On Saturday, August 1st I held a workshop that dealt with the Labor/Community Strategy Center‘s Community Rights Campaign. The workshop discussed in great detail the campaign itself, the demands on LAUSD, and how we want to change pre-prison conditions in high schools. I was able to present to the group the background and tools needed to recruit other folks around the work we are doing to stop the pre-prisoning of our youth. It is imperative that we stand against the racial profiling, excessive police force and ticketing of our youth. Because of these conditions, students are discouraged to go to school. This isn’t so shocking with LAUSD’s 50% graduation rate and California’s spending on education being 47th out of 50 states and 1st in prison/police spending out of 50 states. When students are discouraged to go to school the lack the skills to be successful citizens and therefore resort to committing crimes of poverty to survive. When in prison, 80% of prisoners do not have a high school diploma. This is not surprising when students are differed from school because of  the constant police harassment in their high schools and neighborhoods. There is an imparitive need for students to have adequate resources in high school to assist with their needs and police do not help to solve the root cause of any situation.

With this Campaign’s demands, we hope to gradate more students!!!

Graduating more students is important to the neighborhoods and communities because that means we have politically conscious young people that are fighting for changes within their communities that not only affect them but will also affect the next generation. It is important to train leaders and organizers that will take the initiative to create a self-sustaining community. The environmental aspects of these young people having leadership and organizing skills means that our community is on its way to improvement.

Organizing on the bus is always intense. It begins to get better once one gets back into the swing of things. I continue to learn about myself each and every time I get out there and organize. The two days I’ve organized this week, I have found that I draw myself to only organize women. I had out the flyer (the content in which we use to organize with) to both male and females but I only approach women. I believe that it is my thought that men have a different “agenda” when a women approaches them. To avoid being “hit on” or flirted with while organizing, I just stay away from men.

I met a Jamacian mother who had split thoughts on students getting truancy tickets. She thinks students should be get the truancy ticket. I then guided the conversation to a scenario in which a student left home 2 hours early to get to school only when the student lives 10 minutes away from school, rides public transportation, and still arrives late to school. I asked the woman, “is that fair that this student is being given truancy tickets because of public transportation?” The woman said that is not fair but she is still caught up with students who are not making their way to school. The key to organizing is being able to disagree then draw the bus rider with other common thoughts.

A generation
Downplayed for immaturity,
Growing in intelligence
But noticed for our impurities.
We have enough to deal with
On our own.
Peer pressure, stability,
Stress at school and home.

And 2009 is a year of change…
Not to blame Barack,
But the teacher crisis is a shame.
Stimulate this,
I have a package for that,
And yet California
Is stealing from the one thing we lack.

Somehow gang violence
Has replaced education,
So police have replaced
Positive mediation.

While we need more
Textbooks, resources and stuff,
The police haven’t figured out
A ticket’s too much.

Not to say that the concept
Is bad,
But the actuality of it
Has been a bad reality to have.

I almost feel like
I’m a target or somethin’.
As if they’re tryin’ to take me down,
While I focus on what I’m becomin’.
Going to school to make somethin’ of myself,
And that 5 minute “truancy”
Ain’t gonna help.

What does it pay to have a mind today?
To stand up and say that somethin’ is not okay?
Not much, if we have a surplus of police
And one teacher has 55 students to teach.

Why do we have to deal with
Fear and intimidation
Of ticket distribution
And excessive “regulation”?
Yes, I’m talkin’ about tickets,
But that’s not all.
I’ve heard of police
Searching Cleveland* students
Up the wall.
And police eyeing girls
Instead of watching for wrongs,
And being fashionably late
To try and break up a brawl.
And not to say this is a police
Muscle flew,
But there’s a school that’s
Called an education complex.

This is why I fight
Needless to say, we need more…
Teachers, money,
Class subjects to explore.
And it’s good to know
There’s always a solution,
Just give us what we need
Not this psychological pollution.

Who am I?
Am I really the future like everyone says or just another court case
Below the federal poverty line is where the majority is based
So how can one afford a $250 truancy ticket for being 30 minutes late
Especially since unemployment among minorities is highest in the state
Not to mention that lausd has a 50% high school drop out rate

See, the students here is not to blame
When our public transportation system is lame

But imagine MTA if students had better transportation
To better their chances at receiving an education
And not end up at a police station

Imagine if schools would realize
That being able to criminalize our youth is where the problem lies
Tardiness can be dealt with in other ways

Instead they put us in the hands of the ones that say they “protect and serve”
Giving us tickets for simply being late is a punishment we do not deserve

MTA imagine living in a city where transportaion was priority
And not ticket terriority
Where the handcuffs placed on the rists of youth were considered pelicular
And police unfamiliar

Imagine MTA if you put 500 new expansion buses on the street
And reversed the ’07 fare increase
Maybe the number of tardy students would decrease

Imagine if schools weren’t a pipeline to prison
Introducing our youth in the court system at an early age
Imprisoning them like an animal in a cage
Its time for a change

Imagine how much transportation means to a student striving for success
But daily tardiness is makin u stress, depressed, leading to your future arrest

Imagine MTA being the student disabled from participating in after school activities because the 115 comes once an hour
Or causing you to come home at an undecent hour

Imagine MTA the change transportation can make for me and my peers
A better life in our future years