Here to Lead

Reimagining the Criminal Justice System and Philanthropy

Here to Lead · November 10, 2020 ·

Northern California

“It is only through learning about one’s own history that we are able to appreciate the history and culture of others, and humanize them in a way that they’d want to be humanized in return.”

Eddy Zheng is the president and founder of New Breath Foundation. In this Here to Lead Q&A, he discusses the importance of reimagining the criminal justice system, how philanthropy has an opportunity to better support AAPI communities and the importance of healing, learning one’s personal history and cross-cultural engagement.

Tell us about your work and why you do what you do?

From the age of 16, I was impacted by the criminal “injustice” and immigration systems. This experience solidified my political and social consciousness, allowing me to take responsibility for my actions, and dedicate my life to helping people and communities in similar situations to transform and heal themselves.

What drives me is to use my lived experience to empower marginalized communities and create an equitable, inclusive society. Ultimately, I want all movements and nonprofits to be less reliant on philanthropy and government. By providing support to Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities who have been harmed by the immigration and criminal justice systems, my goal is to promote racial solidarity through healing, shift the narrative and keep families together.

How did the idea for New Breath Foundation come about, and what do you think its role is in the philanthropic space?

Through my experience as a nonprofit leader, organizer and formerly incarcerated individual, I saw time and time again that AAPI communities are not at the table when it comes to funding. With less than one percent of philanthropic dollars going to support Asian-led organizations, these communities are not only left out of the conversation, but overlooked when foundations are speaking about equity and the criminal justice movement. This happens for a variety of reasons: lack of disaggregated data (AAPI individuals are often considered part of an “other” category in the prison system); the “model minority” myth that is often associated with Asian communities; and only talking about the school-to-prison pipeline, not the school-to-prison-to-deportation pipeline. With that in mind, I knew that I couldn’t wait for a magic moment to create a table for our community. I started the New Breath Foundation with the goal of mobilizing resources to support AAPIs harmed by the unjust immigration and criminal justice systems to heal, keep families together, and build movements that shift narratives and policies.

What does anti-racist solidarity look like in practice and in your work?

To me, racial solidarity starts with education and creating opportunities for cross-cultural engagement to counter the idea of the “other”. Even in the Asian community, there are different rituals, issues and cultural practices. When it comes to creating solidarity across African American, Latinx and AAPI communities, we need to focus on tapping in to our CHI – our culture, history, and identity. It is only through learning about one’s own history that we are able to appreciate the history and culture of others, and humanize them in a way that they’d want to be humanized in return. I live and breathe that vision–how to create a space and opportunity to do cross cultural healing and produce racial solidarity by addressing anti-Blackness that is prevalent in the Asian community.

What is the call to philanthropy in this moment, and beyond?

The larger vision is not only about equity in addressing some of the injustices our communities face, but equity in funding: how can we get funders to increase their giving from the mandated five percent to 20 percent or more, or ensure that they divest from harmful practices and corporations that are causing these inequities in the first place?

What is the impact that COVID has had on AAPI communities?

As we see the federal government characterize the pandemic as the “China virus” and the “Kung Flu”, we are seeing an increase in racial violence and hatred toward Asians and Asian Americans, and a re-emergence of Anti-Asian sentiment. Across the U.S., the most marginalized Asian and Asian Americans, especially the elderly and women, are targets of verbal abuse, threats and physical violence. Additionally, due to historical economic and health disparities, we see Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities disproportionately impacted by the health crisis. The lack of political analysis on the impact of this health pandemic continues to deepen the racial chasm among people of color. Our communities are being further used as wedges and scapegoats for the government’s inefficiency and perpetuation of institutional racism.

What do you think is the opportunity in this moment to reimagine the criminal justice system?

In this moment in particular, we have an opportunity to reimagine the criminal justice system by focusing on transformative justice. It’s only now, in the time of COVID-19, that we are seeing people beginning to come around to the idea of abolition, but we have yet to see investment in the healing, education and power of boys and men of color and communities of color. Letting people out of prison in response to COVID is not nearly enough because society still believes in crime and punishment rather than investing in healing within those communities. This is one of the reasons our funding strategies and programs are built to support cultural education spaces that translate historical policies and narratives of how institutions and systems have perpetuated racism and injustice among African American and Chinese communities. We must not only reimagine criminal justice, but invest in policy change, mental health and solutions like ethnic studies to empower people to learn their true history and culture. It is not enough to simply “better” our prisons or push for easy fixes.

