The young people striving to make their mark on Maine state policy

Lianna Holden, representing Freeport High School Students Demand Action, speaks at a gun-safety rally in the Maine State House in Augusta on March 13, 2024. (Jim Neuger/ Maine Morning Star)

Growing up amid rising school shootings across the country, gun safety had been a key concern for recent Freeport high school graduate Lianna Holden even before the issue hit so close to home.

But after Holden, a Lewiston resident, saw the devastation in her community from the mass shooting last fall, she took to the state Legislature to try to compel change.

As Holden stood before the Maine Legislature’s Judiciary Committee in March , she recounted for lawmakers being paralyzed with fear as sirens went off around her home the days following the shooting and the fear she continues to harbor going to school each day with the premonition that tragedy could strike again.

While testifying for the first time before the state Legislature, Holden’s nerves were, for the most part, eclipsed by her knowledge of the legislative process. She’d undergone training on grassroots lobbying, workshops on how to write testimony, and had been tracking the changing text and outcomes of these gun bills and other legislation of interest to her and her classmates.

Holden is one of the founding members of the Youth Advocacy Team , a part of the Maine Students Vote arm of Democracy Main e, a collaboration of nonpartisan organizations focused on making government more equitable. Holden and other students passionate about making change on a state level brought the idea to the nonprofit and, with its backing, have since lobbied legislators and trained their peers.

It was through the youth advocates’ leadership that Democracy Maine developed a subcommittee dedicated to gun safety, which brought together intergenerational views on the topic and organized people to testify on related legislative proposals.

“Youth have so much power that just goes untapped because nobody ever gives us the time of day,” said Alex Wu, incoming senior at Scarborough High School. Another founding member of the youth advocacy team, Wu said the team has given them the resources and courage to make their voice heard.

“You’re there. You’re doing the same thing as adults, and that is so empowering,” Wu said. “You can have an impact.”

Bringing the idea to life

The idea for the group sprouted for Holden in 2022, when an active shooter hoax spread fear across schools in Maine and she decided to turn that fear into action. An intern for Democracy Maine at the time, Holden brought the idea for a team of student advocates to the nonprofit and found that many of her peers shared her interest in this work.

In 2023, the first year of Maine’s latest two-year legislative cycle, the students focused on identifying and tracking legislation on issues that interested them, which in addition to gun safety also included a range of proposals to push for racial, criminal and environmental justice.

“That bill tracker became a really great tool for us to share with our teacher networks,” said Allyson Gardner, director of Maine Students Vote which houses the team. “Because it was a research resource created by students of, ‘These are the bills I’m interested in,’ and it wasn’t from a particular organization or political party’s lens.”

At its height, the team included six members, Gardner said, many of whom were interns with Democracy Maine. However, the youth advocates engaged about 200 more students in their work, Gardner explained, by taking what they’d learned back to other organizations they’re a part of, such as their respective schools’ civil rights teams and  other clubs.

One of the ways the team’s work has extended beyond its membership is through workshops on how to write testimony on legislation. Wu has led many of these workshops, which include providing tips on how to navigate the Maine Legislature website and draw from personal experience to bring anecdotal evidence to the issue at hand.

In 2024, the advocacy team focused more on putting that learning to work — testifying on the legislation they’d tracked as well as speaking directly with their state representatives and senators.

The issues

Wu has had difficulty accessing mental health services and has seen her peers struggle to do the same, particularly since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Wu told the members of the Legislature’s Education and Cultural Affairs Committee on January 11.

“I am scared for my peers,” Wu said. “I am scared of a world where instead of living up to solve the problems handed down to us by past generations my peers choose suicide instead.”

Wu brought her personal experience to testimony in support of a proposal to provide incentives to schools that contract for certain mental health services. The representative of Wu’s town, Rep. Kelly Murphy (D-Scarborough), noted that she’d seen Wu had submitted testimony on numerous other bills as well and asked what spurred Wu’s interest in testifying.

“I know that my age demographic is particularly underrepresented,” Wu said in response, “and I know the importance of civic engagement and how hard it is for legislators to know what’s right or wrong specifically in a case like education, where you’re speaking on behalf of these students but not really getting much direct input form them.”

The youth advocacy team tried to bring the student perspective to a range of legislative proposals last session: bills to assist homeless students , address food insecurity , establish a civil rights unit , prohibit unauthorized paramilitary training , advance the self-determination of the Wabanaki Nations , and have Maine joining the National Popular Vote Compact — among dozens of others.

Some of these topics, like youth mental health, Wu and her peers had an intimate knowledge of, while other issues, like the National Popular Vote Compact, would soon become relevant to them.

