Where I’m from boys don’t become men, they become inmates — lifers whose development is stifled by institutionalization. Girls don’t mature to womanhood, they become baby-momma’s who steal and prostitute their adult lives away, their growth strangled by the byproducts of institutionalization.

Mother’s don’t stick around to watch their children grow. They abandon them at birth and escape their responsibility to return to the call of the crack-rock. Fathers don’t exist. It’s on the promise of hope that our aging grandmothers attempt to raise children 50 years their younger in their “golden years.” Then, you have the institutions that feed off this prevalent despair.

I have witnessed this all.

My nephew was a recent victim of systemic racism at the hands of an unethical judicial system. From the point of his arrest, he was treated as if he were guilty of a crime he had not committed. Yes, he is Black. And yes, he was with two Black boys the night of a robbery that took place near my mother’s house. Yes, it was late into the night. But it was wrong for his White accuser – who was driven around in a San Francisco police car hours later for the sole purpose of identifying the assailants – to accuse them with the line, “Those must be them, the guys that robbed us, what other three Black guys are out this time?” For the last three months, my nephew has been locked up for a crime he did not commit.

When he thinks back to his 21st birthday, my nephew’s memories won’t be of family, friends, a night with his girlfriend, or even a hangover like most celebrating their first taste of adulthood. His memory will be of a cold cell, trapped night after night in the company of strangers, fighting for his freedom to be restored. This is all because a White man wanted so badly to accuse someone of robbing him and his girlfriend allegedly at gunpoint as they left a Haight Street bar.

You’re probably feeling conflicted, because human nature leads us to sympathize with the alleged victim. I’m sorry this man and his girlfriend were allegedly robbed of her purse containing medicinal marijuana, but the fact that there was no gun found, no purse found, and nothing at all that connected my nephew and his friends to the robbery should have been enough to force a further investigation of the alleged crime. But that’s not what happened. A White couple had been allegedly robbed by three Black boys and someone had to pay! Because my nephew “fit the description” – Black in the wrong place at the wrong time – he had his first experience fighting the labyrinth of the criminal justice system.

Over the past three months, the prosecuting attorney tried to coerce my nephew and his two friends to admit guilt. They refused. At each court date, the prosecutor tried to push a deal, and each time the deal got sweeter. Each time my nephew and his two friends refused to deal. “I’m innocent,” my nephew would say, over and over. He insisted he had an ATM receipt in his jean pocket the night of the arrest that would serve as his alibi. Finally, the prosecutor agreed to reduce the charge from a felony to a misdemeanor. This offer came July 22; four days shy of three months from their arrest.

On the evening of this final offer, on the ride from San Francisco County Jail back to San Bruno County Jail, the youngest of the three boys, just 18-years-old, agreed he would accept the deal in exchange for all three to be released from prison — a place they should not have been in the first place. The system of bureaucracy had successfully broken his spirit. A warrior nonetheless, he was agreeing to sacrifice a bit of his future in order for his friends to be freed.

But every dog has their day. The next day, before the 18-year-old could accept the deal, the case was suddenly dismissed. There was no official explanation. Or, an apology for the hell my nephew, his friends and our families have had to live for three months.

It made me think about what the system sees in us. It’s obvious we’re “throw-aways” in their eyes. Adult boys dependent on government assistance and adult girls relying on welfare for income because their skills aren’t marketable in the workforce. Poverty only trained them to hustle for food, run errands to keep a roof over their head and pounce on opportunity when it comes their way. An essential skill they can’t market is staying alive. Dodging stray bullets, avoiding gangs and saying “no” to drugs aren’t prerequisites for working in retail. In fact, if you’re born poor in the hood, you don’t see a mall or a food court until you’re old enough to venture beyond your hood, which, to be safe, you most likely won’t.

I’m speaking to depravity many can’t fathom unless they’ve witnessed it, like I have. Most people never ask what’s going to happen to the “crack-baby” or the young boy or girl who ages-out of foster care. Many end up in jail or homeless. We live in a nation that believes if you are separated from poverty, then the symptoms of poverty won’t affect you. But violence perpetuates violence and the predatory design of this country perpetuates violence upon the vulnerable through its institutions. I’ve experienced incarceration as a crime against humanity. Homeless are arrested for sleeping on the streets. People of color are arrested for hanging on their block with friends. Children in poor communities are arrested for horse-playing at school while their counterparts in affluent communities get detention.

What rational being believes you can cage a human being – made of the same flesh and blood but merely cut from a different cloth – and expect to produce an individual capable of love, respect, loyalty and independence? Our criminal and juvenile justice systems are irrational. It is not a fair expectation to throw back into society someone you’ve treated worse than a stray animal, without education or love, and expect them to then stay out of the system. The punitive origin of the institution of incarceration cannot serve anything but pain and suffering. Especially when the foundation of the institution has been replaced by backdoor deals and under the table exchanges.