Finally, just as we center boys and men of color when we talk about criminal justice reform, we have to center girls and women of color. They are not only as impacted, but actually face harsher treatments and are often times overlooked in this conversation.

How do you define civic engagement and why, particularly in this moment, is it so important?

Civic engagement has to be a priority in communities of color who, every day, are being stripped of their voting rights as a result of racist policies. While we want certain freedoms now, like voting rights for those who have been impacted by mass incarceration, the long-term goal is to empower boys and men of color to be civically engaged so they can understand not only the importance of their vote, but how to participate and actually vote more consciously. It’s up to us to change the way in which people in this country, whether they are citizens or not, are treated and end the impact of white supremacy.

Resources:

Youth Leaders of Today Hold the Key to a Better Future

Here to Lead · November 10, 2020 ·

Northern California

“Young people will be the leaders of our future, so why not start now?”

Tell us about yourself – where you grew up, what shaped you into the person you are today?

I consider myself very fortunate. I grew up in Oakland in a Caribbean family that was never wealthy, but never poor. My parents are really responsible for setting up my foundation and priorities. My mom, who is currently the assistant district attorney in Alameda, has always worked in law and has always known that the criminal justice system in this country is skewed. Her motivation for becoming a lawyer came from wanting to change the system from within. She graduated from UC Berkeley at 19 and is the one who taught me about working hard and to speak up for what I believe in. My dad, who was a professional swimmer taught me about dedication and discipline from his experience in professional sports. Splitting my time between my parents in the Laurel District and East Oakland, I went to private school the majority of my life and surrounded myself with like-minded friends, including Akil. He was the co-organizer of the protest, and we have known each other since we were four. We had a lot in common: we were both Black, heavily into sports and academics and loved history, politics and the arts. It was the desire to tell the untold stories of people of color and Black people that lay the ground for my love for the arts.

How do you define leadership? Civic engagement? How do you see those connected to the protest you organized?

Both leadership and civic engagement are tied directly to the act of protest. With any action, you have to have people engaged, and be able to get across what you need. There is no protest without some sort of civic engagement. In terms of leadership: a leader is someone who cares. You can’t have strong opinions or tell people what to do unless you care about them, and respect them as much as they respect you.. Akil and I genuinely cared about the cause. We told ourselves the day after we put out the flyer that even if it’s just the two of us, we’ll still march because we care about the people who listened to us. Throughout the process, we made sure that every single person felt safe and felt heard.

Why is the leadership of youth of color so important in this moment?

When we are talking about the youth – youth of any race – we have to remember that they are the future. Young people will be the leaders of our future, so why not start now? Elders always have to pass on the torch. For youth of color, and particularly Black youth, this is our cause. Just like the Black Panthers of Oakland fought for their rights, we have to fight for ours. We know what we want. Even if it is someone who is in their 30s protesting, they’re protesting for what they want, but if it’s Black youth like me that want something different, we have to speak up. You can do whatever you put your mind to and make a difference at any age.

What’s your vision for Black youth, for boys and men of color? For our state?

I want to see respect. Black men and Black people in this country, and in some parts of the world, are not respected as humans. I want to see respect from the outside in, and see respect within Black community. When I see us get the respect we deserve, I know that we’ve achieved our vision.

What demands do you have for community leaders, or policy makers? What do you want other young people to know?

Policies around policing in Alameda County need to change. When I say defund the police, I don’t mean to disband the police, but to give the excessive funds that go to police to build up the community so police are not needed in the first place. There can be a specialized group that is specifically trained for high-stake situations, and trained for much longer than they are now, but using the police as a militarized force to solve any issue that may arise needs to change. Currently, police are targeting people who are a products of their own environment. For example, a lot of low-income, Black communities don’t have access to stable housing, quality education, family-sustaining wage jobs, or mental health programs. And when someone grows up in this type of community, and are policed on top of that, of course you are going to have problems. We don’t see police presence in predominantly white neighborhoods like Piedmont, where people have access to all those things, because people have what they need to be happy and thrive.

I also want to make clear that the way I choose to protest and show my pain may be different to other people’s. I have no opposition to the rioting or looting because it’s people showing their pain. I show my pain through my words. I want to make sure that people know that the protests we organized were not truly peaceful. The media made it out to be as such, but, while it was non-destructive, it was not peaceful because we were not at peace – we were mad, hurt and angry.

