Teens in Brooklyn to discuss sensitive issues during a series of video chats.

January 19 celebrates Martin Luther King Day in the USA. It falls on the third Monday of January and is dedicated to January 15, King's birthday. Fifty years ago, King fought for the civil rights of blacks in the United States, seeking to end discrimination, racism and segregation. Many modern human rights advocates believe that segregation in the Americas was subsequently eliminated, which cannot be said about the other two phenomena.

Last week, Brooklyn President Eric Adams told reporters that he spoke with a black high school student from the Brooklyn region of East New York. He admitted that he had never in his life had to talk to a white teenager.

Not long ago, Adams recently visited the Magen David Brooklyn yeshiva. The students of the Jewish school communicated with their peers in China via video chat. Despite the language and cultural barrier, young New Yorkers found a lot in common with the guys from China.

“I thought about how today we use technology to communicate with people on the other side of the Earth,” Adams says. “But in reality we don’t talk to those who live nearby, in the same city, in the same area.”

Eric Adams and human rights activist Norman Siegel announced that starting from 20 in January, high school students from Brooklyn will have the opportunity to chat with their peers from other schools in this New York City boro using Google Hangouts.

The project organizers want young people and girls from different ethnic and social groups to get to know each other better, to talk and discuss such sensitive issues as public relations with the police, protests, the murder of Eric Garner by officer Daniel Pantaleo and the brutal massacre of police Lew and Ramos .

“We live in isolation from each other. I am sure that this fact is directly related to and to some extent provokes the problems and contradictions that our society faces today,” says Adams.

He also noted that, in addition to teenagers, representatives of the New York police would also take part in the discussions. Not indifferent officers agreed to take part in the action after hours.

Norman Siegel says that the results of the experiment of open youth discussion will be summarized by March (by this time several virtual meetings will have to take place). About them, the project organizers are planning to report on the administration of President Barack Obama and the governor of New York Andrew Cuomo. If the project proves successful, the Brooklyn experience will probably be turned over to other parts of New York and the USA.