In my eight years working in the juvenile and criminal justice field, I’ve heard the stories, I’ve cried with the families. I’ve attended the rallies and I’ve marched in the streets to fight human rights abuses. But it was not until this incident did I realize, I cannot and I will NOT fight injustice alone. We must to tell our stories and unite through our pain. A victory is in the near future. Even through my tears I can see it.

For the people who awake everyday to families torn apart by institutionalization, our journey is young but our fight is old. We must find our strength in the footprints of our creator.

Being 19/ 20 years old at the time I was fueled in an indescribable way by your work to put the mass in mass movement. These are my reflections on Prop 21 and thanks to you. Youth built the Prop 21 movement with tenacity and political clarity of those most affected. Memories of Prop 21 days are some of my most inspirational political memories even though it hurt bad to loose after working so hard, feeling so strong. I can only imagine if we had Facebook and MySpace, it woulda been even more off the rickter. Youth led walkouts, marches, speak outs, lobby visits, voter registration efforts, all bringing me to some of the lessons I took with me...

Role of culture in mass mobilization

Key to the Irresistibility of our Movement

The cultural work surrounding this fight was off the chain! I remember rallies that weren’t boring with hella speeches and reiterating the problem but were concerts, M.C. battles, graffiti battles. They were live! They were fun to be at, something you wanted to bring your friends too, even the ones who be like F*that I’m just doing me. The performers were people we looked up to, representing the crowd. Songs that came out had us singing Don’t Explain while riding the 40 bus line. The posters were so fresh people kept one to put in their crib and the rest went up anywhere folks could get 'em. I firmly believe the role and uses of culture at this time were essential to the mass involvement as well as general positive feelings of being in movement space at that time. Underground Railroad as an organization of revolutionary artists provided an example of artists working together in an organized way that I hadn’t seen before and haven’t since, outside of Blue Magazine and Ave. Magazine in NYC those having closed shop eventually as well. I think this is a huge need that is yet to be addressed and hinders us today.

Role of coalitional work

Youth Force Coalition in the F* house!

Folks working together! This made it possible to organize a mass, that felt like a mass, in a megalopolis as well as a way for everyone to be seen a valid/having a role. Macehuali (Olin at the time) rolled hella hard with the indigenous/Mexican@/chican@ youth, Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM) rolled hella hard with general young adult POCs, the Revolutionary Communist Party organized in Oakland High Schools with their Free Mumia work, 3rd World Liberation Front rolled UB Berkeley students of color deep, 3rd Eye Movement plugged in the young hood from Frisco and 3rd Eye 510 from the town (Oakland), Jewish Youth for Community Action (JYCA) plugged in the young mostly white Jewish kids from around the bay, C-Beyond plugged in a working class white and POC youth from the suburbs of the bay, Raj and Debug held down the South Bay. The School of Unity and Liberation (SOUL) provided spaces to develop our political consciousness and further develop our relationships with each other through training in our coalitional space and Sunday School sessions focused on varying international political histories.

Through a collation that had one part-time staff and many volunteers Youth Force Coalition was a collective expression of our power, hopes, determination and dreams. There was beef with-in all of this of course but I wasn’t close enough to it or political developed enough to see it’s expressions outside of particular groups stopping to attend or not attending Youth Force meetings. In the streets we were all there together and that’s what I remember most and really cared about. As young folks we were like this shit is FLY and there was LOVE between the masses of us. Thinking back I give props to my organizers for never fostering diversionary thinking in me. I was never told to hate on anybody. This is a lesson for us within its self, to fight our real enemies and foster a healthy distain for oppressors/the system not freedom fighters, even if someone acts like an asshole sometime cuz we all do.

A youth movement can’t do it alone

We Are IT the BEST, the LEADERS, the SHIzNIT…basically

AIN’T NO POWER LIKE THE POWER OF THE YOUTH & THE POWER OF THE YOUTH DON’T STOP sayyyyyy whatttttt AIN’T NO POWER LIKE THE POWER OF THE YOUTH & THE POWER OF THE YOUTH DON’T STOP sayyyyyy whatttttt. I remember chanting until I couldn’t speak for days. I remember chanting into the bullhorn getting everyone pumped, the crowd jumping up and down like we were on trampoline streets. I remember the centering of youth as the future, that youth are always the leading force in social change movements; we were trained in a way that kinda made some of us youth big head crazy, meaning we knew was the shit and that’s that. Not a difficult place to work from as a youth, in fact it felt empowering but it was too narrow a view. Too narrow as far as our role as youth, what it would take to win and helped to hold the disillusionment after we lost. This highlights the necessity to develop youth within an analysis that the youth movement while essential is part of a broader international movement for justice. This way youth see themselves as more connected to communities as a whole (here and globally), youth would have had more places of entry into other movement sectors/organizations that peeked other interests of theirs.

