Listen: Youth Activists Go To Tally To Talk Immigration Reform, Voting Rights, Juvenile Justice

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Credit Barbara Corbellini Duarte/WLRN

Phillip Agnew leads a news conference with the Dream Defenders inside the Capitol. Group members came to Tallahassee from Miami and cities in between.

College students from Miami and elsewhere around the state are trying to keep the dream alive.

They came by bus to Tallahassee during the opening week of the legislative session. The group is known as the Dream Defenders.

Phillip Agnew, Executive Director of Dream Defenders, led a news conference inside the Capitol then spoke with us about the group’s legislative agenda.

It includes voter suppression, zero tolerance policies, kids in adult jails, and the Stand Your Ground law.

Agnew is a former student body president at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee.

He was moved to become an activist after the beating death of teenager Martin Lee Anderson at a youth detention camp in the Panhandle.

Then Trayvon Martin was killed, and “Dream Defenders” was born.

Agnew says he hopes to inspire others by “doing.”

“We like to say we wow with our actions and merely woo with our words,” Agnew says. “We want to show them what happens when we DO -- and the power of that.”

Barbara Corbellini Duarte contributed to this report.