More mythbusting is in order today… The Huffington Post points out:

In 2011, marijuana possession arrests totaled 663,032 — more than arrests for all violent crimes combined. Possession arrests have nearly doubled since 1980, according to an FBI report, while teen marijuana use recently reached a 30-year high.

Also, next Monday, there will be a free screening of the documentary “the House I Live In” at UIC. I will be on the panel following the film along with some youth from Circles & Ciphers (a program we sponsor).

Sometimes walking down the STREET
Feels like an OBSTACLE COURSE.
We are constantly trying to avoid DANGER.
It’s like Lil’ Red Riding Hood
Who was sent into the WOODS
To take food to her sick old grandma and
Was attacked instead by the BIG BAD WOLF.
For us,
the STREETS sometimes seem filled with
BIG BAD WOLVES.

by Rogers Park Young Women’s Action Team in Shout Out: Women of color respond to violence (2007)

I’ve spent many years working with young women of color. One of the most formative experiences I’ve had were the nine years that I spent supporting an incredible group of girls & young women who called themselves the Rogers Park Young Women’s Action Team (YWAT). I have written about YWAT sporadically over the years on this blog. I haven’t however written about my experiences in any depth. I have also never before shared my very personal and specific reasons for engaging in anti-violence work with girls & young women in my community. For me, it began with street harassment and over the next few weeks, I will share some reflections about addressing this issue with young women of color. Finally, I hope to explore how my years with YWAT shaped my anti-criminalization ideas for addressing social problems.

To begin, it’s important to settle on a definition of street or public harassment. For this, I rely on Carol Gardner (1995) who defines public harassment as including “pinching, slapping, hitting, shouted remarks, vulgarity, insults, sly innuendo, ogling, and stalking (p.4).” She adds that “public harassment is on a continuum of possible events, beginning when customary civility among strangers is abrogated and ending with the transition to violent crime: assault, rape, or murder (p.4).”

There is probably no woman in the world who hasn’t experienced street/public harassment in her lifetime. My interest in this issue is longstanding and personal. I was raised in New York City – the daughter of West African return migrants. I grew up in the “city that never sleeps” and learned from an early age that there were dangers “lurking” around most corners. I don’t remember my parents ever telling me to be afraid. I don’t remember being sat down and told that I should be careful. However, I did have a curfew and I noticed that my father never seemed to be asleep when I would get home from being out at night. He never admitted that he was waiting up for me.

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Here’s the next photograph from the series…

Based on my very, very unscientific poll of 14 black youth ages 15 to 18, I would say that gun control advocates have their work cut out for them.

I facilitated a peace circle yesterday at a local school. I was invited to keep the circle as part of an ongoing “Peacemaker” after-school program. When the circle ended, I engaged the young people in a conversation about recent school-based shootings. First, I asked if they had been impacted by gun violence. All of them had. This isn’t surprising because as a recent report (PDF) by the Children’s Defense Fund suggests: “Gun homicide continued as the leading cause of death among Black teens 15 to 19.” More specifically:

1. Black males 15-19 were eight times as likely as White males of the same age and two-and-a-half times as likely as their Hispanic peers to be killed in a gun homicide in 2009.
2. The leading cause of death among Black teens ages 15 to 19 in 2008 and 2009 was gun homicide. For White teens 15 to 19 it was motor vehicle accidents followed by gun homicide in 2008 and gun suicide in 2009.

Next, I asked how many of them supported stricter gun laws. Specifically, I asked if they would support banning assault weapons. The answer was a resounding NO from all of them. All 14. The adult sponsor of the program appeared stunned at their answers.

I asked why they opposed a ban on assault weapons and got various responses. Some of the young people suggested that banning things just made some folks more likely to want them. One young man said: “It’s like when my mom tells me I can’t have that extra slice of pizza. All I can think about is how much I want it.” Others suggested that the government wouldn’t be able to stop the flow of the assault weapons since they couldn’t do anything about drugs which were already illegal. Another young man said that guns weren’t the problem but rather people’s mindsets were. Finally, one young woman spoke about the need for people to be able to protect themselves from the police. She thought that having an assault weapon would even out the odds with law enforcement if they were to come after you “for no good reason.”

There is obviously a long tradition in the black community of invoking the right to armed self-defense. In the modern era, Robert F. Williams was a vocal proponent of this idea.

In 1955, Williams joined the NAACP in his hometown of Monroe, NC after having served in the Marine Corps. He quickly became the President of the Chapter and rebuilt it to include many veterans, farmers, and working-class people. In 1956, the Monroe NAACP started a campaign to integrate the only swimming pool in the city. It had been built with federal funds and yet blacks were barred from access. City officials not only refused to let blacks swim in the pool, they also turned down requests to build a pool that they could use. Williams and the Monroe NAACP took the city to court. This engendered massive backlash from local white community members including members of the KKK. The KKK held rallies, drove around black neighborhoods intimidating residents, and shot guns at people out of moving cars.

