Suspension Stories, a youth-led project by the Young Women's Action Team and Project NIA, produced a series of written, audio, and video testimonies about students getting suspended. The project intends to highlight the school-to-prison pipeline and show how school discipline policies often seem premature, too extreme, or unfair to students.
Below, Adeola M. shares her story of getting suspended. If she had been guided to talk out her conflict with her classmate, she says, she would not have missed a week of school, including a test.
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The following originally aired on KCBS.
By: Bianca Brooks
I remember elementary school mornings reciting the Pledge of Allegiance saying, “Liberty and justice for all.” But lately I wonder who is the justice system working for?
I arrived in Oakland from Atlanta in 2010 and saw Oscar Grant on city walls and windows, but his story was a mystery to me. I saw videos of this unarmed man being shot in a BART station by a police officer. The officer spent only a year in a private cell, and I wondered if he served time for Grant’s death, or embarrassing California’s justice system.
I had the same feelings when Casey Anthony was acquitted on charges of murdering her daughter. I imagined if my family was murdered --who would pay the price?
I grew up believing cops would protect me, and good guys always win, but these cases are changing my mind. I wanted to believe in America’s judicial system, but I’m growing up in a world where
instead of jail time, criminals get book deals and Lifetime movies. No doubt it’ll take more time and money the US doesn’t have to reform the justice system, but if we don’t how can I honestly recite “justice for all”-- in a “justice for who” nation?
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As the awards ceremony approaches, Youth Radio is profiling each of the six 2010 Brower Youth Award winners. The Brower Youth Awards go to six outstanding environmental activists between the ages of 13 and 22. The awards ceremony takes place in October in San Francisco.
De’Anthony Jones, 18, San Francisco, CA
Fostering Service LearningThrough the group Environmental Service Learning Initiative (ESLI), an organization that works in seven public high schools in San Francisco, De’Anthony has worked to connect social justice and global climate change at the forefront of education. De’Anthony’s engages youth of color in the environmental movement through integrating community learning, environmental service, teacher-student partnerships, collaboration with community-based organizations, and hands-on learning. He is helping to create a new youth culture that takes environmental stewardship as a given.
In the fall of 2008, during my first year at Mission High School in San Francisco, as a junior, I met some people who became my mentors, including Jay Pugao and Dave Room. I had just finished a summer in the CORO Exploring Leadership Program in SF, where I learned about the energy crisis. That’s when my passion was sparked. Jay Pugao started the ESLI program at Mission High, and I got involved then. Read more...
"I'm Bi-racial. My father is black, and my mother is light skinneded." -King Anyi
At a young age, several women in my family use to tell me... "You better not bring home no white girl!" That was before I even started dating. Their comments had the opposite effect on me. I have dated several white women. I've also dated black, Latina, Asian, and mixed race women. I can say I don't have a racial preference. But I can say that some of my relatives wouldn't be too pleased with my dating history. And I find that puzzling, considering that these same relatives are light skinned. They are the children of interracial dating.
Recently in Louisiana, a licensed justice of the peace refused to grant an interracial couple a marriage license because he didn't feel races should be "mixing." In fact, Justice Keith Bardwell told the press, "There is a problem with both [racial] groups accepting a child from such a marriage." The justice's actions, comments and beliefs are so audacious in this day and age. I mistook the story for a joke when I first heard it. How such ignorance can survive in today's current social climate is not a surprise to me. What is shocking is how such ignorance can still exist so openly in such a public sector of society. You would think that even if someone did harbor such prejudicial feelings that they would keep a lid on it. Think about the countless moments of negative press and condemnation against executioners of such rhetoric that have cost them and their organizations countless millions. Bardwell's public stance not only encourages such ignorance, it undermines our progress as a society. More importantly it undermines the people of Louisiana by making them vulnerable to legal action and misrepresenting the citizens of the Creole State. Creole is a term used to refer to the descendants of Louisiana's early French settlers, African-Americans, and Native Americans who have been mixing in the state since before 1803, when Louisiana was purchased from France. In fact, I am a descendant of Louisiana Creoles.
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By Sophie Simon Ortiz
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