courses, but sometimes not always the material we need for the courses.”

Laguer’s project focused on reinstating the student travel program Uniondale High had before the coronavirus pandemic. She collected information on how the program was run, along with its educational benefits, and sent emails to administrators articulating her case for why and how the program can be restarted.

“I’ve been advocating to bring it back and help the teachers,” she said.

One of Laguer’s biggest takeaways from the internship was the history of housing development on Long Island and the impacts it had on communities. The legendary urban planner Robert Moses played a large role in developing the Island, and the construction of highways in certain areas divided and segregated neighborhoods, and the impacts still reverberate today.

“When I heard that (history) was one of the many parts of the nation, I thought that was pretty interesting,” she said.

Robbins’s biggest takeaway was the importance of looking into her own community and keeping up with current events.

“This internship really had opened my eyes to what happened before, what happens now, and what happens in the future,” she said.

ERASE Racism is a civil rights organization, Harding said, working toward developing solutions to address and “literally erase” racism throughout the region.

“We advocate for fair, affordable and inclusive housing,” she said, “and for educational equity across funding and across access to high-quality education.”

The students are already thinking about how the internship will help them in their future endeavors. In college, Robbins plans to study psychology and neuroscience — “what makes a person think a certain way; what part in your brain will make you act a certain way” — and feels that this summer’s experience will help her with her socialization in college and beyond, and that she will make sure to stay informed about what’s going on around her.

Laguer aspires to be a travel nurse. The internship, she said, opened her eyes to the world around her, and she feels inspired to become more involved in local activities, like meetings and programs, to understand what’s going on in her own backyard and to “change the future.”

“There’s definitely a lot that needs to be changed,” she said, “and I’ve learned that during my internship.”