Power U Center for Social Change
33
Power U Center for Social Change is a community organization consisting of predominantly minority individuals from the Overtown community of Miami, Florida. The organization takes a stand against the injustice in their community by campaigning to raise awareness and end the school-to-prison pipeline, as well as implement restorative justice practices in their public schools. Power U has held a multitude of community forums and has both assessed and demanded more from the inequitable disciplinary practices of Miami-Dade Public Schools. Together, the organization has prompted the decrease of suspension rates by reducing the amount of students locked out of schools due to minor infractions, such as tardiness, skipping school, or not wearing the correct uniform. In addition, Power U has led restorative justice trainings in 26 of the community’s low-achieving schools.33
34
Save the Kids (STK) is a national grassroots organization founded upon the mission that kids need to be “saved instead of thrown thrown away as trash” by racialized systems. The organization is dedicated to alternatives to and the end of incarceration of all youth and the school to prison pipeline. The organization operates in three distinct program areas. First, the organization provides educational workshop programs for incarcerated youth. The goal of this is to provide incarcerated youth with safe, trusted and respectable relations and allow them to engage in educational opportunities, such as critical discussion, which have often do not exist inside juvenile detention facilities. Secondly, STK focuses on non-violent community organizing, activism and civil disobedience (rallies, sit-ins, days of silence, speak-outs) to fight against social justice issues such as boycotting cops in schools, challenging racism, abolishing mass incarceration and dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline. Lastly, STK organizes educational forums (workshops, debates, lectures, community dialogues) every other month in order to raise awareness, inform and engage the public by initiating important conversation on issues relating to the school system and juvenile justice system.34
35
Youth United for Change (YUC) is a youth-led community organization compromised of minority youth who share the collective mission of reforming and improving the Philadelphia Public School system to meet their educational needs and the needs of all youth of color. Founded in 1997, YUC organizes students in chapters within their high schools in order to demand improvements and raise awareness about school inadequacies from the students who experience them. Importantly, YUC has a chapter composed of minority youth who have been “pushed out” of the public school system by zero tolerance policies. In response to the increasing dependence on harsh disciplinary policies that push students out of Philadelphia’s school, YUC members have recently released a research report evidencing the detrimental impact of zero tolerance policies on colored youth. YUC believes that successful community activism does not only concern organizing technicalities, but also fosters leadership development and youth development. Therefore, the young members of YUC are educated on historic resistance movements, as well as about how their racial and cultural identities are positioned within society and how to leverage these positions for change.35
36
Urban Youth Collaborative (UYC) is a student-led community organization, consisting of minority youth leaders from the Bushwick and Northwest Bronx areas of New York City who connect through the common social, economic and racial injustice found within their inadequate neighborhood schools. The UYC’s school-to-prison pipeline campaign focuses on ending punitive discipline practices within neighborhood schools in an attempt to fight against student push out and keep students in the classroom and out of the judicial system. Currently, the campaign calls for the elimination of suspensions for minor infractions (such as defying authority), the implementation of a restorative justice disciplinary reform and the elimination of school safety officers and school police.36
PODER: Youth Scholar’s for Justice
37
Youth Scholar’s for Justice (YSJ) is the youth sector of the Austin, Texas-based organization PODER, which is composed of minority participants that focus on redefining environmental issues as social and economic injustices and fostering activism and education around the fact that environmental issues have negative social and economic implications in minority neighborhoods. YSJ was founded in 1995 and is composed of both college and high school students of color that organize in resistance of the educational, environmental and economic injustices that impact their lives, in the hopes of initiating institutional change. YSJ began focusing on juvenile justice in 2000, when a juvenile referral report evidenced the that minority youth were being referred to Austin’s juvenile court at disproportionate rates. YSJ took a stand by presenting the issue of radicalized criminalization to the Austin School District. Today, YSJ is working to repeal zero tolerance polices by hosting forums and workshops that educate minority students on their rights within their unjustly disciplined schools. Additionally, YSJ has formulated a set of revisions to be presented in front of the Austin School District, such as hiring more teachers of color, and making in-school suspension a productive learning experience instead of a punitive one.37
38
Washington Incarceration Stops Here
Washington Incarceration Stops Here (WISH) is a grassroots organization located in Seattle, Washington that actively resists against the racist youth imprisonment, criminalization and immigrant enforcement within the community. WISH was founded in 2012 in response to their Seattle’s King County’s plans to spend $210 million dollars building of a new youth jail and court buildings. Through civil disobedience, (tabling, rallies, protests, workshops) WISH has expressed their distaste in the county’s “reinvestment into cages, instead of youth.” Specifically, WISH is organizing against the investment of millions of dollars into racist prisons that punish black youth, while many youth still do not have their educational and basic needs met.38
New Mexico South West Organizing Project
39
The New Mexico South West Organizing Project (SWOP) is an organization based in the low-income communities of New Mexico that seeks to revise power relationships, gain community control and educate the public on racial inequality and social/economic injustice within society. SWOP activism takes on many different forms, including grassroots campaigns for social change, education and leadership development amongst community members, and civic engagement strategies that foster collective demonstration through voting. Currently, SWOP is organizing for the well-being of New Mexico’s youth, which is ranked 50th nationally. In order to increase child well-being, SWOP is petitioning for the abolishment of the school-to-prison pipeline in order to improve their educational and life outcomes. The petition outlines the creation of alternative, less punitive disciplinary practices, the investment in the well-being of children through the allocation of adequate resources in schools, the formation of strong student-teacher and family-teacher relationships and most importantly the assessment of the root causes of poverty. By signing the petition, supporters acknowledge New Mexico’s school-to-prison pipeline, its detrimental impact on youth, and pledge to implement solutions to this problem.39