Notes on how the PIC impacts youth

Thanks Naomi!

How does the “War on Drugs” impact young people’s daily lives?

• Young people are entered into cycle
• Takes from them—mom, dad, hope
• Street sweeps
• Mandatory minimums
• No financial aid for college with a drug conviction
• “street culture” is more appealing than school (i.e. school to prison piplining system
• racial profiling—police state—no hope, apathy
• no real information about effects of drugs/harm reduction
• way on drugs—the system’s legal ways to prison
• border cartels killing whole families
• what counts as (bad) drugs?
• $$ spent on enforcing drug laws, lack of funding for education
• labels young people as bad, dangerous
• takes away opportunities and resources
• find other ways to survive under the radar
• zero tolerance policy

What are some examples of “Quality of life” policing and how does it impact young people?

• Making parents responsible for $$ for what their children do
• Accountability: parents
• Media and how youth are portrayed—young black men are dangerous
• Hyper surveillance by punitive structures
• “child protection” = no lights
• lower quality of life (low Socioeconomic status, racialized bodies, etc)= greater policing and restriction of rightsàtreated as second class citizens àculture of poverty pathology àinternalized hatred and diminished integrity
• Curfews
• Gang loitering laws
• Quality of life when there is no quality

What is the street economy?

• All of the different ways for youth who are shut out of “legitimate’ ways of making money to survive
• Social capital—incarceration as credential/rite of passage
• Age 15—64 arrests--what the F*%# is that? (related to a story about a young trans woman who had been arrested, booked, and then released by the police onto the same corner without connecting her to supports)
• Selling cigarettes and other drugs
• Helping each other stay alive
• Necessity for some
• Empowering/demoralizing
• Not a secret to cops, authorities
• Making money to take care of family
• Getting money any way possible
• Criminalized
• Selling and making DVDs and CDs
• A method for folks with limited access to resources to live and survive
• Survival economy
• Doing/getting what you need to survive

What is Zero Tolerance?

• External control vs. internal
• Bad idea
• Military discipline
• No second chances
• Not looking at the whole person
• Weapons=expulsion (this includes fake weapons)
• False “public safety”
• Parents may feel it is the only thing keeping their children safe
• Population control of black/brown youth, who are the moral ills of the society, the “crack babies”
• Applied to things like “disobeying authority”, cursing, etc. –vague definitions of what this means but youth are still punished
• No chance for correction or development
• A way not to deal with inequalities
• No difference between the recipient of violence and the perpetrator
• Divisive
• The implication that people of color are criminals and should be dealt with to assure public safety

How is the school to prison pipeline playing out in Chicago Schools?

• “special education” pathologication
• zero tolerance still visible
• criminalization of behavior
• high stakes testing
• no privacy (searches)
• assumption that students need constant policing
• removing students from school by suspensions, expulsions, arrests
• suspensions are mostly handled by legal department of CPS not principal
• funding surveillance rather than education
• youth being labeled “bad” “lazy” and “unmotivated” and then that is internalized—youth starts calling other youth these labels
• police stations inside schools
• In Phila: at the start of 2009 school year…(sorry…I couldn’t read it--nm)
• Requirements to call police for certain kinds of misbehavior
• Metal detectors
• No social promotion
• Lack of resources for students with mental health and disabilities, replicated in prisons
• The next step from school to prison or jail

• Unfairly enforced, students of color, LGBTQ students targeted
• Not considering child development or personal history when defining or trying to change behavior

How can young people organize to combat the PIC?

• Communicate, dialogue with each other. First many youth may not feel included or aware of how to organize/mobilize
• Blocks Together security guard organizing campaign
• YWAT—Suspension Stories
• Participatory Action Research
• Youth from around the country come together
• Youth help get their teachers involved and engaged in dialogue and action
• Southwest Youth Collaborative—Audy Home Campaign
• Young Women’s Empowerment Project—Bad Encounter Line
• Political popular peer education
• Empowerment pipeline
• Early prevention workshops, clubs, programs,
• Knowing their rights. Solidarity; union (students) presence in schools
• Student Bill of Rights

What is Institutionalization?

• Intertwined (inextricably) with knowledge (who holds it, who gets to say what is/is not legitimate)
• Public funding of private corporations
• Making people conform/fit in to systems, even if those systems are unjust
• Defining based on assumptions
• The normalization of behaviors, perspectives, language, etc (even if oppressive)
• Inability to function without structure coming/being dictated from above
• Changing culture
• Systemically deriving agency (police officers, social workers, case workers, corrections officers, teachers, foster care, etc)
• State intervention
• Disguises responsibility/accountability
• Being caught up in the fears of society

How does the PIC impact young people in their daily lives?

• Fear
• Hypermasculinity and hegemonic masculinity for MEN of color that perpetuates misogyny and (men’s) violence against women and other gender nonconforming bodies
• Delusions of manhood!
• Separates families—children from parents
• Internalized self hatred
• Limits beliefs about future and opportunities
• Trauma
• Hatred of other youth—talking each other down
• Climate of violence in schools (verbal, physical, etc)—stressful on mind and body
• Low self-esteem
• Creates victims
• Demonizes young people, their families and their communities and creates severe cycles of internalized oppression

What are some alternatives to calling the police or social service?

• Project Nia—peace circles, community responsibility to our youth and solidarity, grandmothers group
• Creative interventions—try something! Organize collectively, center survivor (if desired)
• The first step should always be to call the youth to the side of you’re comfortable with that and outline how his behavior is disrespectful and impacting you
• Ask those harmed what they need
• Involve youth in more processes that directly effect/affect them (communicate) so as to hold all accountable and responsible
• Get communities to hold people accountable/call people out
• Call the families—create a school community