A presentation of AIT.

- It's messy. It is freedom and it's rules. It's rights and responsibilities. It's conflict and resolution. 
- Both empowerment and compromise. 
- It is justice. It is individual and it's collective. 
- It's fairness, respect and values. 
- It is equality. It is truth. It is government and it's choices. It's passionate. It's problem solving. It's action and it's possible. It's me, my family and my community. "Democracy it is." 
- All: Democracy it is!

- I don't believe it. 
- It looks like somebody found our hiding spot again. 
- This is disgusting! How could people do this? 
- We had to clean this up before and now it's even worse. Let's just go. 
- We can't just leave this spot looking like this. 
- Why not? This isn't our mess. It's not like we threw it here. 
- Well, we have a choice. We can either let this keep happening or we can try to change it. 
- Like how? 
- Go talk to someone. Get other people involved, too. 
- I don't know, Haley, that sounds like a lot of work to me. 
- It's up to you. This is a great hideout. Do you want to hang out here, or not? 
- Well, I do like it here, and it's close to home. So, if we get any good ideas, let's try them. 
- Let's start with getting as much as the not-so-gross stuff as we can for now, and see what we can do later. 
- Okay, here, I've got a bag.

- Oh! My name is Quinn Haberl. And I'm a black belt in Tae Kwon Do. I've always enjoyed singing. § 'Til by turning 
§ §
 Turning we come out right §

 And I am visually impaired, which means that I see a little bit, but not much. When I was five years old, I asked my parents if I could get a guide dog. And they said... 
(buzzer sound)
 No. Because in the United States, they do not provide guide dogs to children under the age of 18.

There was a school up in Montreal, Canada, that gave guide dogs to children. My dad flew me up to the guide dog school, where I stayed for one month and trained with Coda. And Coda has changed my life so much. Before I got Coda, I would fall down stairs and I would literally walk into walls. Now I have the freedom. I can be a normal citizen of my community. Coda and I have the right to be anywhere that any other person can be regardless of our disability. It's a big responsibility to have a guide dog. Kids who can handle a guide dog should be able to experience the freedom and should be able to experience my dream coming true for them. 
- Quinn came home from school one day, and said, "What are the chances that we could build a guide dog school here for kids in the United States?" We are totally committed to making this happen. 
- One the words that I learned was "networking," and that's getting the word out. Talking to new people, telling them about my dream and telling them how their help is greatly appreciated. Well, this morning, I spoke at the County Board because we're looking for any sort of help that we can get from them, anything that they can offer to us is awesome. My dream is not complete until I have made other children's dreams come true just as mine has, with the building of the first guide dog school in the United States for children, right here in Marinette County, Wisconsin. Thank you very much for having me speak today. 
(applause)
 You've got to respect other people's viewpoints, so you should always listen, even if you disagree with somebody, always listen to what they have to say. 
- Community support here in Marinette has just been incredible. 
- We had a fundraiser, a pet walk. People in the community are raising puppies for us. It's just the people coming forward and saying, "We want to help." And my family's just been the best. They're my support team. I want to see the quality of visually impaired and blind children's life-- I want to see the quality of their life change, because every kid has potential, regardless of what disability they have. And no kid should forget that.

- So, I talked to my soccer coach last night. She's also a City Council member. She told me everything about City Council meetings and how they work. 
- So, what will we be doing? 
- Basically, we have ten minutes to present our ideas to the City Council. For now, our job is to get all of our research organized. Let's see what we've got. 
- Last week, I took lots of pictures of city parks that have litter problems. 
- Great, so we're set there. 
- And we have a lot of people who agree with our surveys. 
- Yeah, and I can tell from all the letters people have been writing to the newspaper that we're not the only ones upset about all this litter. 
- Okay, and to fix this problem, we agree that we need more garbage cans, more trash collection days and more park signs, right? 
- Wait. Why park signs? 
- Because when people see park signs, they're less likely to throw trash around. They know that somebody cares enough about the park to put up a sign. 
- Hey, check it out. Park signs seem to work pretty well in these other communities. 
- Hey, how about we bring some garbage we found at the park, like that old tire? 
- Let's see if we can find another way to do that. Like this poster of pictures, our survey and some other parts of our research. 
- We've definitely got a lot of information collected. 
- Yeah, this presentation is gonna be awesome!

