{"id":318233,"date":"2026-10-31T10:36:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-31T10:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/318233\/"},"modified":"2026-10-31T10:36:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-31T10:36:09","slug":"shania-bennetts-plan-for-youth-engagement-in-philadelphia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/318233\/","title":{"rendered":"Shania Bennett\u2019s plan for youth engagement in Philadelphia"},"content":{"rendered":"

What questions do you have about the 2026 elections? What major issues do you want candidates to address? Let us know.<\/a>
Shania Bennett, the 26-year-old challenging Mayor Cherelle Parker<\/a> in next year\u2019s Democratic primary, brought her campaign\u2019s focus on young Philadelphians to North Philly on Wednesday evening, hosting a listening session at Kingdom Boxing Gym.\n<\/p>\n

Since announcing her candidacy, Bennett has been hosting public listening sessions focusing on various topics including mental health and wellness, public safety, and political strategy. She said she plans to hear the concerns of Philadelphians before releasing a policy platform.\n<\/p>\n

Bennett addressed concerns over large gatherings of young people that are often organized through social media, sometimes referred to as teen takeovers. In Philadelphia, a teen takeover in Center City over Labor Day weekend resulted in multiple arrests and citations as well as injuries to a Philadelphia police sergeant. Bennett argued that the city\u2019s response to teen takeovers has relied too heavily on policing rather than addressing the reasons young people gather in the first place.\n<\/p>\n

Bennett said the issue with the city\u2019s response to teen takeovers \u201csimply put, [is] over-policing.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\u201cPhiladelphia has not taken an approach that\u2019s comprehensive around youth engagement, right? We don\u2019t even have a rapid response plan for when young people are gathering except for police presence,\u201d she said.
\n\"ShaniaShania Bennett, a 26-year-old mayoral candidate, speaks during a youth engagement listening session at Kingdom Boxing Gym in North Philadelphia. (Rana Rastegari\/WHYY)\n<\/p>\n

To tackle the potential for such gatherings to become violent, Bennett said she wants to focus on \u201ctaking back our community\u201d.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all say it takes a village to raise a child. But we also negate that there\u2019s people that have to step up and actually be the village,\u201d Bennett said. She called for adults to take responsibility for investing in young people, including those labeled as \u201cbad kids.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Bennett, who previously worked as the director of youth engagement in Parker\u2019s office, placed particular emphasis on the importance of city officials regularly visiting schools, recreational centers and neighborhoods to hear directly from the young people.\n<\/p>\n

During her time in Parker\u2019s office, she said she led school safety tours where she spoke to young people about civics. She said she was the only city official present at the events, adding that \u201cthese visits should absolutely have every single official there.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

When the conversation opened up to audience members, education quickly emerged as a central concern. D\u2019nell Booker, an 18-year-old student at Randolph Technical High School who is studying construction, said he is frustrated by the environment in his high school and what he sees as a lack of meaningful engagement with learning.
\n\"D-nellD-nell Booker, an 18-year-old student at Randolph Technical High School, speaks about his frustrations with Philadelphia\u2019s public school system. (Rana Rastegari\/WHYY)\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI sit down, everybody [is] on their phones \u2026 As you sit down, we get on the phone. As soon as we get our assignment, everybody is straight to their phone. Everybody [is] cheating on their phone,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not stupid. I really want to learn,\u201d Booker continued. \u201cEducation is something that I really want to do and I feel like it\u2019s just so different when you\u2019re in the class and you see everybody doing work and you\u2019re the only one [who doesn\u2019t know what to do].\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What questions do you have about the 2026 elections? What major issues do you want candidates to address?…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318234,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[25694,69,71,70,61434],"class_list":["post-318233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-elections-2026","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-youth-voting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}