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Youth speeches, awards and GSA support highlight Empower Montana’s Diversity Day in Missoula
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Summary
Empower Montana’s Diversity Day in Missoula featured a youth keynote about coming out and organizing, the reading of a city diversity proclamation, and awards recognizing youth leaders who advanced GSAs, disability access and immigrant support. Organizers urged action, listed resources and closed with a band debut and raffle.
Jesmonies Hernandez, director of youth engagement at Empower Montana, opened a Sunday Diversity Day event in Missoula by announcing the theme “Light, Courage, Action” and urging attendees to turn that theme into concrete steps, including signing an action board and visiting resource tables.
Hernandez highlighted Empower Montana’s year-round programs — community clubs, the Montana GSA Network, youth policy fellowships and the statewide Montana Youth Advisory Council — and promoted the free Empowering Youth Leadership Institute slated for July at Seeley Lake. “This year’s theme is Light, Courage, Action,” Hernandez said, “bringing to light community issues, uplifting courageous leaders, and taking meaningful action.”
The program included the reading of a city proclamation. Evan Polakhardi, a peer facilitator for Empower’s Youth Advisory Council, read a Missoula proclamation noting the city’s commitment to diversity and citing a nondiscrimination ordinance passed on 04/12/2010. Patience, one of the event emcees, said the ordinance’s passage and subsequent youth organizing led to the first Diversity Day proclamation and an ongoing annual celebration.
Wilson McLaughlin, the youth keynote speaker and a senior at Hellgate High School, described coming to understand her queer identity in middle school, confronting bullying and opposition at a school-board meeting, and helping sustain a GSA and later founding Queer Prom MT. “If I don’t stand up to these hateful people, who will?” Wilson said, recounting speaking at a tense school-board hearing and the role that organizing played in preserving safe spaces. Her account emphasized the stakes for students who rely on school- and community-based GSAs for safety and belonging.
Organizers presented Youth Lead Now Awards to several young leaders. Shukari Enyazay (introduced as Shikoria) shared a refugee-to-leader story about finding belonging in Missoula; Leila Riggs spoke about disability advocacy and recent testimony to the Montana legislature to protect pre-employment transition services funding; Sara Parsa described building community through Soft Landing and leadership councils; and Evan Colsac Hardy reflected on years of engagement with Empower Montana and urged adults to listen to youth voices.
Event hosts also listed resource tables in the back of the room, including the Black Student Union (University of Montana), ACLU Montana, Queer Prom MT and community GSAs run by Empower Montana such as BU Crew and Youth Forward. Attendees were encouraged to donate via QR codes, follow organizational social accounts and sign the action board to document personal commitments.
Organizers closed the program by thanking sponsors (including The Good Food Store, Blackfoot Communication, First Security Bank and Coca-Cola), announcing raffle mechanics, and introducing the debut performance by the band Familiar Museum. Raffle winners were to be drawn after the band’s second song.
The event combined personal testimony, practical resource-sharing and public recognition of youth leadership; organizers emphasized civic engagement, legislative advocacy and sustaining spaces for queer and marginalized youth in Missoula.
