This snapshot was gathered in conjunction with the Museum on Main Street program at the Smithsonian Institution and its "Stories from Main Street" initiative. The project is intended to capture Americans' impressions and stories about their small-town and rural neighborhoods, waterways, personal memories, cultural traditions, work histories, and thoughts about American democracy. This story is from a group of narratives inspired by the Smithsonian traveling exhibition, "Voices and Votes: Democracy in America."

EJ (00:00): At school and in such classes such as AP Lang, we have been discussing sustainability and my topic was ocean sustainability. And lots of the problems for pollution in the oceans today are plastic bags. Turtles are mistaking plastic bags as jellyfish because they think they're food and it's destroying the sea life ecosystem, which is really sad to see because oceans are a big part for so many islands and smaller places for food and resources. So I believe that there should be more strict restrictions on such things as fishing, pollution and other things like that.

(00:53): Another topic we discussed at school is gun control. You hear on the news of the school shootings occurring so many times throughout the year, which is really sad compared to other countries. And it's important for us to know that there should be stricter policies for guns because people are dying from them, as well as some solutions could be such as gun control, just stricter gun laws. And for pollution, such as plastic bags, maybe implementing a tax around Arizona such as 10 or 20 cents to decrease the amount of plastic bags used. Because plastic bags aren't fully bad, it's just the ones that are not being used or disposed of the proper way that are bad.

Asset ID: 2022.34.12.d