Education Equity Archives

Sacramento/San Joaquin

“What you see is what you become. That’s why I’ve dedicated my life to showing young people how they can improve their tomorrows, so they will see themselves as successful young men of color, before the world around them tries to show them otherwise.”

“I recently met a young person in North Stockton, who had gotten into some trouble, and I wanted to talk to him about the work I do with young people across Stockton and Sacramento. He told me he lives in Polo Run apartments, and when I told him I used to live there, too, he couldn’t believe it.

“Polo Run is a community that has experienced neglect and violence, and young people of color who live there often grow up with little hope for their future, because they don’t see other options.

“I told this young person, ‘Listen, this is just where you are now, but it doesn’t determine where you want to go. I went to college, I worked at the Capitol, and then I helped start an organization to support young men of color like you.’

“His face lit up. Seeing that I went to college and succeeded, he knew he could, too.

“Growing up in Stockton and Sacramento, I wasn’t sure who I would become. I wanted to be an attorney, but I never saw one in my neighborhood. I was 21 by the time I met a Black attorney.

“My father was an incredible role model for me, raising my siblings and me on his own. He was the first person in his family to go to college, but he didn’t graduate, and he wasn’t able to live out his own dream of becoming an attorney.

“After high school, I was recruited to play football at UNLV. The first week of training, I got a call that one of my high school friends, who had been like a brother to me, was shot and killed. I was sad to lose him and frustrated that nothing would change because of the circumstances around my high school.

“As a college sophomore, I went to a campaign rally of a guy talking about hope and change – that guy was Barack Obama. I realized I had to do more myself. Once I graduated, I committed to doing what I could for young people to have access to positive role models.

“I started out working at the Capitol, using my position to help pass legislation around education and public safety, but I didn’t get to see the real-world results of the work.

“Six years ago, I founded Improve Your Tomorrow, Inc. (IYT) with Michael Casper, to help young men of color get to and through college. We offer wraparound support including student development, weekly tutoring, internships, college tours, parent engagement, and mentorship. Young people can enter as early as seventh grade and remain in the program for a maximum of 12 years, or until college graduation.

“We are committed to supporting young people to be part of what we call the college-to-community pipeline, disrupting the current school-to-prison pipeline many young people are caught in. Our college-to-community pipeline brings young men of color back into the community to help the next group of students get to college.

“Our program has met with success and we are now one of the largest education nonprofit serving only young men of color in the country. One hundred percent of our college academy students graduate high school and 90 percent attend college.

“We also work on policy change because we know the conditions of our neighborhoods and communities have to change for our young people to have a real fighting chance. In 2017, a bill we helped sponsor with the Alliance for Boys and Men of Color to shift funding away from prisons toward schools and youth became law.

“The bill, AB 2944, gives taxpayers the option of contributing to a Schools Not Prisons California Voluntary Tax Contribution Fund, to fund nonprofits like IYT who invest in the state’s young people and keep them in school and on track for success.

“There are so many incredibly bright and talented young people in our communities. We have to show our young people we believe in them and invest in and support programs and policies that will improve their futures. It’s the only way they will see what we see: beauty and potential.”

Michael Lynch is Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Improve Your Tomorrow, Inc., based in Sacramento, California.

Resources

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.

Michael Lynch: Let’s Show Our Young People Their Beauty and Potential