Xavier Brown is in the acting program at UCLA and an Oakland native. He co-organized the Oakland Tech youth march in response to the recent murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and the numerous Black lives that have been lost to police violence. The protest saw more than 15,000 attendees.

Resources:

How 2 Oakland students got 15,000 people to march against police violence on Monday
Anti Police-Terror Project’s Defund OPD
Black Organizing Project: The George Floyd Resolution

Using our Stories to Mobilize and Organize

Here to Lead · November 10, 2020 ·

Central Valley

“From single working parents, to young people navigating systems of oppression, my community has many hidden leaders that simply need to be encouraged or recognized. Leadership shows up in our hardships.”— Alejandro Jurado

“We are not these stereotypes that the media says we are. We’re people who are resilient and come from glorious places.”— Jesse Orñelas

Alejandro Jurado and Jesse Orñelas are part of Youth Leadership Institute’s Rise and Lift program in Merced. In this Q&A, they talk about the impact of COVID-19 on young people in their community, how they partner with the Alliance for Boys and Men of Color and the importance of using one’s lived experience to advocate for change.

Tell us about the community you live in: what makes it so special? What are its challenges and how have those challenges been exacerbated by the pandemic?

Alejandro: Merced has challenges that are specifically impacting young people, including substance abuse, homelessness, mental health and food desserts in low income parts of town. You can really see the segregation by which neighborhoods have access to clean air and parks, and those who are over policed and have some of the highest rates of suspension in the state, particularly for Black youth. There were many issues young people were facing before the pandemic, however with COVID, these things have only been heightened. Since young people are stuck at home, for many, this means not having access to school as their safe space of escaping the situations they are dealing with at home, in addition to not having access to food or technology the school may have provided. It creates a lot of anxiety that young people are being forced to navigate through.

Jesse: One thing’s for sure: community violence has not slowed down during COVID and young people are dying. Just recently, we lost a young person in our program to an overdose. Resources that are needed are not reaching those that are most impacted, and there are school and city officials who are still turning to incarceration and pushing young people out as solutions. It’s not just a need for more resources; it’s about meeting young people where they are and listening to them about what they need.

What is your background and what inspired you to do the work you are doing now?

Alejandro: At the age of 10, my mother, sister and I immigrated to the United States from Mexico to join my father, who came before us. Being raised by my mom, who essentially was a single parent, gave me a lot of perspective. When I moved to the United States it was a culture shock. We arrived to violence, drugs, and a neighborhood where farmworkers, Latinx and Black communities lived side by side. All these complexities gave me a lot of understanding of the society we live in. My parents came here to survive. For them, education was always an exit from the situation they were in, but, when I made it to UC Merced, I didn’t have the tools or support I needed to succeed. Struggling with my mental health, I had to drop out to go to community college. However, that was the beginning of how I began helping youth who were having a tough time navigating their own journey. I started doing voter registration in different communities, supporting organizing with undocumented students, there I started to understand more closely how the immigration systems deeply hurt our communities.

I knew I could help even more through the Youth Leadership Institute. The Institute believes in the leadership of young people in the Central Valley and using their stories to determine what’s needed for our communities. Doing cultural and healing work and understanding trauma young people go through allows me to help and create space for youth to process their experiences, and use that growth to lead campaigns to change their communities and cities. A lot of people see young people as if they don’t know what they’re doing, but overlook the powerful work and transformation young people lead, bringing to their communities healing and liberation. When you talk to young people, they know exactly what they need and what they want to see.

Jesse: I grew up in Southern California witnessing intimate partner violence and, when I was 16, my father committed suicide. As a young person who was victim to such horrible things, I found myself projecting pain on other people and, the day after I turned 16, I was arrested for attempted murder and incarcerated for six months. This prevented me from attending high school and forced me into a community school that was connected to a juvenile probation facility, where adolescent behavior was treated with detention. This was exactly the right formula for bad things to happen: not enough resources, marginalized places for young people being hit hardest, generations of poverty and incarceration and gang involvement and everything that goes with that.

After being incarcerated for the last time a decade ago, I decided it was time for a change. I was forced to either go to college or get a job, so I decided to go to school. There, I learned about the social determinants of health – the things constructed by the system that helped me make the bad decisions I was making. I remember that moment so clearly – I felt played. It was eye opening and frustrating at the same time, but I kept going. I got involved in the Brown Berets, and learned to love the community and skin that I’m in. We are not these stereotypes that the media says we are. We’re people who are resilient and come from glorious places.

What do you feel are the greatest threats and opportunities facing communities of color, and boys and men of color, across California?

