DJ Yearwood: Advocate for Youth Representation

Yearwood’s path to the Vote16 campaign began in 2018 with his dislike of cigarettes and cigarette smoke – people in his family smoked regularly – and an innate sense of injustice. While attending a mostly white school in Independence, a suburb of Kansas City, he noticed it was mostly black and brown kids who were being charged with possession of vape and tobacco products while in school. Missouri state law prohibits possession of such products on school grounds.

Around the same time in 2019, he learned two things that sparked his curiosity. The first was that tobacco company marketing strategies targeted children and people of color with tactics he had seen used in his community. He remembered his own family receiving coupons in the mail for packs of cigarettes when he was younger.

The second was that a school-to-prison pipeline exists that most impacts the same black and brown population targeted by the tobacco companies.

Yearwood connected the dots. The kids caught vaping or carrying cigarettes get suspended, get addicted, fall behind on their schoolwork, and eventually start failing classes, drop out, and often wind up in jail.

He remembers, “It just made me very mad the more I thought of that and the more these two things intertwined.”

Always willing to question the world the adults had presented to him – a “fatal flaw” that he says got him kicked off student council in 8th grade, Yearwood went to work. Over the next two years, he worked with the American Heart Association as a youth advocate, initially campaigning to ban flavored tobacco and vape products. Over time, he became the face of a campaign to increase the state budget for education and support around preventing vaping and tobacco use and addiction. In 2022, the legislature passed, and the governor signed, a bill that increased funding fivefold to $2.5 million. Yearwood believes it was the largest investment in tobacco prevention and cessation efforts in Missouri’s history.

By 2025, the Department of Mental Health reported that tobacco use among the state’s teens had dropped. A spokesperson for the American Lung Association in Kansas City credited the 24/7 availability of phone, text, and online resources that offer support to current and potential users.

For his efforts, Yearwood was recognized by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids as the 2023 Barrie Fiske National Youth Advocate of the Year. He continued his work as a board member of the organization from 2023 – 2025, one of two teens to join the board at a time when it had no youth board members.

The idea that students needed more representation grew out of Yearwood’s frustration with the limited influence of student government and the disconnect between the students and the school board that made decisions on their behalf. He began researching options for giving students a voice in local elections, and quickly developed “a policy rationale rooted in precedent from other cities and what I think of as a ‘phased civic engagement’ approach, starting with school board elections as an entry point.”

Building on his earlier advocacy experience, Yearwood began organizing students around local elections, convening a public forum dubbed KCFutureVoters that brought together students and candidates for the Kansas City City Council. The group followed up by hosting a town hall for candidates and formally launched the Vote16 campaign in May 2023.

The launch received substantial press coverage. Interviewed by Fox4 News Kansas City, Yearwood pointed out that many 16- and 17-year-olds are taxpayers who should be part of the decision-making process.

“The overall vision of Vote16MO,” he said, “is to create a better educated, better prepared, and more engaged electorate.”

A year later, Yearwood explained on St. Louis Public Radio, “I think that young people have a unique perspective about their day-to-day lives, whether it’s in their school or community or of their peers that should be elevated and represented in policies in all levels of government.”

The campaign provided a bitter lesson for Yearwood, who believed the state’s Secretary of State, Jay Ashcroft, would not weigh in publicly on the issue. Ashcroft, however, came out against Vote16, arguing it was too complicated to implement

Yearwood responded, “We value the Secretary of State’s opinion, and it would be true that it would be more work put in, but we believe it’s worth it because tax-paying citizens should have the right to vote in their community.”

Despite their efforts, it became clear that the campaign would not succeed at the state level. At that point, Yearwood redirected his focus to lowering the voting age to 16 in Kansas City.

When the campaign’s legal advisors persuaded him that the law limited municipal authority over the legal voting age, he pivoted again. He argued successfully before the city’s Neighborhood Planning and Development Committee for the establishment of the Kansas City Futures Office. The Office serves as a platform for engaging teens aged 13-18 and young adults, aged 19-24, in separate advisory commissions to the city council. It will hold its first Youth Summit in March.

It was not the solution Yearwood had originally sought, but he was satisfied that it at least created an avenue for teens and young adults to have their voices heard on issues that mattered to them.

Yearwood’s work on Vote16MO led to his involvement with Vote16USA, the national Vote16 organization, where he is a member of its national advisory board.

Yearwood ascribes his political passion to his family, his study of historical events, and Donald Trump’s 2016 candidacy, but it was two youth-centered, civic-minded programs that gave him the structure that enabled him to act with impact.

From a young age, he says, he knew his mother was “a big fan of Barack Obama.” Yearwood vividly remembers his mother’s excitement when Obama was reelected in 2012. Only six at the time, he understood the importance of being the first black man to be president. He enjoyed learning about the Boston Tea Party and reading the historical novel, “Prisoner B-3087”, a fictionalized account of a Jewish boy who survives the Holocaust.

Yearwood turned 10 the year Donald Trump was first elected. His family had just moved to Kansas City from California, and he was living with his aunt and uncle in Independence, where the schools were better but a lot less diverse and more white than what he was used to.

“Trump’s rhetoric was really appalling to me,” he says, recalling how horrified he was at the idea that adults would vote for this man. When he “begged” (his word) his aunt to vote for Hillary Clinton, she told him he needed to give her a good reason why. He studied up, made his pitch on election day, and she agreed.

“It felt like a big win to me.” Yearwood still has the “I voted” sticker his aunt gave him that day.

While in middle school, Yearwood took advantage of two programs: Youth Court and Youth Ambassadors (YA). Youth Court is an alternative to Family Court. Juveniles charged with minor offenses such as tobacco possession can choose to be tried in Youth Court, where they are prosecuted, defended, and judged by their peers. After training and passing an exam, Yearwood served as a defense attorney for many of those caught with tobacco and vape products. It was in this role that Yearwood began to recognize the injustice of tobacco marketing.

His interest in getting a job led him to join Youth Ambassadors, a leadership training program that pays students to do outreach and organizing related to health and wellness. His work in YA led to his involvement with the American Heart Association.

Through these programs, he became involved in the campaign against youth tobacco use.

Yearwood graduated from high school in 2024 with an Associate of Arts degree from Metropolitan Community College of Kansas City, meaning he needs only two years of college to obtain his Bachelor’s, which he is currently pursuing through Southern New Hampshire University’s online campus. He expects to complete the degree in June, despite his full-time job managing Councilmember Patterson Hazley’s office. In addition, his experience in youth empowerment and youth tobacco use has made him a valued – and often paid – speaker at events across the country.

Yearwood is committed to attending law school in the near future, with an eye toward seeking an elected position, probably in city government to start. But he is also very much still engaged in the present:

“I’m focused right now on becoming a better political strategist and just getting good stuff done. There’s not a job that is in my head right now that I’m aiming for or that I’m working toward. I’m trying to build progress and capitalize on momentum. That’s all.”