Chair Stevens responds to youth panel testimony
Stevens thanks the youth panel for their courage in sharing their stories, emphasizing the importance of humanizing the data discussed in hearings and encouraging them to continue civic engagement and advocacy, potentially even running for office themselves.
Thank you guys so much.
One, I just want to say thank you to all of you who had the courage to come share your story with us today.
I think that it's so important that when we are in hearings and we're talking about, you know, bed rates or we're talking about numbers decreasing.
it's important that we humanize it because that's why I was like, even with language of a reduction, we are talking about people and we're talking about young people.
And so you guys coming to share your stories is so important and necessary.
So I hope this is the first step of you guys understanding that this is what civic engagement looks like.
This is what advocacy looks like and continue to do this work because you guys are.
The closest to the issue, which means you have the solutions.
And you need to be in spaces like this and influencing people like me, and not only influencing me, but taking seats like this to be able to create the policies that we are fighting for now.
I think that is so important.
So thank you guys for showing up.
We appreciate it.
And I just wanted to say that.
I have a couple of questions for this panel, though.