Through a fuller analysis of a movement youth can picture themselves as eventually adults in the struggle, can think of whatever fight they are currently in as part of a progression of oppression and resistance...Too many young folks who were part of the Prop 21 movement, the experience was more off the chain than anything they imagined or had ever seen before. To have defeat at the end of it meant the man was impenetrable. That in fact we had all wasted our time. Which of course is total bullshit but ya know that’s what it is. Key to this dynamic was a lack of relationship to our elders in the struggle. If we had more spaces to dialog with elders, not 30 something’s, but OG's who were 50/60+ I think that would have strengthened our youthful understanding of Prop 21 as not static in time, not a standalone fight. The elders probably coulda helped us on some other strategic thinking as well...

CA has red state tendencies

5 Districts isn’t CA, Proof of Lesson Learned

We built fierce presence, organizing, and consciousness in the Bay Area and somewhat in Los Angeles and but we got killed throughout the rest of this mammoth state. If this was a local election we woulda won so big we’d still be cheesing. We didn’t have the analysis that was in the forefront of the tactics of the civil rights movement and the tactics the right uses, we didn’t bus ourselves/organize outside our bubble. It’s a huge bubble that took everything and then some to cover and organize but simply we lost this fight in the areas most conservative, in the areas we never door knocked, in the areas of white flight and conservative POC churches, we lost in all but 5 districts with a final tally of 62.1% Yes and 37.9% No.

While that is almost half of the voting population of the state we were hurt hugely by a somewhat insular local strategy. Many of the same folks that were active for justice 10 years ago still are. And many of us remembered this lesson when we built a movement to defeat Prop. 6 in our last CA state wide elections. The deliberate work to reach the central valley though Spanish language press, our inter-faith work to reach churches and there bases throughout the state, the mailings and work with the teachers and fire fighters unions throughout the state made it possible for us to defeat the most recent throw 'em in jail proposition. It felt good to see our growth, to remember our legacies and to F* win that time around.

Community Is What Sustains Us

Most of all I am so appreciative of the opportunity to learn so much from and build so deeply with incredible people. As a confused, radical, energetic, mixed race, G.E.D. having, poor, butch/flat top sporting young knuckle head I was taking seriously. I was treated with respect and what I had to offer was respected. The mentorship provided by people like me yet slightly older gave me an amazing portal into what I hoped to be my future.

Tony Colman, Omani Imani, Sake 1, Patty Burn, Raquel Lavina, Steve Williams, Rene Quinones, Cindy Wisner, Genevieve Negron-Gonzales, Jay Imani, Favianna Rodriguez, Van Jones, Adam Gold, Joy Enomoto, Jason Negron-Gonzales, Marisol, Anita DeAsis, Jaron Brown and Maria Poblet thank you for helping me realize my future could go beyond my block and for seeing me as a butting intellectual and community organizer. The other leaders who were under 21 at the time Jasmine Barker, Jesse Osorio, Charisse Domingo, Nancy Hernandez, Rory, Aleks Zavaleta, Pacolia, Rosi Nieves, Venus Rodriguez, red haired Katie, Tina Bartolome AND HELLA MORE OF US you made me believe in possibility and myself. In this all I think there’s a lesson. You all have seen and/or personally had to experience the joys and sorrows of my growth and failures and for the most part are still in close community to me.

Our grace with one another and ability to allow each other to transform must be one of the foundations of our work. Without you, I don’t know if I’d be alive yet alone here in the field working for our liberation. Without our collective we are truly alone and we need each other, our people need us and this world very clearly needs us. Thank you for all you did and continue to do.

Philadelphia’s “flash mobs” have been the subject of recent media frenzy. Teens organizing online or through text messages have been gathering on South Street and in shopping malls to hang out. A small number of them have violently acted out.

Most recently, a young man at work was attacked by a mob of teens trying to enter a pizzeria. Before that, 100 teens rampaged a Macy’s store. The incident was dubbed “Macy’s Mayhem” by news media.

Of the thousands of teens in any town there are bound to be a few a violent ones that exploit large gatherings – but in Philadelphia, one judge has been using his power to punish adolescents far beyond the extent of their actions. In an exchange with one 15-year-old boy, Judge Kevin Dougherty reportedly threatened a year in the juvenile justice system for every “lie” – what he characterized explanations by youth who said they had gone downtown to go shopping or meet girlfriends.

“By the time the boy was taken away in handcuffs, he had received three years,” a reporter observed. “Despite getting the information he wanted, Dougherty seemed determined to send a message about the flash mobs.”

It is not a juvenile court judge’s job to send a message about a citywide problem that points to the boredom or frustration of its teenagers. Some of Philadelphia’s teens behaved recklessly. But because mob acts are drawing negative attention to the city, the initial response has been to round up youth for harsh punishment. We know that punishment won’t prevent teens from getting into trouble. That is the very nature of adolescence. Few of us did not make any mistakes as teens.

Instead of contemplating such issues, Philadelphia police are on high alert and Mayor Michael Nutter is promising that he will “ruin” the lives of teens caught in flash mobs. His threats also include tighter curfews and limited access to downtown by minimizing the hours teens can use free transit passes. And the arrest of anyone caught in flash mob. All this in an effort to “get tough on young people.”

The more punitive that Philadelphia city officials get, the more they are negatively impacting these youth’s futures. They are catapulting them into a downward spiral.