Juvenile Justice Reform

Alejandro Galicia Cervantes: Why We Need Systems Change to Achieve Education Equity

Here to Lead · December 16, 2020 ·

Our society needs to shift the blame from youth to systems.

As a child, I moved around a lot, living in Los Angeles, parts of Southern California and San Fernando Valley until I was 14. When I was in seventh grade, the home we lived in was within reach of gang violence. Our neighborhood was constantly targeted by the LAPD. The environment I was in was pushing me into vocational school and away from higher education. While there is nothing wrong with that route, I learned early on how the influences and environment that surround you can provide a clouded picture of what you can actually achieve.

When my family moved to a different community in South Sacramento, the school I attended had one of the highest expulsion and suspension rates. I watched as my friends took different paths than me. That struggle within myself — was I guilty or proud that I had turned out differently — had a profound impact on how I experienced education. I felt like school was a shackle on one leg, and my culture was a shackle on the other. I was ashamed of speaking Spanish, and never thought of school as a gateway to a better life, just a means to graduate.

What changed my outlook was mentorship — having supportive adults who were able to guide me to what I could become — and having the encouragement to dream. I was given multiple opportunities, room to fail and, ultimately, grow. This allowed me to transform my dreams into achievable goals and accomplishments, which would not have been possible without my mentors.

While I was lucky to have my family around, I didn’t have consistent adult support. My parents worked day and night. This was just the system in which we live in — parents not being able to spend time with their children because they’re too busy working to put food on the table, or not being able to plan for a future because they were too busy worrying about the present. It’s the same for education equity. Our society needs to shift the blame from youth to systems. Disparities in our education system exist because of income inequality. Right now, there is no national leadership around how to continue with school during a pandemic. We see that those who are able to afford education and have access to resources are not impacted, but what happens to the rest of us? Those of us systematically less able to adjust to remote education. The assumption is that we’re all going through the same thing, but kids like me are being punished for having to support our family during a global pandemic.

Because of my experience, my work centers around education on a state and local community level. As a Board Member for the Mentor of California Affiliate of the National Mentor Partnership, I focus on programmatic expansion and drumming up support (funding and geo political) for mentoring programs across the state. On a local level, I tutor and mentor youth as part of the My Brother’s Keeper (MBK Collaborative) and support the 1300 Campaign, which launched in Sacramento to increase the number of boys and men of color going to college. I am also the Chairman of ASUCD’s DREAM Committee that provides basic needs resources for undocumented students on campus, including textbooks and supplies. Finally, my personal brainchild is the Dream STEM Initiative, funded by the Donald A Strauss Foundation, a virtual boot camp where young people and AB540 folks can learn coding skills from Undergraduate and Masters students.

It is imperative for youth to have a voice. There is a disconnection happening in that we are creating public policy around youth without their voice or input. A lot of the time, we, as youth of color, are involved with systems that negatively impact us, and are victims to punitive punishments and biases because of our skin color. If we are to get youth to college, we need to shift the responsibility from the youth, who are under the burden of a system not built for them, onto the system for removing the barriers to college. By becoming a mentor or joining the 1300 campaign, we can make this a reality.

Alejandro Galicia Cervantes is a Junior at UC Davis double majoring in Economics and Political Science and minoring in Community Regional Development, with an ultimate goal to end up in Congress.

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Corey Jackson: Dismantling the School-to-Prison Pipeline in Riverside County

Here to Lead · December 8, 2020 ·

Southern California

I grew up in the Inland Empire and founded SBX Youth & Family Services to dismantle the barriers that are preventing young people from succeeding. While our goal was, and continues to be, youth mentoring, in 2014, we made the decision to get involved in systems change and advocacy work.

At the time, we were seeing kids getting pepper sprayed and put in handcuffs on campuses at all ages and knew it was time for a change. It was time to eliminate law enforcement from school campuses and dismantle the school to prison pipeline. Our society has gotten away from our ancestral roots and the idea of “your child may not live with me, but your child is my child.” Because of that, we even see parents of color internalizing racism and speaking the language of the oppressor when they say it’s ok to lock up other children. If we don’t intervene, we’re going to pay for that destruction and suffer the consequences for our inhumanity towards our children.

Anyone who makes an argument in favor of law enforcement is ignoring the facts and the data. Police in schools do not make our children safe and, more specifically, they criminalize Black and brown youth. As a result, we are condemning our young people to a life of poverty, trauma, and a path to prison.

That’s how we got involved in fighting the school to prison pipeline. With the Alliance for Boys and Men of Color, the ACLU and NAACP, we filed our first successful lawsuit to start reforming the juvenile justice system. The lawsuit focused on reimagining what safety on school campuses looks like and resulted in cutting the number of police officers in half on campuses across the county. By suing the County of Riverside on behalf of the students, we argued that the county’s Youth Accountability Team (YAT) program spent millions of dollars funneling children into an unconstitutional probation system that denied them their due process rights and subjected them to oppressive, invasive policies. Through a historic settlement, the County now no longer has the right to enroll young people in the probation program for adolescent, non-criminal behavior. Instead, we can ensure that youth receive due process protections and positive incentives instead of punitive restrictions.