Alejandro: The greatest threat is that to our existence. Our physical and mental health are being profited from and exploited in so many ways. The way our communities are kept impoverished, overworked and exploited has direct links to our early deaths. There are so many traumatic experiences that we are impacted by that a regular person shouldn’t go through, but for us, it’s become normalized. Our reliance shows when even with the heavy impacts of an oppressive system, our communities take the journey of healing and creating solidarity amongst struggling people; to take the journey that Jesse has taken and using personal experience to use our voice to mobilize and organize to dismantle and create. Destroying the systems that keep us down, creating alternatives for ourselves and building community – that is what gives me hope.

Jesse: The biggest threat is the fact that white supremacy has a hand in everything. We see that corporations and big agriculture expect us to be thankful for minimum wage jobs with no future in towns like Merced; that the Mayor expects us to be grateful for jobs that pay a minimum wage with no meaningful career path. Poverty continues to be a threat to us as well as lack of political representation. But at the same time, our greatest asset is resilient people. Black and Brown folks have resilience in their DNA and we can weather the storm. What we’re experiencing now is the desperation of white supremacy. All we have to do is use our resilience to weather this last storm to extinguish it.

How did you get involved with the Alliance for Boys and Men of Color, and how do they support the work that you do?

Jesse: As you can imagine, it’s hard to find a job after being incarcerated. Merced is the belly of the beast. The government and city officials have traces and hints of white supremacy. My focus was to get resources to young people and, when I landed a job with the Youth Health Project, I was fortunate to have a supervisor named Marilyn Mochelle who said, “What you have lived through should be a resource and I think you should get involved in the Alliance for Boys and Men of Color.” She reached out The California Endowment and got funding to do work in Merced. It was surreal that my experience was being seen as an asset, and it felt good to know that the struggle me and my family had gone through has resulted in a job that doesn’t feel like work sometimes.

Currently, the two sites that Youth Leadership Institute has in Fresno and Merced align with the Healing Together campaign. We have participated in the Advocacy Days at the Capitol with PolicyLink and the Alliance for Boys and Men of Color to push for passage of numerous pieces of legislation that would result in the betterment of youth of color. We focus a lot of our work in local campaigns that affect boys and men of color, such as Schools not Prisons and Educational Justice. As an organization, we have also been part of their work in signing letters of support to elected officials around police brutality and advocating for CEOs to sign letters of support for numerous initiatives that have passed at the state level.

How has your work been impacted by COVID? What are you seeing among the young people you work with? Any solutions you would like to push for?

Alejandro: With COVID our work shifted quite a bit. The way we engage with the youth has all moved to virtual, which creates obstacles, however, we have persisted and continue to create space, even if virtually, for youth to come together. An aspect of young people’s lives that has been greatly impacted is their academics. Education was, and continues to be impacted. COVID-19 has created a lot of uncertainty for many. Seniors were in the process of applying for colleges and now don’t know what the new year will bring, many youth are now faced with parents who are no longer able to provide for them. We are currently working on a campaign around education justice, looking at how different resources can be allocated to better support young people. Our goal through the campaign is to ensure that when they do return to school, they are not returning to the same issues.

Jesse: The needs of young people are not being met. We need to listen to our young people and communities – the experts – as to how funding and resources can be best allocated to support them.

What does leadership mean to you and how does it show up in the work that you do or in your community?

Alejandro: Leadership to me means using any tools, resources and experiences available to us to advocate for our communities, share any knowledge we might have and ultimately build strong relationships that will ground the power of our collective. From single working parents, to young people navigating systems of oppression, my community has many hidden leaders that simply need to be encouraged or recognized. Leadership shows up in our hardships.

Jesse: To me leadership looks radical: it’s led by love; it’s led with empathy. It’s going into the belly of the beast and not compromising our value that liberation for all oppressed people must happen for all, or none at all.

Resources:

Youth Leadership Institute’s Rise and Lift program
Alliance for Boys and Men of Color Healing Together Campaign

Isaac Kinney: The Lessons Our Water Can Teach Us

Here to Lead · November 10, 2020 ·

Northern California

As the world is turned upside down by the news and impact of COVID-19, Isaac Kinney and his community continue to be grounded by their traditions and practices. After years of working in transportation, water and food systems that sustain his community and their livelihood, Isaac is building his own organization – Watershed Regenerative Ventures – to invest in regenerative projects in Northern California.

