Silver Spring Skaters Organizing

It's an amazing thing to see skateboarders in Silver Spring starting to organize and find ways to express their thoughts and their creative energy. There's so much creativity among them. Some of the kids have started their own clothing company, a couple of groups have started their own skate teams, and as I've mentioned before, 30 skaters showed up for the meeting about the Woodside Skate Spot.

These kids were so motivated to stand up for their need for a skate spot that they got to the meeting place before everyone else. They met up at Woodside Park at 5:30...even though the meeting was scheduled for 7:00. There were so many skaters there that we took up half the seats in Park & Planning's auditorium.

These kids hate to sit still. But they did that, and they were quiet and polite throughout the entire hour-and-a-half meeting. They might have reacted badly to some of the comments that were made, but that didn't happen.

For quite some time after we lost the skating spot on the lower part of Ellsworth, many of us were kind of dazed and confused, not knowing what to do or how we could communicate our needs, or who to talk to. But we've gotten past that. We're now organized, energized, and focused, and kids are standing up and speaking up for their right to skate.

We now have this blog, a Facebook Fan Page (we got 81 fans in only 3 days), a Facebook Group, a YouTube Channel, and we're also on Twitter. Not too bad for a bunch of kids and a few adults, drawn together by one thing -- our love for skateboarding.