KNOW JUSTICE KNOW PEACE

Part 2PO Box 73688, L.A., CA 90003 / www.youth4justice.org / freelanow@yahoo.com

WITH CREDIT GIVEN TO: THE YOUTH AND FAMILIES OF THE YOUTH JUSTICE COALITION WHOSE WISDOM AND EXPERIENCES GAVE RISE TO THIS WORK; JUSTICE MOVEMENTS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD WHO HAVE INSPIRED AND GUIDED US; AND THE COMMUNITY ELDERS AND ANCESTORS WHO LAID THE GROUNDWORK. AS THE YORUBA PROVERB SAYS, “If we stand tall, it’s because we stand on the backs of those who went before us.”

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KNOW JUSTICE KNOW PEACE

THIS PRESENTATION IS DIVIDED INTO THREE PARTS: (1) CITY OF LOST ANGELS explains why the Youth Justice Coalition (YJC) was forced to address violence and crime, and why transformative justice was the only logical path for us to take towards peace. (2) ROOTS OF THE SCHOOL-TO-JAIL TRACK, YOUTH CRIMINALIZATION AND MASS INCARCERATION covers some of the history that led to America’s addiction to prisons. (3) BUILDING A MOVEMENT FOR YOUTH JUSTICE describes the YJC’s Transformative Justice Process and includes

comparisons with the traditional U.S. court system and Restorative Justice.

THIS IS PART 2.

ROOTS OF THE SCHOOL-TO-JAIL TRACK, YOUTH CRIMINALIZATION AND MASS INCARCERATION

CriminalizationThe labeling of an individual or group, their activities, culture and/or identity as deviant, dangerous and/or undesirable and the corresponding suppression of that individual or group by authorities. Criminalized people and populations do not need to engage in illegal or harmful behavior to be treated as criminals, and are regularly targeted for surveillance, police stops, frisks and questioning; school suspension/expulsion; as well as receive harsh and unfair treatment at every level from arrest, to court, detention, sentencing, incarceration and deportation.  Criminalization often extends beyond police and court systems' control to impact the larger society's perception and treatment of the individual/group, dramatically impacting media coverage, public policy development, public opinion, voter behavior, or increased suspicion by neighbors and businesses (such as targeting by a neighborhood watch, having people cross the street, divert their eyes or ignore individuals perceived to be “dangerous”, or being followed by store clerks or security).  Thus, criminalization drastically transforms one's life chances - eliminating access to employment, education, housing, loans and numerous other resources and opportunities, and causing abuse by and exclusion from the larger community, regular dehumanization, verbal, sexual and physical attacks, and widespread fear and loathing.

DISPLACEMENT Legal/legislative force (as opposed to military

force) such as treaties, imminent domain, false bribes such as Section 8 and Hope VI, gentrification/development, etc. Displacement is always onto inferior land/area or into homelessness.

FORCE VIGILANTE JUSTICE, MOB VIOLENCE, MASSACRE, DISEASE,

STARVATION, BURNING PEOPLE OUT

DETERIORATION + ISOLATION Neglect -

allowing or enabling land to fall into disrepair so that it’s less valuable, dangerous and uncomfortable, COMBINED WITH TRAPPING PEOPLE in that condition - eventually people are forced to abandon the land.

Gang Profiling, Loitering, Stop and Frisk, Code Enforcement, Status Offenses, Construction to Stop Free Movement, Ease Surveillance and Prepare People for Incarceration

SLAVERY AND INCARCERATION The

Thirteenth Amendment states that slavery shall be outlawed in the U.S. and all its territories except as a “punishment for crime.”

ADDICTION From Reservations to Vietnam; from Opium Dens

to Crack Houses DIVISION/ASSIMILATION/MISSEDUCATION Divide and Conquer From Plantation to Prison /

Boarding Schools / Inferior Education and Outlawing EducationHARRASSMENT/CRIMINALIZATION/CONTAINMENT

YOUTH SEEN AS

SATAN

SAVAGES AND SLAVES

1600s

ORIGINAL SINThe Puritans believe that children are born close to the Devil, and the role of society and family is to wrestle Satan from within the child.

FIRST PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Massachusetts’ Old Satan Deluder Act of 1647 establishes first public school system. Since, Puritans believed that children were born with the “original sin,” they had to be raised in an atmosphere of fear, strict discipline, hard work, and a strong knowledge of the Bible to delude Satan. The Bible is America’s first school text book.

SCHOOLS LOOKAND RUN LIKE PURITAN CHURCHTeachers established as all-knowing, and students as empty vessels. The system of an instructor lecturing from the front of a class, with students sitting in stiff rows and memorizing information rather than building critical thinking skills, remains the norm to this day.

