connection: Side view of a young man comforting a sad young woman in a train station

Opinion: How Human Connections Can Save Our Youth

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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.

Extremism: Christian Picciolini, Balding man with dark hair, beard, mustache, black top stands in front of bookshelves

Why Teenage Christian Picciolini Joined, Then Quit White Power Movement

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Christian Picciolini, 14, was hanging out one day in an alley near the intersection of Union and Division streets in Chicago. 

An older man with cropped hair and big shiny boots drove up. 

He was warm and friendly, and he offered fatherly advice: Don’t smoke marijuana, he told Picciolini. “That’s what the Communists and Jews want you to do,” he said. He told Picciolini to be proud of his Roman warrior ancestors: They were a superior race, he said. The man was Clark Martell, a violent neo-Nazi who was later sentenced to prison for assault and robbery. But Picciolini was hungry for attention and he saw Martell as heroic.

toolkit: Woman showing papers to man and woman in suits.

Toolkit Can Help OST Workers Band Together to Respond to Hate Messages 

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What do you do if you find racist graffiti on a wall near your school or youth program? Or come across neo-Nazi flyers in the area? Or read white nationalist comments on an online platform used by your program? A toolkit, “Confronting White Nationalism in Schools,” can help adults who work with youth choose specific responses. It was created by the Western States Center, a Portland, Oregon, nonprofit whose mission is to strengthen inclusive democracy and respond to bigotry and intolerance.

white nationalism: Rear view of man in crowd wearing ball cap, blue tank top that says Proud Boy.

When Hate Groups Recruit Youth: Teacher, Former White Nationalist Tell How to Counter It

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Nora Flanagan’s first brush with hate group recruiting took place when she was 15 and living in Beverly, a southwest Chicago neighborhood. Her older brother brought home a couple of his friends. To Flanagan’s dismay, they’d shaved their heads and wore Confederate flags on their jackets. It signaled they were part of the burgeoning skinhead movement in Chicago in the late 1980s and early 1990s, led by a teen named Christian Picciolini. “And they had been recruited and they were running around with this guy terrorizing the South Side.

Tookie: Man of color with dark hair, beard, mustache sitting on bench looking to the left

Opinion: ‘Tookie’ Williams Proved Anyone Could Evolve From Violent to Anti-gang

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“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.

Man of color in business suit pointing to left against background of city

Opinion: Time For Marginalized Communities to Do Their Own Talking, Privileged to Step Back

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“Caution, Sir! I am eternally tired of hearing that word caution. It is nothing but the word of cowardice!” —John Brown

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.” —Abraham Lincoln

March on Washington, August 1963, 250,000 people.

restorative justice: The phrase "Reparations for black community " on a banner in men's hand with blurred background.

Opinion: Restorative Justice Is Used to Legitimize Oppressive Systems

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Imagine building a house on unstable ground and then only working to address the cracks in the walls, uneven floors and leaking roof, all symptoms of a faulty foundation. Many contractors would find this unreasonable, if not dangerous. 

Yet that is essentially what we have done in the United States. After having built our nation's house on unstable ground, we have stubbornly clung to the irrational idea that all we need to do is fix the resulting, cosmetic issues. In doing so, we have begun to use restorative justice as one of those "easy fixes," to the detriment of both the practice and the communities asked to participate in it. The practices and approaches the Western world today refers to as “restorative justice” have roots in indigenous, including indigenous African, peacemaking and ways of being in community.

Virginia: Martinsville. Virginia on a map

Opinion: Pardoning Martinsville 7 Would Be a Start to Acknowledging Virginia’s History

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I’ve experienced the racial disparities and harsh retribution of the Virginia criminal legal system firsthand. I join the call for Gov. Ralph Northam to pardon the Martinsville 7 posthumously as a small but important way to begin the process of acknowledging the unfair and racist treatment of Black people in the Virginia legal system.

book club: Father And Young Son Reading Book Together At Home

Opinion: Book Club Can Save The Kids in Your Max Unit

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“My teen years were ones of drugs, shootings and beatings, and arrests. I was around when South Central Los Angeles gave birth to the Crips and Bloods. By the time I turned 18 years old, 25 of my homies had been killed by rival gangs, police, drugs, car crashes and suicides.”

—Luis J. Rodriguez

“Always Running” is a book that I recommend to everyone. It is one of the best books written by Luis J. Rodriguez and for many years was on the banned book lists throughout the country. 

When I arrived at the juvenile court school library, it was off the banned list and one of the most sought-after reads. I brought it to book club on many occasions.