Isaac believes strongly that access to water, such a basic need that people often take for granted, is essential to healing: “People don’t understand the value of water,” he said. “You can’t have the prosperity of the Bay Area without the water from the Hoopa Valley and you don’t have Tinseltown (Los Angeles) without water theft of the Owens Valley.”

Isaac is from and lives in the village of Weych-pues, which sits at the confluence of the Klamath and Trinity Rivers in Humboldt County. His advocacy is grounded in water rights and access, fighting against the unstable and obsolete infrastructure that is perpetuating the systems of oppression. Current water systems, some of which were set up as early as the Gold Rush era, not only take water away from communities that work hard to preserve it, but redistribute this vital resource in a manner that often prioritizes corporate interests, not people who deserve access to clean water. “A lot of people don’t realize that for the last 25 years, 60 percent of the Trinity River has gone through diversion to the Sacramento River, which feeds into federal and state water projects,” he said.

Isaac deems the use of water in California as the “water stock market”, with big corporations buying water and giving it to communities that can pay for it, not to those that need it. “This is contributing to gentrification, and therefore an increase in displacement and cost of living,” he said. “Many of our people have been hit by the opioid epidemic because they need to take a nip off of reality. So, it becomes not just that our water and fish are being taken, but so are our lives.”

In California, nearly forty-five percent of rivers, or enough to cross the state nearly 36 times, are altered (source: Center for American Progress). This drastic development impacts wildlife and fish populations, interrupts natural water flow patterns, changes the very ecosystem of our climate and threatens many native species to the point of extinction. Additionally, water quality is being impaired by agriculture, our cities and corporate interests. Approximately one million people in California do not have access to clean drinking water, with the biggest impacts felt in underserved communities around the state. Currently, there are many threats to natural tributaries statewide, like the Klamath and Trinity Rivers as Sacramento River and the Bay Delta. As a result, many of the species that rely on these watersheds continue to face the threat of extinction. Governor Brown’s recent Water Portfolio depends heavily on the Trump Administration’s gutting of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) regulations to streamline their construction. These projects are a mixture of massive water “storage” facilities (i.e. Shasta Dam Raise and Sites Reservoir) and the Delta Tunnel Project. These projects will divert water to the desired destination via taxpayer funded Central Valley Water Project (federal) and State Water Projects.

“California’s water infrastructure has been led by the Westlands Water District, which is the largest user of the Central Valley Water Project, and is responsible for many of the water access and pollution issues in the San Joaquin Valley,” said Isaac. “Additionally, it is no coincidence that the Trump appointed Secretary of Interior David Bernhardt, who has represented Westlands Water District for the last 20 years as a lobbyist, has shepherded a sweetheart deal awarding Westlands a new water contract in perpet u ity. This is a major conflict of interest and will have major ramifications for the region and the State’s tributaries.”

Despite these challenges, what continues to inspire Isaac is the youth in his community. While there is so much turbulence around the environment, politics and the economy, his community’s culture and familial ties provide consistency for the area’s young people, giving them the courage to take action in various ways. “We’re seeing students organizing their own Water Protectors Club, sending representatives to the Capitol with over 100 people showing up at the Governor’s office,” Isaac said. “Within our tribes, we have a really strong connection to our culture, spirituality and food and water system, and how those are tied to our customs and livelihood.”

He points out that there is still a lot to be done for Native youth, particularly Native foster youth, who continue to be disproportionately impacted by lack of access to opportunities and unjust systems in our society. “Growing up as a Native male, I was lucky to have good mentors. Many of our foster youth often don’t get that same quality of care.”

Isaac’s hope that people take the time during this crisis to reflect and reimagine how Californians can collectively transform disparate systems and critical issues, such as water rights. “It’s been wonderful to see people listening to the wisdom of Indigenous Peoples, particularly around healing that needs to happen physically and collectively,” he said. “What I want people to do is follow their water. It has more to teach us than any of our history classes. When we learn the history of where our water comes from, we will learn to be more empathetic towards one another. ”

Resources

Q&A with Amir Casimir: #StudentsDeserve Police-Free Schools

Here to Lead · November 10, 2020 ·

Southern California

“I defined it differently before and after I turned 18. Before I was of voting age, I looked at it as educating myself and learning about policies that can impact me and my community. After I turned 18, civic engagement and the role that I can play look different because I can vote.”

Tell us about the community you grew up in. How has it shaped the vision that drives your work?