EDUCATIONAL TRACKING IN THE COLONIES As the New England Colonies were settled, educational tracking determined that there was no education, forced apprenticeships, indentured servitude, or slavery for poor classes, basic skills training and literacy for the small middle class, and classics-based, college preparatory education for the upper class.

TRACKING

Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin engage in an ongoing public debate on purpose of public schooling. Jefferson argues for a classics, university

prep education. Franklin wins; except for the elite, schools are to build the workforce for the new nation.

UNEMPLOYMENT WAS SEVERELY PUNISHED The death penalty, prisons, asylums, poorhouses and work farms were established to isolate anyone who didn’t fit into the economy, who engaged in the underground economy or who rebelled.

Children are kept in the same institutions and courts as adults.

In 1787, the Quakers create the nation’s first

penitentiary - believing that solitude was

needed to enable people to do penance for their sins. But the isolation and sensory deprivation soon proved to cause severe mental illness and the Quakers abandoned the practice. The government, however, picked it up and make it the norm for U.S. prison system.

FIRST INDIAN BOARDING SCHOOLS

Throughout U.S. history, missionaries establish schools to Christianize indigenous children, freed slaves and new immigrants. This begins first with Harvard University, which in 1614 was founded by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and included in its mission the conversion of Indian children to Christianity, considered the first Indian Boarding School. Once Harvard became known as a prestigious university, this mission was abandoned. Yale University was founded in 1701 also for the purpose of “saving” the souls of Indian youth. Despite the fact than Indian communities rejected the schools from the start, and those youth in boarding schools faced great hardships, confusion and disease, the practice became not only church but government policy throughout North America until the 1950s, and continued by removing the majority of indigenous children from their homes through foster care system through the 1970s.

“KILL THE INDIAN, SAVE THE MAN.”

Beginning in 1879, Captain Richard Henry Pratt, 10th Calvary Buffalo Soldiers, establishes a widespread

government boarding school system. For the next 70 years, indigenous children are stolen from their

communitiesand taken hundreds to thousands of miles from their homes to government boarding schools. Their hair is cut; they are forced to wear Western clothing and speak English; they

are punished for speaking their language or practicing their religion; and they are put to work in school factories.

For African Americans, Learning to Read or Teaching Others to Read is Punishable by Death

“Midnight Schools” are established in Black communities to secretly teach literacy. Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth and other Black abolitionists promote that African Americans speak for themselves, strive toward university education, and publish their own narratives and newspapers.

Thirteenth Amendment

Slavery shall be outlawed in the U.S. and all its territories except as a punishment for crime. - 1863

POST CIVIL WAR TRACKING

Beginning during Reconstruction, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington engage in a similar debate to that of Jefferson and Franklin, with Douglass and Du Bois arguing that African Americans should have access to university admission, and Washington arguing for agricultural and technical schools for Blacks. Washington supports many of Du Bois’ political efforts, yet his arguments are also used to support the needs of U.S. capitalism. Separate schools and colleges for African Americans are established.

YOUTH SEEN AS

CHEAP

LABOR1800s - 1900s

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTIONAs the Nation’s first well-known State Secretary of Education,

Horace Mann argued in 1837 that public education’s goals are to create an “industrious class of women and men who obey the law and are diligent in their work.” Initially, factory and mining work, required only basic literacy skills. By 1860, there were no more than 300 high schools in the United States, less than 100 of them free. Schools were built to look and operate like factories, including the use of bells to signal student movement.

“UNWASHED MASSES”

Immigrant youth are exploited as cheap labor, and pushed to assimilate into American culture. Many of those who end up on the street are starved, killed, incarcerated, institutionalized or sent west to be “adopted” as farm labor.

THROUGHOUT THE 1800s - 1930s,

the majority of American children and youth are workers, not students.

ClassroomManagement

With strict discipline, “one who studies educational theory can see in the mechanical routine of the classroom, the educative forces that are slowly transforming the child from a little savage into a creature fit for law and order, fit for the life of civilized society.” - 1907

