More than 600 students and social workers showed up to Advocacy Day in Columbus at the Vern Riffe Center. They were trained on how to influence legislation, how to speak to elected officials, how to push policy, and how to turn their voices into law. Let’s stop right there. Because policy is not just politics… policy controls housing, policy controls schools, policy controls policing, policy controls healthcare, policy controls money flow into communities. If you understand policy, you understand power. Now look at the picture they showed you. Not one Black student. Not one.

So while your kids are being told to “stay out the way,” “get a job,” or “just vote,” other students are being trained how to control the system your kids have to live under. They are sitting in rooms learning how to influence the exact decisions that determine whether Black neighborhoods get funding or get ignored, whether rent goes up or stays stable, whether police presence increases or decreases, whether schools get resources or get left behind. This is not accidental. This is what structural exclusion looks like in 2026. No signs, no slurs, no headlines saying “you’re not invited.” Just access being quietly given to one group while another group is missing from the room.

They even said it themselves. Students were “empowered.” They gained “real-world experience.” They learned how to influence policy decisions. That means when they graduate, they don’t just enter the workforce… they enter positions of influence. Meanwhile, Black youth are largely absent from these pipelines, meaning they enter adulthood reacting to policies instead of shaping them. And that right there is the cycle. One group learns how to create the rules, the other group lives under them.

And let’s go deeper. They discussed paid internships, AI regulations, and legislation like House Bill 88. These are future-shaping decisions. Technology, labor access, economic mobility. If Black youth are not in those rooms early, they are already behind before the policy is even written. This is how disparities are built before anyone even notices them. By the time the impact shows up in eviction rates, school quality, or policing data, the decisions have already been made years earlier… by people who were trained in rooms just like this.

This is not about blaming the students who showed up. They did exactly what they were supposed to do. This is about asking why Black youth are not being systematically brought into these same spaces at the same scale. Where are the pipelines? Where are the programs? Where is the exposure? Because if policy controls everything, then keeping a group disconnected from policy is one of the most effective ways to control their outcomes without ever saying a word.

This is why the Black Wall matters. Because the Black Wall doesn’t just show you what politicians say… it shows you what their policies actually do. It tracks the outcomes. It connects decisions to real conditions. And more importantly, it gives people the information they need to stop being spectators and start becoming participants in the system that shapes their lives.

If young Black people don’t get access to rooms like this, then we build our own pipeline. We study the policies ourselves. We track the outcomes ourselves. We hold officials accountable ourselves. Because at the end of the day, if you don’t understand policy, you don’t control your future.

Start paying attention. Start asking questions. Start using platforms like the Black Wall to see what’s really happening behind the scenes. And most importantly, start sharing this information so the next generation isn’t locked out of rooms that decide everything about their lives.

And y’all cool with this?