I grew up in Inglewood, California, and was lucky to always be surrounded by people who look like me. This gave me a strong sense of community, while also realizing, from a very young age, that there was a lot of unnecessary stigma towards folks who look like me through policing. Once I started attending Inglewood High School, I started learning more about social and racial justice. From there, the journey into advocacy with other Black students and students of color came naturally for me.

How did you get involved in being a youth leader as part of the Brothers Sons Selves coalition and the Social Justice Learning Institute (SJLI) and fighting for police free schools?

I was only 12 or 13 when I got involved in the SJLI and the Brothers Sons Selves Coalition. Starting in middle school, I was involved in a public health fellowship program that focused on health inequities in communities of color. The fellowship made me comfortable in using my voice and the opportunity to engage in civic leadership in different ways. At the end of that program, my mentor, David Turner from the Brothers Sons Selves Coalition, encouraged me to go to Sacramento to testify and speak truth to power about the inequities I was working to change.

My background in public health connected directly to my work and advocacy to decriminalize our schools. Our society ignores how influential living conditions can be on other aspects of our lives. Not having access to healthy food or safe housing, for example, can impact how someone shows up at school. When I got to high school, I started seeing police intimidating Black students for just standing and congregating in one place. That’s not what our students need. What schools and students need are mentors, fellowships, and connections – to be surrounded by folks that look like you and can relate to you, not police.

How have you been involved with the organizing around police free schools in LA? What is the call to action to school districts and local officials when it comes to police free-schools?

When school closures happened at the beginning of the pandemic, I was part of the Brothers Sons Selves Coalition’s push for police free schools and the efforts to reduce LAUSD’s police budget. Additionally, with schools not being in session, I wanted to be part of that organizing during my downtime. I reached out to the local BLM chapter and worked with their cohort to start putting together a list of demands, which later became #StudentsDeserve. The demands included ICE and police-free food distribution centers, end the use of pepper spray in schools, conduct graduation ceremonies for students and mandatory passage of classes for seniors to ensure that students still had a fair and just education experience during a pandemic.

Even with some of this progress, it does not feel like youth of color are safe anywhere. Recently, a young Black man was murdered close to my school. He was shot 29 times by LAPD. It makes you think that there are no safe spaces. If someone can walk down the street and get shot, why would someone think they are safe in a school that is flooded with police? Our society has a problem with the way we think about youth, and particularly youth of color. If our school system is so scared of young people that they need police presence, it is time to either rethink our schools or the role of police.

How do you define civic engagement and why, particularly in this moment, is it so important?

I defined it differently before and after I turned 18. Before I was of voting age, I looked at it as educating myself and learning about policies that can impact me and my community. After I turned 18, civic engagement and the role that I can play look different because I can vote. Now, I do more research and am more intentional about my voice. It is easy to be in a classroom and learn about issues in our society, but now it is about applying that and continuously educating folks of how they can go beyond just voting to make a difference.

What does leadership mean to you and how does that show up in your work? Why do you feel like it’s important to support the leadership and voice of boys and men of color?

Leadership is a two-way street. You need to be able to lead while lifting up everybody in the room and their voice. Everyone is a leader in their own right and leadership should not be centralized to one person. A leader should be open to criticism, hearing other perspectives and representing those that put their trust in them. Folks think about different things in different ways.

More importantly, boys and men of color are not a monolith – each person has their own perspective and an individual way of doing things. This moment has given a lot of people initiative, so we need to make sure that individual voices are heard and magnified. It’s our moment, but we must also acknowledge what this moment has different meaning for each individual.

What do you think is the opportunity in this moment to reimagine communities and schools without police and community safety?

I don’t think I need to explain why I don’t want Black people getting killed. It’s not complicated. They look like me. When we reimagine safety, we need to acknowledge that it’s happening to real people – this is someone’s uncle, son, best friend – it’s not someone random. It is ridiculous that there are police in schools, but the fact that they are shows how incredible of a force police are in our cities. If we have a system of policing that is supposed to be protecting people and providing safety, but is instead cutting lives short, we need to ask “why” does this system continue to exist, and is it functioning correctly.

What advice would you give to other young people of color around civic engagement and leadership? Why is it so important that youth get involved?

Your voice matters more than anything.

Amir Casimir is a youth leader at Inglewood High School, the Social Justice Learning Institute (SJLI) and, most recently, as part of the Brothers Sons Selves coalition. He has testified on behalf of his community in Sacramento and across the state, and worked with the Alliance for Boys and Men of Color to speak out about gentrification in his community.