OPINION | To the Class of 2026: Your Actions Can Help Shape Our Future

This is not a standard graduation speech. It is a plea for empathy and clear thinking, and an urgent call to action. Graduates of 2026, you are not alone in this world. You are connected to all humanity and life on our planet. To echo Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., our county’s namesake, we are all part of an “inescapable network of mutuality.” 

Our words here are part of the battle for our future. Your actions will decide its course. 

This has been a year of great tumult: We have faced continual war, both internationally and at home: Genocide has been streamed in real time from Gaza, Congo, and Sudan. Under the Trump administration, the economic, political, and educational rights and lives of Black people are under attack once again; our history and very existence are being erased. This onslaught demands our attention and resistance.

Neighborhoods throughout the country have been invaded by armed, masked ICE agents. We have witnessed families being torn apart. Your generation has suffered through a pandemic and most of you contend with eco-anxiety, fearful of an unknown future of potential climate disaster. 

Domestically, the urban battleground is active; it has its casualties and its heroes. Two Rainier Beach High School students, 17‑year‑old Tra’Veiah Houfmuse and 18‑year‑old Tyjon Malik Stewart, both set to graduate in June, were murdered at their bus stop in January. They will not be here to hear this message. 

You face an eternal question: How do humans align themselves to the earth and to each other? With urgency, there is no sitting on the fence.

In the words of our friend and long-time Seattle educator, Doug Edelstein (who passed away in March this year), to the graduating class of Nathan Hale in 2012, “It’s easy, and not entirely misplaced, to be cynical. But no graduating class ever has faced completely cloudless, sunny skies. Turbulent weather is definitely coming your way. If the world is going to get better, you are going to have to help make it so.” 

As elders, we can tell you that wisdom does not necessarily come from years lived and experienced; it is available to all of us at any age. When Mark, one of the co-authors, asked his 90-year-old Grandma Schein if she had any wisdom to share, she replied, “The wisdom is that you already have all you need inside of you.” 

You must trust yourselves, your families, and friends to figure out together how to build the world we all deserve. We’re not going to give you a pathway or map to get there. What principles and tools will assist you in navigation? You will certainly need honesty, the flexibility to adapt, and confidence in knowing that your actions matter. You must have patience with your own and your loved ones’ fears. 

In her novel Parable of the Sower, Octavia E. Butler outlined how our survival depends on community, based on caring for the feelings and needs of each other. You will have opportunities to do this. Engage in the co-creation of knowledge. Harness new energy sources for everyone’s benefit, not to serve more profits to billionaires. 

Though circumstances always change, the year has shown numerous examples we can look to for inspiration. In Skyway, the brilliant work and imagination of Nyema Clark, Rainier Beach graduate and founder of the Nurturing Roots organization, brought hundreds of volunteers to open the first Black Panther Park in the world in April. The food pantry and library at the park are already being stocked and used. The herbs and fruit trees are already flourishing. At the ribbon-cutting ceremony, Clark said, “I wanted to give the people who lived this history their flowers while they are still here.” The park is just one example of how community can be seeded. 

We also have a vision of new possibilities for what cities can do with the elections of new mayors Katie Wilson in Seattle and Zohran Mamdani in New York City. Several cities have adopted community violence interruption techniques, contacting possible victims and targets with conflict resolution alternatives, and have reduced street violence. 

In Minneapolis and St. Paul, during the harshest snows of winter, we saw how an entire city can practice the principles of caring for their neighbors, as people battled unaccountable ICE attacks for months with bravery, creativity, and resolve. They adapted defense techniques from anti-ICE organizing in Los Angeles and Chicago; they practiced citywide and neighborhood mutual aid. 

Colonial systems are still in place and are falling. There are surges of independence and unity in West Africa against imperial extraction that has poisoned the land and impoverished the people. This year, we saw youth-led revolutions in Bangladesh, Nepal and Madagascar. Lakota youth are continuing the fight against oil domination of their South Dakota lands. Seattle students have organized and walked out for justice several times this year.

Sometimes you have to hunt for the connections; but use the technology we have, and you will find them. This is a time of transformation – for you, our country, and our world. All stand at a crossroads.

Most importantly of all: Sustain and nourish your spirit; we are only in this body one time. Delight in nature: plant, animal, and inanimate. Enjoy the beauty people create in art, music, and movement. Note which way the winds are moving the clouds. Breathe it in. Now, exhale and get to work. Build our future; interconnection is its foundation.

Michael Dixon was a nerdy scholar-athlete who worked as a legislative page in Olympia, with the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, and the Black Student Union at Garfield High School and the University of Washington. Recently, he retired as a security specialist from Seattle Public Schools. He's currently a happily married father and grandpa.

Mark Epstein is a retired, though still subbing, longtime Rainier Beach High School social studies teacher. He is a lifelong union activist, loving life as a husband, father, grandfather, and community member.