William Chandler Bagley

THE BACKLASH AGAINST

YOUTH

POWER1960s -

1970s

OUT OF L.A. COME THE ARCHITECTS OF SCHOOL DE-FUNDING AND MASS INCARCERATION

U.S. POLICIES THAT COME OUT OF L.A.:Nixon’s Law and Order backlash after 60s movements leads to mass incarceration of poor people and people of color. The prison population increases 700% in 30 years. Cali and L.A. lead the world in incarceration and harsh sentencing, including creation of JLWOP, Prop 21 and Prop 9 - all are written and financed from L.A.., and Three Strikes - written in the Central Valley, but financed from L.A. Nixon also declares the War on Drugs, and Ronald Reagan escalates the war internationally.The modern anti-tax movement - jump-started in L.A. by Howard Jarvis’ Proposition 13. and UCLA Economist Milton Friedman - is picked up by Reagan; his trickle down economic policies come to be known as “Reaganomics” and include: globalization and deindustrialization, war on welfare, massive cuts to social services, and mental health de-institutionalization without community placements, all of which lead to massive increase in homelessness, unemployment and the bankrupting of entire towns and cities. Small rural towns that lose their industrial jobs look to state and federal governments’ building of prisons as their new economy. L.A. creates “planned Skid Row” to force homeless into downtown isolation. LAPD Chief Parker introduces military-style policing and brings National Guard into L.A. to squash Watts Rebellion in ‘65. Chief Gates takes militarization further by use of helicopters, battering ram, creating nation’s first SWAT and CRASH (gang) units.’92 Uprising once again reflects L.A.’s anger over entrenched police brutality, and National Guard is once again utilized against civilians. Gates also created DARE.in the 1980s, U.S. fuels wars against rebellions in Central America. LAPD and Sheriffs work with U.S. military to teach counter-guerilla tactics, interrogation and torture against civilians, based on tactics used against urban rebellions on the streets of L.A. In the 90s and 00s, L.A. law enforcement return to Central America and Mexico to teach “gang suppression” when people are deported - (the greatest number are deported from L.A. The violence that L.A. creates we then deport to other U.S. states, Mexico, C.A., Laos and Cambodia) 2007 - Jordan Downs is first community in the U.S. to get GPS surveillance system. L.A. and Riverside first to use GPS monitoring to track people with gang convictions returning home from prison.

WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL? JUST SAY “NO”

These policies lead to the mass incarceration of youth of color.

YOUTH SEEN AS

SUPER

PREDATORS

1980 - 2000s

IN 1985, PRESIDENT REAGAN APPOINTS

WILLIAM BENNETT AS U.S. SECRETARY OF

EDUCATION.

Zero Tolerance

policies include requirements for suspension, expulsion and

arrests; the takeover of school discipline by police

departments; and relationships in schools are replaced by

metal detectors, locker searches, drug-sniffing dogs,

and security gates.BENNETT REQUIRES SCHOOL DISTRICTS TO FOLLOW ZERO

TOLERENCE STANDARDS IN ORDER TO RECEIVE

FEDERAL FUNDS.

1. Police Departments take over school security

2. More Probation Officers than Counselors

3. Schools look and run like prisons; some have the same architects

4. Locker, backpack and body Searches, metal detectors, gang profiling

5. Leads to dramatic increases in student push-out, ticketing and arrest

L.A.’S INTENSIFICATION IN THE 1980s OF ITS 150-YEAR-OLD “WAR ON GANGS”

1848 California and the Southwest is annexed into U.S. through illegal war against Mexico.

L.A. : Is the only region west of Texas to side with the Confederacy. Gains reputation as nation’s most violent city with one murder per day by 1870. The homicide rate between 1847 and 1870 averaged 158 per 100,000, which was 10 to 20 times the annual murder rates for New York City during the same period. If we had the same homicide rate today, we’d have 600,000 murders a year. French send troops to protect their citizens.By 1871, half of businesses are gambling halls, saloons or houses of prostitution, most with political or law enforcement ownership or involvement. Corruption is the norm in L.A.’s police force until the Parker administration of the 1960s. The Marshall’s Office is funded by enslavement of indigenous population.L.A.’s first jail is established (chain and a log.)

L.A.’S WAR ON GANGSSTARTS IN 1848:

L.A. has the highest lynching rate of any region in the country. the victims are largely Californios - now seen since the war as Mexicans struggling to reclaim land and livestock taken through the war. First use of gang profiling – “bandido/bandit” – to criminalize groups. Los Angeles had several active Vigilance Committees during that era. Between 1850 and 1870, mobs carried out approximately 35 lynchings of Mexicans—more

than four times the number that occurred in San Francisco. Los Angeles was described as "undoubtedly thetoughest town of the entire nation.

1871 – Chinese Massacre is L.A.’s first of many “riots,” all of which are led by law enforcement or happen in response to police brutality. A shootout between Tong factions leads to the death of a popular white

chicken rancher. A mob of 200-500 Whites and Latinos led by local government and law enforcement leads to the lynching of 19 Chinese men and the burning down of Chinatown. Vigilante mobs and state sanctioned

murder typifies L.A.’s “justice” system throughout 1800s and early 1900s.

1881 - The L.A. Times is founded by Otis Harrison, and both he and the paper are a leading voice in L.A..’spower structure which establishes L.A. as nearly all-white and union free by 1900.