States that are part of the compact pledge their Electoral College votes to the presidential candidate with the most overall votes across the country, though more states still need to join in order for it to take effect. While not yet old enough to vote, Wu will turn 18 years old just in time for the November election.

“I do not want my vote’s importance to be decided based on what state I live in,” Wu told Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee when lawmakers first considered the proposal. “My friends do not want their votes’ importance to be decided based on what state they live in. Our votes should be counted equally. The National Popular Vote Compact achieves this.”

Some of the bills the students advocated for, such as this compact, did become law, but many did not — whether that be because of failing to pass the Legislature, secure funding or get the governor’s sign off .

“Right now, they’ve been doing a lot of reflection about okay, ‘Which bills didn’t get passed that you were passionate about? What is the pathway to bring those back to the legislative session?’” Gardner said of the team’s summer plans.

With one legislative session under their belts, the youth advocates also now have ambitions to draft legislation of their own.

“Most of my summer is going to be trying to reread through the Maine legislative drafting manual,” Wu said, and seeking out advice from legal experts on bill writing.

While Wu and others are eager to continue to expand their knowledge of the legislative process, the students also want to use their unique perspective as students.

“I think one of the great benefits of not having fully developed yet is that we are just willing to do stuff that goes unquestioned for adults,” Wu said. “Like, why should that part of that system be part of this system? That’s stupid, that’s dumb, let’s change it. And then, we make it easier for the next generation of youth.”

Holden also sees advantages to advocacy work as a young person, particularly when it comes to the issue of gun safety that she’d focused on last session.

“ I was just a kindergartener when the tragedy at Sandy Hook unfolded, and I was in sixth grade when the horrors of Parkland took place,” Holden told the Judiciary Committee in April, testifying in support of a proposed red flag law . “These mass shootings, which have become all too familiar in our society, represent a uniquely American experience — one that should never be accepted as the norm.”

Most adults don’t know the fear of attending school with the constant thought in the back of their mind that a shooter could upend their lives, Holden told Maine Morning Star . That perspective is needed and one that students can uniquely provide.

“There are a lot of doors closed to us,” Holden said of youth advocates. “But, there are also a lot of doors open.”

When you're learning how to advocate for other people, you also learn how to advocate for yourself.

– Lianna Holden, recent graduate of Freeport High School

Addressing barriers to youth involvement

While Holden, Wu and other members of the youth advocacy team spent a lot of time in the State House during the last session, it wasn’t always easy.

“Accessibility is a huge issue,” Holden said, pointing to the fact that Augusta is not a quick commute for many in the geographically expansive state.

Committee meetings and chamber sessions also typically occur during school hours, and the Legislature runs on what many call “legislative time,” Wu added. Wu used the virtual option to provide testimony for a number of bills last session, which made doing so more accessible — saving Wu the time and gas money for the more than an hour commute from Scarborough to Augusta.

However, Wu quickly realized that blocking off a period of the school day to testify was rarely sufficient because of late starts or unpredictably long meetings. “ An hour out of your day to do testimony could turn into an entire school day,” Wu said.

Holden testified in person in favor of several of the proposed gun reforms and said another barrier to youth engagement is parental support. While Holden said her mom allowed her to miss school to go to the State House, “a lot of parents aren’t cool with that.” Parents may not agree with their children politically, Holden added, which can be another roadblock.

“I rarely saw other young people when I was there,” Holden said of her time at the State House. “It’s just really not a young constituent friendly place a lot of the time.”

The accessibility of language in bill texts and understanding the legislative process itself are additional hurdles, Wu said.

“Quite frankly, a lot of the language is dry or not understandable,” Wu said, explaining that connections to Democracy Maine were pivotal on this front, because through the organization the students had a network of legal professionals who could help them break down legalese.

In addition to the legal advice, Democracy Maine allowed Wu and others to get paid for their work through a high school internship program. The organization also recently wrapped its pilot year of a paid fellowship program, open to high school graduates.

“Subsidizing youth work, or telling the people in power that you want subsidized youth work, is so powerful,” Wu said, explaining that money is also a major barrier to youth involvement. “Time, transit, those all relate to money.”

While barriers remain, the youth advocacy team has helped Wu, Holden and their peers overcome many of the obstacles to understanding state policy and making their voices heard.

“So much of it is empowering,” Wu said of their advocacy work. “You feel like you can do this stuff — you know you can do this stuff because you’ve been doing it.”

The students said they learned skills they believe will aid them in their future careers, and more broadly as civically engaged citizens.

“When you’re learning how to advocate for other people,” Holden said, “you also learn how to advocate for yourself.”

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