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Measure Y
"Now most of my free time is spent teaching them skills that they can turn into careers. "
By D’Mariey Johnson
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The City of Oakland’s Measure Y initiative includes funding for violence prevention programs for young people. Youth Radio’s D’Mariey Johnson is active in one such program and says he’s promoting change from the ground-up.
I’m only sixteen years old, but already I’ve become a leader of a group of young people most traditional teachers haven’t been able to reach. I work in Oakland with teens from challenging backgrounds – some have been incarcerated, others abused, and most live in rough neighborhoods.
I know where they’re coming from. I live in a place where you’re as likely to hear gunshots as a plane soaring overhead. It’s easy to get caught up in the violence. And even though I’ve always been what most people would call a “good kid”, here, you can become a target whether you’re good or not. I learned that lesson last year when one of my friends was shot and killed for no apparent reason. Like me, he had never been in any kind of trouble. But at fifteen, he lost his life just sitting in his brother’s car at a gas station.
I kept thinking about how innocent he was and how easily something like that could have happened to me. I figured the best way to avoid that fate was to stay off the street and help other teens do the same. Now most of my free time is spent teaching them skills that they can turn into careers.
I’ve seen my students change as a result. Instead of hanging out where violence is likely to happen, they’ve become more interested in writing and making music. By working with other teens from similar backgrounds, they also develop a sense of trust, along with the skills. That opens a door, so they can stop dwelling on all the bad things that happened in the past and begin planning for a better future.
But even with all this progress, almost every time I watch the news, I hear about more people becoming victims to the random violence in my community. Most of the time, the faces are young. They make me wonder if things will ever change. I know it’s possible, but I also know there’s no guarantee.
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