Los Angeles County built the nation’s first comprehensive gang suppression policies:

[1] Gang injunctions - first started in Pomona and West Covina in 1983 - the ability to lock down a neighborhood and arrest people if they are on the street with another alleged gang member - Including family - out past curfew, or carrying a cell phone.

[2] In 1985, L.A. established CLEAR [Community Law Enforcement and Recovery] first multi-agency task force and joint code enforcement effort targeting “street gangs.”

[3] Gang databases in 1987 - computerized lists that label people as “gang members” without their knowledge, without any chance to appeal, and without clear way to get off. (4) The statewide STEP (Street Terrorism Enforcement and Prevention) Act

in ‘88, the nation’s first law targeting street gangs, first gang definition, first language

referring to gang members as “terrorists,” first gang enhancements in court, and took

database statewide [Cal Gangs Database].

L.A. FUELS CALIFORNIA’S AND THE NATION’S ADDICTION TO INCARCERATION

IN THE EARLY 80s, CALIFORNIA STARTS TO RAPIDLY EXPAND THE BUILDING OF PRISONS AND CUT THE BUDGET TO EVERYTHING ELSE. AT THE TIME, WE ALREADY HAVE 12 PRISONS.

DURING THE SAME TIME, CALIFORNIA BUILDS ONE UC AND TWO CAL STATE UNIVERSITIES.

BY 2010, CALI HAS 176 THOUSAND STATE PRISONERS;

40% FROM L.A. COUNTY.

2010

With realignment, 135,000 people are in prison. But in many counties bodies are being shifted from state

cages to county cages.

California used to be #1 in school spending and had one of the best school

systems in the world.

Now, California is #1 in prison spending, and with this year’s budget cuts,

dropped from #47 to #50 in school spending!

South and East L.A. lead the nation in school overcrowding,

low test scores and drop-out/push-out rates

with only 40% of students graduating.

What are the Results of L.A.’s Multi-Billion $ Gang War?• After 25 years, L.A. has 6 times as many alleged

gangs and at least twice as many alleged gang members, and L.A.’s “gangs” as well as gang suppression policies have spread throughout the world.

• In 30 years, there are more than 100,000 shooting victims in South Central and Watts alone.

• In West L.A., 1 in 78,000 young men are victims of homicide.

• In East L.A. it’s 1 in 6,100.• In South L.A., it’s 1 in 2,200.• L.A. County leads the nation and the world in

detention, incarceration and deportation. • One in 3 African American males is under the

custody of the state.• African Americans are 11% of L.A.’s population,

but 36% of detention and prison population.• Latinos in L.A. serve five times longer sentences

for the same crimes as whites.• Latino youth are five times more likely, and

African American youth 18.3 times more likely to receive life without parole than white youth.

The largest numbers of youth contacts with the police and Probation are for: (1) Tickets that can turn into arrest warrants or holds on Drivers’ licenses when families can’t afford to pay them. The #1 “crime” fare evasion - riding train or bus without paying.(2) Curfew Violations(3) Routine stop and frisks, gang database adds on the street.(4) Graffiti related tickets and arrests including minor acts such as posting slap tags, tiny throw ups, carrying a marker, or having a graffiti-covered back pack,(5) Small possession of weed or alcohol for individual use.(6) Minor Probation violations - such as missing school or arguing with family - can get youth lock-down placement or camp time.

We are also suffering from something we define as Post Incarceration Stress Disorder

PISD is caused by the following: The lack of human interaction; extreme verbal, sexual and physical abuse at the hands of guards and other equally miserable prisoners; sensory depravation; rampant spread of disease within filthy and overcrowded institutions; conditioning of system-involved people to depend on constant oversight and management of our daily lives - when to pee, when to sleep, when to move, when to eat; the wide availability of both prescription and contraband drugs within institutions combined with a lack of quality and effective drug and alcohol treatment; the hours of wasted time without educational or vocational resources; and the domination of gang and racial “politics” within the system all serve to increase mental health problems and further cripple system-involved people and our families.

PISD causes new and increased rates of several afflictions, which are also spread to families and communities on the outside. These include, but are not limited to: inability to make decisions or live independently; chronic homelessness and unemployment; dangerous health epidemics including HIV, Tuberculosis, Staph infection, Hepatitis C; increased mental illness; misdiagnosis, addiction to, misuse, over-use and sharing of prescription medications; increased substance abuse; increase in both domestic and community violence; extreme, unpredictable and often uncontrollable mood swings, depression and anger; suicide; paranoia and lack of trust; increased fear of authority; “gang” affiliation and violence; and racial hatred and conflict.

PISD: You’re pissed all the time. Everyone is pissed at you. And resources and opportunities tell you to, “piss off.”