- Nerstrand School is a service learning school. And we do all sorts of projects. 
- We're making sandwiches for the Simpson Homeless Shelter in Minneapolis. 
- People need food at the homeless shelter. And we'll always try to help people that are struggling. 
- We have a responsibility for each other, our school and our community. 
- We're planting acorns. And once they grow, we're going to take them out of the pots and plant them in the big woods. We learned that we need trees for oxygen, you know, 'cause we need oxygen to live. 
- At our school, we think it's very important that it's not the adults that make all the decisions for the children, especially when it comes to service learning. 
- We also need new ideas for service projects. What are your suggestions? 
- We can go around Nerstrand and pick up garbage. 
- Everybody has a say in this school. 
- There are lots of committees and the student's voice is heard. 
- Like a few kids from every homeroom is in the "Learn and Serve" group. 
- The Learn and Serve students meet, and then they're responsible for taking back information to the homerooms. 
- Our ideas come from our homerooms. 
- So, then we'd go back to Learn and Serve and then we'd figure out what would be the best idea. 
- So we're going to break into our homeroom groups. And you are going to go over the list of ideas that your homeroom came up with. And you're going to narrow those down to the top five. Okay? Talk about-- 'Cause some of you might have different opinions. 
- Then we could do, like, games. 
- Yeah. 
- If we didn't have respect in our committee meeting, everybody would be fighting all the time, and we wouldn't get anything done. 
- It's really important for them to know how to problem solve, how to work as a team. 
- Everybody gets to decide. 
- When you give kids choice, they, I think have a feeling more of it's their projects. Kids understand that you can really make a difference in the world by reaching out to others. 
- I know what I've learned here I'll always remember.

- Wow, who knew that a City Council meeting could be so exciting? 
- Yeah, but we still didn't get everything we asked for. They didn't give us a "yes" or a "no" on our idea for more garbage cans and park signs. 
- And they said more trash collecting days are definitely out. The parks department is stretched to the limit on that. 
- Well, my mom has a saying. "We're one voice among many." 
- What does that mean? 
- It means that there's a lot of needs and ideas for the Council to consider along with ours. 
- And I sure wasn't expecting that one guy to talk tonight. He might have blown our chances just to get this done. 
- Well, I understand what he was saying, signs and garbage cans just being more clutter in our parks. I just don't agree with him. It isn't like we wanted to add a fast food restaurant, or something. 
- Why did he say people should be taking out their own trash? They aren't doing that and that's the problem. 
- Yeah, but it was really cool when that same guy came up to us afterwards and told us what a great job we did. 
- I guess people really can disagree about important things and still be respectful. 
- It's still taking forever, and now we have to wait another week. 
- It's taken us a month to get this far. These things take time. 
- You can say that again.

- San Pablo is like, across the Bay of San Francisco. Our schools are in need badly. 
- If an earthquake happens here, they're not safe. 
- We need more textbooks for our school, because we can't learn without them. 
- There was like, no toilet paper and no water, you know, for your hands. 
- So why does their public school look like it's about to fall apart? 
- And you know, we're wondering why that is, because supposedly everybody is supposed to be equal, you know, everybody has equal rights here. 
- That's when they were able to see with their own eyes, this is unjust; this is unfair. So one kid started talking to another kid. And then there started to be conversations out in the classroom, out on the playground. And kids were like, what if we come together? So, we had a huge meeting in the auditorium. And then, the idea of the March came about. The March 4 education was a 70-mile march all the way to the state capital in Sacramento. 
- We're marching 70 miles to bring attention to the fact that the schools in our district are not equal to the schools throughout the rest of the state. 
- The march started when we were in our spring break. 
- Kids made the choice. I'm not going to be watching TV or playing video games during my spring break. I'm going to march about 12 miles a day.

That's the choice the kids made. They convinced their parents this is something that was within their rights. 
- Everybody has the right to be heard. That's why we were marching. 
- I was leading the slogans. 
- Marchers: What do we want? Education! 
- What do we want? Education. When do we want it? Now. 
- Everybody around was cheering cheers, talking about the problems in our community. 
- Some people came out of their houses just to march at least one mile. 
- So we were passing a bridge, and people under the freeway, they were honking at us. Telling you, you know, we believe what you're doing is right, so keep on doing it. That's when I felt like, really, I was making a difference. 
- I think marching in the group was an effective way to show people that not only one person thinks that we need our education. 
- Once a student finds out there's an injustice, yes, you have rights. You have the right to protest. You have the right to speak out. But you also have a responsibility to speak up. And to do it in a way that's going to bring people together. 
- You should also show what you think, not keep it to yourself. Because then later on, you might be complaining, and it might also be your fault because you didn't say something. 
- Podiamos hacer algo por nuestra communidad. 
- And they did see changes. So, now the local elementary school is going to get changes, it is going to get renovated. 
- The march made a change in my life because my voice could be heard.

- This sign looks great! 
- And the garbage can fits right in! 
- Hey, you two, come look at our hideout! Wow! What a difference! 
- Whoa! It looks like our old place again. Even better! 
- This was a lot easier than I thought. 
- Is this the same guy that was complaining about how hard this was? 
- Okay, so, it wasn't easy. 
- It was a lot of work. 
- Yes, but it all seems worth it. I didn't think we stood a chance when we decided to take on this problem. 
- But we still didn't get everything we asked for. And I thought we made a pretty good case for those extra trash collection days. 
- True. But that's the reality of making a change like this. There's lots to think about. That's how this stuff goes. 
- Yes, but the important thing is that we didn't give up and we did make some good changes. 
- Yeah, this definitely was a group effort. 
- All right, so we're ready for the next project, right? 
- Next project? 
- Let's see if we can get the City Council to clean up my bedroom. 
- Yeah, right.

- To learn more about our program, visit our Web site: democracyitis.ecb.org