Revere High School’s Restorative Social Justice Club is holding presentations and seminars during its first year as an after school club. 

The club’s goal is to “Acknowledge, Educate, and Appreciate” people’s differences within the Revere community. 

Freshman and club leader  Anthea Phan, explained how the club started.

“She asked me if I wanted to [take ] charge [in] the club [since] [Mrs. Simonelli] wanted it to be more student-led,” Phan said.

 Since this is RSJ’s first year at Revere, Phan and other members in the group focused on bringing in underclassmen to the club, since they wanted to have a strong group of people for the following years. 

“We were interested in sophomores and juniors, but we didn’t focus on seniors because they would be leaving, and since this is a new club, we want to get the word out,” Phan said. 

Phan talked about the process of creating a topic for a presentation and what the club is planning on talking about in the upcoming months.

“Every month we pick a topic, like the previous two months its been black history month and sexism. [For] May we are bringing in American support animals and psychologists. [For] June we are doing pride month, [so we] are focusing on LGBTQ+ voices,” Phan said.

Phan talked about the point of holding these presentations at the club. 

“We really hope our presentation will start a discussion because that’s what we find to be the best part of the presentation is the seminars,” Phan said.

Phan described how RSJ club is different from the other clubs similar to them at Revere. 

“There are several clubs that are similar to us such as Students Demand Action and Diversify our Narrative. Those clubs are really similar, but what we try to focus on is rebuilding. Going back and realizing those specific times that there has been sexism or discrimination, we try to educate people based on those situations,” Phan said. 

Phan spoke out about combining with another club for some events in the future.

“I went to one of their Student Demand Action meetings led by Drake Du. They were talking about Asian American hate crime. I was really inspired by that. I was talking with Mr. Fry [and] he would love to bind these groups to have a school-led discussion so that could be possible in the future,” Phan said. 

RSJ Adviser Bonnie Simonelli talked about why it is important to have a club like this at Revere.

“If we can open dialogue and have free talk, presentations, and questions asked it makes things a lot less taboo,” Simonelli said. 

Simonelli spoke about the response of the club from the students and the school as a whole. 

“I am glad Revere is open to it. I think it is awesome that students want to share their experiences with other students and hear about it,” Simonelli said. 

Freshman Julia Grandon talked about her favorite part of being a member in the club.

“It is very freeing. It is nice to talk about things that people do not really talk about or they do not realize are issues in the world,” Grandon said.

Grandon explained why it is important that we have this club at Revere. 

“We are talking about it, we are informing people, we are making presentations to make sure people are aware of what’s going on in the world,” Grandon said.