Our goal now is to completely eliminate any form of law enforcement on campus. We, as a society, have been conditioned to think that law enforcement prevents crime, when all they do is respond to it. And, whatever they do respond to, all too often turns into racial profiling. All of these things can be prevented if adults do their job on school campuses. Everyone knows when a fight is about to start or a kid is being bullied. We are not being preventive, nor are we giving young people mental health support to live and think healthier. More affluent communities have these supports because they don’t allow their children to be criminalized, but we have zero tolerance policies that do nothing but destroy the most marginalized young people. Instead of asking them what they need, we criminalize them.

There is no way our nation and California will be able to create a healthy society for everyone if boys and men of color are forced to head in the wrong direction. We need to uplift boys and men of color and dismantle the systemic racist barriers that restricts them from living a productive and healthy quality life.

It takes courage to speak up, be consistent, and not be afraid to get into good trouble. Right now, we have to have courage to reimagine and to dream what safety could look like. In this moment, we have the opportunity to reclaim the power that each of us have and use it to create a world that allows everyone to be more prosperous and healthy. If you’re a young person, the time to fight for the future you want is now. The future is not for someone else, it’s for you. Young people have a unique opportunity to transform society into the one they want to live in. My call to action to them is: step up; you have nothing to lose; this is your time.

I want to repeat the wisdom of John Lewis: “step up, have courage, get in the way, speak out, the time is now”. I believe this is the second Civil Rights Movement. I know that, at this moment, I am doing everything I can. When we look back on history, we tend to ask “why didn’t they do this?”. Now it’s your turn to do something.

Corey Jackson is the CEO of SBX Youth & Family Services, a nonprofit organization focused on breaking the cycle of poverty and violence through mentoring, education and organizing.

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Daniel Mendoza: Sharing the Stories of Young People, Beyond the Stats

Here to Lead · November 10, 2020 ·

Daniel Mendoza believes in the power of storytelling. He is aware of the story people think they know, when they hear he was formerly incarcerated. While that experience helped define who he is today, Daniel knows there’s more to the story.

Two years ago, Daniel transferred to UC Davis to complete his Bachelor’s degree in sociology and ethnic studies. He quickly saw the way professors spoke about people with his background—brown and Black men involved with the criminal justice system—was without context, as if he were simply a number. Their research lacked an understanding of why young men of color are more likely to be incarcerated.

“We may be a data set, but we have a story to tell,” says Daniel. “I went from one institution that was meant to keep me in to one that was meant to keep me out. Transferring was very hard, trying to navigate this big system.”

He didn’t feel comfortable sharing his story because “every time I tried to talk to someone, I felt like I had to lie about who I was and change my story so they would feel comfortable.”

Paired up on a class project with a fellow student, Tina Curiel-Allen, Daniel began talking about his experience and the two realized they’d both been living in fear of revealing their secret—they’d both been incarcerated.

Daniel and Tina launched Beyond the Stats, a program aimed at creating community and support for other students who have also been involved with the justice system, while at the same time challenging how faculty and students perceive people who have been incarcerated.

They conducted a survey to uncover how the campus felt about having formerly incarcerated young people attend the university and were disappointed by the results. The two launched a zine to share stories in their own voices, including poems, personal statements, and interviews from members and friends of the movement.

Starting Beyond the Stats was not only part of Daniel’s advocacy, but it was part of his healing.

“I was overwhelmed,” recalls Daniel. “I listened to other students talking about their life experiences, and how they had been preparing for college since high school and here I was remembering my time incarcerated, struggling to write a paper for class. College was not part of my big picture. Until I met Tina and found community, I wasn’t sure I was going to make it, and graduate.”

Once he graduated, Daniel knew he wanted to keep challenging narratives about men of color, bringing together stories with data, to inform public policy.

He joined the Stockton-based community organization Fathers and Families of San Joaquin as a youth justice and policy advocate. He partnered with juvenile justice stakeholders to make policy changes to eliminate the practice of trying youth as adults, end solitary confinement, and improving reentry services for formerly incarcerated individuals.

Daniel believes “the movement is definitely making progress. At the state level we’ve been able to pass policies like Prop. 57 in 2016 that gave judges in the juvenile justice system the power to keep young people from being tried as adults and AB 392 that Governor Newsom signed into law this past August, that holds police accountable for their use of force.”

But he knows there’s much more work to do, particularly in communities of color where entire groups of people have been stigmatized due to their race, background, or experience. Daniel continues to tell stories and transform the narrative about places like Stockton because he knows changing the narrative is linked to changing the outcomes.

“In Stockton, we’re starting to talk about our city as a place of opportunity and prosperity,” says Daniel. “Words matter. I remember being called ‘the worst of the worst’ as a 14-year-old in adult court. It took me years to overcome that and believe in the power of my own voice.”

Daniel knows it is critical for formerly incarcerated people to participate in advocacy. “The closer we are to the problem, the closer we are to the solution.”

The work will always hit close to home, says Daniel. “This work is very personal and it’s a collective effort. My mother used to tell me, watch out for your little brother, watch out for your sister and so forth. And you know, I’ve just expanded on that vision.”

Daniel Mendoza is co-founder of Beyond the Stats, a collective of formerly incarcerated students working to dismantling structural barriers and supporting system-impacted students navigate the University of California system. Daniel is also Youth Justice and Policy advocate at Fathers and Families of San Joaquin in Stockton, CA.

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