Name: Sariah Metcalfe
Year: Sophomore
Major: Arts and Humanities (RCAH)
Hometown: Kalamazoo, Michigan
Name: Natasha Blakely
Year: Junior
Major: Journalism
Hometown: Singapore
What is your role as co-Editor-in-Chief for the NextGen Stand Up online magazine?
Sariah: I was the original Editor-in-Chief of NextGen, but then over time we realized I was too nice to edit. I just don’t care as much for the really formal grammatical and the proper English types of editing. So, we promoted one of our other cofounders, Natasha Blakely, to be the co-editor that was more adept for that. I took on the role of being like a curiator, talking about the project in public places and trying to pull in people who have interesting stories to tell. I am more of the creative organizer/co-Editor-in-Chief.
Natasha: I help edit and approve the pieces that get submitted. I put the website together, but that’s mostly because Sariah is also in charge of PeaceJam, NextGen’s parent group, so I try to lift the burden off her shoulders where I can.
What are your goals for the magazine?
Sariah: My goal for NextGen is just that we grow as a community of people with different backgrounds, different types of identities and different intersections to our identities, just so we can build a platform for people who might not always get to speak or feel like they’re represented in other types of media. And also just kind of build a collection of people who care about activism, who care about each other and want to make the world a better place. We’d eventually like to be a print magazine, maybe, and also expand our different types of multimedia, so those are things I’d like to see as well.
Natasha: Awareness and distribution! I want people to recognize the name NextGen. I want people to hear the name NextGen and immediately think of high quality articles with high quality content.
What would you say is the purpose of the magazine?
Sariah: It’s somewhat an anti-media message almost. When we first started PeaceJam and NextGen as an extension of PeaceJam, (PeaceJam Project), we were taking our first political writing classes as RCAH students and we were learning about how media can be used to make people think and act a certain way. What we wanted out of NextGen was to be a counter-narrative to that. It’s supposed to be a space for people who might not fit the ideal form of beauty, or any form of beauty that people are used to. We wanted them and their photographs, their articles, their pictures, our articles and pictures, to just have a space online — or even as NextGen grows as to something that can’t be contained to one website — where we could be supportive or be supportive of one another.
Natasha: I want it to be reliable and honest. I want others to be able to quote NextGen and know that they can depend on us not to mislead them or use false information.
What is PeaceJam and how did you get involved with it?
Sariah: Internationally, PeaceJam is a peace education organization. The idea was to connect to Nobel Peace Prize Laureates and have them mentor youth leaders to do good. The Laureates came up with these 10 major global calls-to-action that range from empowering and supporting women and girls and their roles as leaders, to education, to sustainability of the environment, human rights and ending racism and hate. They take ideas like that, and the ideas that the chapters and clubs that are extension of it, and will do projects and have discussions that relate back to those things. I got involved with PeaceJam when my mother was the assistant superintendent of the Kalamazoo County Juvenile Home. She helped bring the Great Lakes PeaceJam to the Juvenile Home for her kids back when I was very young. I would always accompany her to the PeaceJam conferences around town. As I aged out of that, I was in the high school PeaceJam group in my high school. Once I got to college and saw there was no PeaceJam, I saw a really good opportunity to bring the experiences I grew up with to the college campus.
In the article, “What is NextGen Stand Up Magazine,” you said the idea was birthed from your high school AP Literature teacher exposing the class to white-washing. What effect did that have on you and how you view your intersectionalities?
Sariah: That has kind of been a journey for me, as I’ve grown up and just coming to recognize that I’m a woman and Black woman who has things, as far as socially and personally, that are impacted by the fact the I’m a Black woman. I’m encouraged by how people have reacted to NextGen and PeaceJam and finding spaces where me and my intersections can be encouraged and raise my voice. Now I’m encouraged to talk about these things in the media, like a little girl who’s punished in school because her hair is too poofy because she’s Black or about Black students being suspended at higher rates than White students. I’m also reminded in the midst of that, there are things that I can do and there are things that other people can do to make the world better.
Once I understood it [intersectionalities] and I thought about it, [I realized that] I’ve never had anybody say, ‘hey, there are theories about this, and this is a real thing that people have to struggle with because of the injustices of the world.’ It’s easier to be empathetic to someone who’s different than you, but it was harder for me to recognize that there are some things I have to work harder at to make people understand what I’m capable of because of my color and because of my sex [or gender].
Since the first phase of NextGen was feminism and intersectionality, what do you believe feminism to be, and why do you think it is important?
Natasha: To me, feminism is the desire for equality among all genders. I think it’s important because women are paid less for the same job, women still get blamed when they are harassed or assaulted, and women are still getting their rights taken away by the government. Feminism is important because there are people that think just because the situation of women has improved, there are no more improvements needed. Those people are wrong.
Sariah: My understanding of feminism is that it’s supposed to be for everyone. And that means when women’s positions in the world and in society get better, stuff will become better. That doesn’t mean just one kind of woman. It means women of all colors. It means maybe their bodies weren’t born as a woman, but they always thought of themselves as a woman. It’s for women of disabilities, women who are uneducated, for women who maybe never want to support all the things that feminism supports. It’s for women who never want to have sex, it’s for women who always want to have sex. It’s for every woman and the idea that we are all here and that we all deserve our rights and respect in society and to feel safe where we are.
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