MINNEAPOLIMEDIA EDITORIAL | TODAY, OUR GIRLS SPEAK, AND HISTORY WILL REMEMBER WHETHER WE LISTEN

There are days in the life of a community that arrive not quietly, not gradually, but with the full weight of consequence. Days that insist on our attention, that refuse to be folded into routine, that demand we step outside our numbness and decide, right now, who we are and who we are willing to become.

Today is one of those days.

This morning, from 10:00 to 11:30 AM, inside the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, a group of young girls, brilliant, brave, and unbent by a world that too often underestimates them, will take the mic not as a courtesy but as a claim.
They will speak not because they were permitted to, but because silence is no longer compatible with survival.

And the question hangs in the air, urgent as breath:

Will their community choose to listen?

The Stakes: A Generation Fighting to Be Seen in Real Time

Across the Twin Cities, our girls are coming of age in a landscape that tests them before it teaches them, critiques them before it comforts them, and consumes their creativity before it nourishes their potential. They navigate hallways, screens, and public spaces where their identities are contested terrain. They build confidence in conditions that would diminish even the strongest among us.

Every day, they carry more than their backpacks.
They carry expectation.
They carry scrutiny.
They carry histories not written for them but heavy all the same.

And still, astonishingly, they rise.
Not because the world makes room for them, but because they carve room where there was none.

This is not accidental. It is earned. It is fought for. It is the result of community anchors like Project DIVA International, which has equipped these girls not with scripts, but with sovereignty.

The Work They Have Done Is More Than Curriculum, It Is Reconstruction

For months, these girls have immersed themselves in the legacies of inventors, thinkers, and architects of change, people whose names shook the world not because they were destined for greatness, but because they refused its denial.

They learned that courage is not a lightning bolt.
It is a discipline.
A muscle strengthened in the dark, long before any spotlight finds them.

And then they turned that lens inward.

They examined the scaffolding of their own becoming.
They confronted doubt with language.
They replaced silence with certainty.
They drafted, revised, reimagined, and reclaimed.

What they built, word by word and thought by thought, was not a project.
It was a self.

This morning’s showcase, I Can Speak for Myself, is not a recital.
It is a rupture.
A soft revolution.
A declaration that they will no longer wait for a world that has made hesitation their inheritance.

Why Today Demands More Than Our Praise, It Demands Our Presence

There is something almost holy about the moment a young girl looks up from the page, or the podium, or the stage, and sees that the adults in her community have shown up for her, not to judge, not to correct, but to witness.

Presence is not symbolic.
It is structural.

It tells a girl:
Your voice does not echo into emptiness.
Your courage is not invisible.
Your story has an audience, and therefore, a future.

We live in a country fracturing under the weight of distrust, disconnection, and despair. We cannot afford to let another generation grow up believing that they must shrink to be accepted or mute themselves to be safe.

When a community shows up, it stitches something back together.
When it listens, it begins to heal what silence has broken.

Today, Minneapolis has a chance to choose repair over routine.

A Call to the People Who Believe in Tomorrow

This is not a ceremonial invitation.
This is a civic summons.

Mentors, educators, aunties, elders, organizers, uncles, neighbors, and leaders, your presence today is not optional if we are serious about shaping a different future for our city.

Because the truth is stark:
A community that ignores its girls forfeits its tomorrow.
A city that silences its daughters signs its own obituary.

But a community that listens, truly listens, writes a different story.

One where voice is not a privilege but a birthright.
One where girlhood is not a risk factor but a launching pad.
One where today’s young speakers become tomorrow’s legislators, artists, founders, builders, healers, and historians.

Today, Our Girls Are Speaking. Today, We Must Stand in the Room.

Do not assume someone else will go.
Do not assume your presence does not matter.
Do not assume they will be fine without you.

They will not.
No child becomes who they are destined to be without adults who choose to show up at the exact moments that matter.

This is one of those moments.

Event Details, Today

I CAN SPEAK FOR MYSELF 
Presented by Project DIVA International
WHEN: Today, December 6
TIME: 10:00 to 11:30 AM
VENUE: Minneapolis College of Art and Design

RSVP if you have not.
Come anyway if you can.
Stand in that room.
Hear them.
Honor them.
Protect the space they are creating for themselves.

Because when a girl says, “I can speak for myself,”
she is also saying to all of us:

“Now do your part.”

MinneapoliMedia