Despite curfews and ‘watchful eyes,’ D.C. youth culture adapts and endures
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Being a young person in D.C. often means navigating through a land full of rich culture, but having your access to that culture restricted.
It means growing up in the capital of the United States, while feeling the watchful eyes of adults on you, adults who see you as a potential threat rather than a fellow society member with a voice, needs, hopes and inspiration. This dichotomy creates a complicated identity for young people in D.C. — one defined by pride in the city’s rich history and the frustration with a system that limits their own autonomy.
As a youngster growing up in Washington, D.C., I’ve often noticed that the opinions of young people are not taken into consideration when restrictions are imposed due to increasing concern over young people’s behaviors, habits and criminal activity. D.C.’s current youth curfew, enacted in November 2025, has been making it difficult for those of us under 18 to keep our commitments to jobs and community service when shifts and curfew overlap.
To better understand how these issues are affecting young people, I spoke with Marie Moll, the Teen Center program manager at the Latin American Youth Center (LAYC), a pioneering Latine organization that has been around since the late 1960s and remains deeply connected to the youth in the city today.
Moll has worked with D.C. youth since the early 1990s, starting with programs that taught photography and other that young people could use to help them document their lives. She says she has always focused on helping young people tell their own stories, instead of leaving it to others to define for them.
Read our interview to find out more about Moll, how youth culture has shifted in D.C. and continues to adapt to changing circumstances.
Can you share a little bit about your background and what first inspired you to get involved in youth-led projects in D.C.?
I moved to D.C. a long time ago, in the early ‘90s. I worked with an organization called Shooting Back that taught kids photography as a way of documenting the world they lived in. Then I went on to a place that taught kids video as a way of also documenting your world and telling a story about your life and where you’re from. Then I started working with — well, even with those projects, I worked with Latin American Youth Center — but I worked a lot with the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and we worked with the youth center. So every job I had, I worked with the youth center, and then I just came and started working with the youth center.
Yeah, I see what you mean. Why have another organization in the middle?
I think all those projects had something in common, whether it was photography or video or art or whatever it was. It was about not having outside people come in and tell the story or document a young person’s life. It was about teaching young people the skills to do it themselves, tell their own stories rather than have someone else tell their story.
We went to Indian reservations and taught photography. I think a lot of outside people go to reservations and talk about what life is like there, but you get a different story if you have a teenager who grew up there saying, “This is what my life is like here.”
If you only come for a short while, you might see that there’s a lot of poverty or things like that. But if you live there longer, you see there’s community, and people help each other out. There are these layers. But if you only look at the surface, you don’t see that depth.
How would you describe youth culture in D.C.? What role do you feel you play in shaping or representing it?
Hmm? I don’t know that I play any role in shaping or representing it, because that’s not my role. Although if you think of the exhibits we produce, it’s representing youth perspectives on things. But we aren’t saying, “Oh, that piece is in, and that piece is out,” … almost everything everyone creates is in it.
One thing I’ve noticed that I think is different since the pandemic is that kids spend a lot more time at home than they used to. They just don’t engage in person as much. Before the pandemic, kids would come here and take a class on a Tuesday, but they’d also come Monday, Wednesday and Thursday and hang out, or meet their friends. They don’t do that anymore. They just come for the thing, purposeful thing.
I guess how youth interact more is online. They might go home, but they aren’t necessarily alone, because they’re interacting with people online, playing games or doing things like that.
But young people still want to be really engaged. When I see them here and what they’re doing, they’re still really engaged in their community. They have lots of opinions and ideas and things. I don’t think they’re apathetic at all. It’s just harder to get them together in person as much.
We did a radio class last semester, and it was great to see how engaged they were in current events and stuff like that. There’s still a lot of passion about making changes in your community that young people have, which I think is great.
Yeah, I can kind of understand about people being more online than in person, but it’s also the fact that right now there are few places where youth can hang out freely. What message or vision would you like to share about the future of youth culture and activism in D.C.?
I think it’s strong. I think it’s always evolving. Though, how do young people do it? In the past, young people used to make signs and go out and protest on the street. Now, maybe it takes more of a form of social media. It was where a lot of action takes place. I still think it’s out there; it just takes different forms.
Like I was saying with our youth radio program, young people have really strong reactions to things. We had a lot of discussions down here about the Target 1The Target store and entire DC USA mall on 14th Street NW have banned under-18-year-olds not accompanied by an adult. And wasn’t there a curfew that was put into place this summer? We talked a lot about that.
Through the discussions we have here, I see that young people are still really engaged in what’s going on around them and are trying to figure out how to make a difference in those things.
Find out more and sign up for LAYC’s Teen Center programs.
– Story by Jessica Mendez-Perez
– Copy edited by Valerie Izquierdo and Kami Waller
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