PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — 500 area high school students gathered at the Pennsylvania Convention Center for the 16th annual Youth Leadership Conference. Part of the program, aimed at helping kids identify how to not be indoctrinated into a culture of hate, included a keynote speech from a former neo-Nazi.
Shannon Foley Martinez says she believes explaining what attracted her to becoming a neo-Nazi nearly 30 years ago is necessary to help kids understand how easy it is to get lured into a culture of hate.
But despite her message now, Martinez says she gets a lot of pushback.
“I get death threats and hate emails and rape threats,” she said.
Martinez described her vulnerability at their age, being a victim of sexual assault. She says she was so angry after that happened.
“I didn't have anyone to help me, like, process,” she said. “And I think the rage within me really resonated with the rage that the white power skinheads that were at all the punk rock shows displayed.”
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According to Andrew Goretsky, the Philadelphia regional Anti-Defamation League director, 2021 had the highest amount of antisemitic incidents since the ADL has been keeping records. He says conferences like this help kids gain critical thinking and give them tools to deal with microaggressions and bullying.
“And so to know how somebody got into it, how somebody got out of it, to understand what's behind it can hopefully help students identify who may be at risk in their own schools and help them get help before they get to that point,” he said.
And this conference wasn’t just for students, it was also for teachers — including Amanda Edwards, a teacher at Plymouth Whitemarsh High School. She says she’s had to be careful about phrasing whenever she has these conversations with her students.
“When we used to talk about privilege, for example, sometimes I have to watch that being a trigger word because I don't want kids to shut down so it's more you know, we talked about like advantages,” she said.