Every day, I walk into school greeted with silencing stares from armed police officers. They’re not facing the windows or the doors looking out for a stranger who could walk in and hurt my friends and me. Their eyes are on us, not some external threat. We walk past them silently, afraid that anything we do or say will be perceived as a “threat” that will lead to suspension, arrest or worse, physical harm.
Our schools have normalized this fear by allowing officers to patrol our hallways and criminalize us. In my county, a police officer was celebrated for tasing a Black freshman girl three times inside her school cafeteria.
I discovered my purpose when I was 21 years old, and the man I’d tackled during a pick-up football game shot me three times in my legs. He was upset that I’d tackled him so hard. It made me want, profoundly, to understand my fellow player’s extraordinary anger and, perhaps, that of other Black and brown kids whose life circumstances had pushed them down the wrong path ...
ByEmily Haney-Caron, Erika Fountain, Alexandra Cohen and Gail Rosenbaum |
Imagine being 16 years old, arrested and charged with a crime after getting into trouble with a friend. You will remain locked up until your hearing. You haven’t spoken to anyone about what's going on. Eventually, you meet your attorney 45 minutes before court and he says the prosecutor wants to offer you a deal. If you admit guilt, your punishment will be lighter than if you are found guilty in juvenile court.
You ask if you can have time to think and talk to your mom but the attorney says you must decide quickly because your hearing starts in 30 minutes.
The Parkland high school mass shooting on Feb. 14, 2018 killed 17 people, including 14 students. The shooter fired 136 bullets in six minutes and four seconds, or about 22 bullets per minute, from the rifle he used. In 1789, when the Second Amendment was passed by Congress, the average number of musket balls that could be fired by a member of the militia was about two per minute. Using this comparison of the number of bullets released per minute, the Parkland shooter represented the equivalent of 11 militiamen storming the high school.
The wounding energy of each of the rifle bullets released by the Parkland mass shooter in 2018 is at least nine times greater than the energy released by the musket balls shot by a member of the militia in 1789.
Let me start by saying I am a triracial human being with a dark complexion. That was my funny way of saying I’m Black. I embrace my Mexican side. I embrace my Indian side and my Black side but for a while no one else embraced it.
I was bullied a lot growing up. I’m 33 years young, and it was because I didn’t fit the mold the world created for me.
An often overlooked but major injustice is how our juvenile justice system impacts Black and Hispanic youth and their families, limiting their ability to reach their full potential and thrive in their communities. In fact, the disparities are so bad that a recent Marshall Project article noted that “though the racial inequality in youth detention has long been stark, it's wider than ever.”
Youth arrest rates have plummeted over the past several decades, falling nearly 70% nationwide since 2000, including a 54% reduction in violent offense arrests. There are now fewer youth in juvenile halls or courtrooms and far smaller probation caseloads. Yet state and local governments continue to invest heavily in juvenile justice, shoring up systems that are known to cause harm.
Amid the current economic crisis, maintaining overbuilt juvenile facilities and bloated probation budgets squanders resources that schools, health systems and community-based service providers desperately need. Moreover, funding excessive facility space can needlessly sweep youth into a system bent on self-preservation. In California, like much of the country, juvenile justice systems have experienced significant population reductions.
The well-established finding that a majority of youth in the juvenile justice system have been exposed to trauma has led to a clarion call for the implementation of trauma-informed practices.
However, to date, less attention has been paid to the importance of providing juvenile justice staff with the tools needed to carry out trauma-informed practices in ways that protect them from the potential risks associated with this work. In fact, recognition of such risks is relatively new; only in 2013 did the official diagnosis of post-traumatic stress first recognize that secondary exposure to another person’s trauma is a bona fide type of traumatic experience. Such secondary traumatic stress (STS) — also termed vicarious trauma or compassion fatigue — has mostly been the focus of attention among mental health professionals and first responders.
But well known in the juvenile justice community — even if not well recognized outside of it — is that working with traumatized youth and families, reading their extensive trauma histories, performing trauma screenings and delivering trauma-informed programming all bring us into contact with thoughts, feelings and images that can be difficult to put aside at the end of the day. What can be done? Self-care: strengths and limitations
To date, most of the strategies designed to prevent or intervene with STS have been focused on self-care and wellness promotion, which are certainly of value.
There are thousands of years’ worth of documented history and stories of our connection with each other. There are millions of love stories and historical accounts of all kinds of relationships interpreted in books, movies and even sketched onto buildings and structures that speaks to our powerful bond.
Could this be the answer to the age-old question — what is the purpose of life? Science tells us it is. We are programmed to connect, not to self-destruct. If this is so, then why is it that we are suffering through a suicide crisis?
A crisis is when a non-common negative occurrence increases in trend and frequency.
“I'm learning to ‘master self’ while rising from the ashes of madness.” ―Stanley “Tookie” Williams, “Blue Rage, Black Redemption: A Memoir”
The day that Stanley “Tookie” Williams was executed, I was working in the library at a juvenile court school in California. The students and I had talked this over for several months before the scheduled execution. Some of us felt a huge loss at the impending death of Tookie, as he was often called.
The day after he died, the library was filled with grieving students. Many saw Tookie as a hero for making such huge changes during his prison term on death row. We had a service of sorts in the library to commemorate his life and his achievements that brought more peace to this world.