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Early last year, I was on WBEZ talking about a report that I co-authored titled “Policing Chicago Public Schools.” I discussed the fact that black students in Chicago Public Schools (CPS) are disproportionately arrested and recommended that we rely on restorative practices for addressing disciplinary issues instead.

In CPS about 25 students a day are arrested on school property. The Chicago Tribune reports that in Illinois, minority students are disproportionately targeted for arrests. This is of course unsurprising. Below is a chart from their report:

We spend over $70 million on school security in CPS (with $25 million going to the Chicago Police Department to provide two police officers for each high school). In addition, last year, the Chicago Public Schools launched a Compstat “school-safety” partnership in order to further cement the ties between schools and law enforcement:

“The program brings police, principals and religious leaders together on a weekly basis to discuss crime and safety plans, analyze data and continually evaluate the implementation of those plans.”

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Brown Threat 2 Society
by Alejandro G. Vera

A menace to society and a vago from the hood
And porque my skin is brown
People assume I’m up to no good
They don’t feel safe when I’m around
They look down on me cuando hablo Espanglish
A bloodthirsty descendant of the Aztecs
Porque I don’t speak the “proper” language
I speak what’s known as Tex-Mex
Because I come from the Deep South
And have aggressive attitude towards people
But in my life, there’s been nothing to smile about
It’s full of sin, struggles, and evil
All they show is resentment and fear
But if you look closely into my eyes
You’ll see the pain from all those troubled years
I disguise it with black shades in daylight
And at night wash it away with a case of beers
But still at times in the still of the night
Alone in the dark I fight away tears
Pero no me entiendes, you can’t understand
When the odds are against you, how can you prosper?
When during childhood you become a man
And after that derange into a monster
This is for all my misunderstood brothers
Who won’t settle for minimum wages
Who are a danger to themselves and others
For all the carnales confined up in cages

Alejandro G. Vega was born in Mexico City and brought to the United States at the age of two. “I grew up my whole life in San Anto, and as the oldest of six children born to first generation immigrants I learned everything through hard knocks at home and in school — but mostly on the streets. Nobody in my family has ever been to college or graduated and I hope to prove a lot of people wrong and be the first one. I feel my poetry is an extension of my beliefs and emotions harmonizing in an art form. Every poem is a peek of what goes on inside a revolutionary mind.”

This video does a good job of breaking down the exponential growth of the prison population and attributes the major part of the growth to the “War on Drugs.”

Also, the Wall Street Journal published a pretty good article about the War on Drugs. One key excerpt:

The total number of persons incarcerated in state and federal prisons in the U.S. has grown from 330,000 in 1980 to about 1.6 million today. Much of the increase in this population is directly due to the war on drugs and the severe punishment for persons convicted of drug trafficking. About 50% of the inmates in federal prisons and 20% of those in state prisons have been convicted of either selling or using drugs. The many minor drug traffickers and drug users who spend time in jail find fewer opportunities for legal employment after they get out of prison, and they develop better skills at criminal activities.

My friend Naomi’s mom owns an antique shop. I secretly dream of quitting everything and opening one myself. Anyway, Naomi was visiting her mom and picked up a couple of vintage Ebony magazines for me from another store adjacent to her mom’s. It’s great to have friends who indulge my obsessions… Anyway, I really liked the aesthetics of this cover. Beyond this though, it also represents an important historical moment as it clearly highlights the various gangs that black youth in Chicago belonged to in the late 1960s. Finally, it is a reminder that the more things change, the more they stay the same. It is fascinating to read some of the articles featured in the magazine. The topics include high youth unemployment, terrible public schooling, a lack of recreational opportunities for youth, poverty, gangs, the impact of racism and more. All of the articles could be written about the situation of many black youth today.

“A black woman’s body was never hers alone.”

This is a quote from Fannie Lou Hamer and I think that it speaks volumes. I am moved to write this morning because I have been feeling very triggered by the “discussion” about rape over the past couple of days. Once again, social media is abuzz with asinine comments made by another Republican Congressman about rape and pregnancy.

So I want to write about oppression and resistance today. More specifically, I’d like to focus on black women and girls’ resistance to sexual violence.

I have mentioned historian Danielle McGuire’s work on this blog a few times. She wrote an excellent book titled “At The Dark End Of The Street.” I hope that everyone who is interested in women’s history, black history, American history, the history of social movements, and criminal legal issues will read it.

McGuire (2010) writes that black women who were sexually assaulted often spoke out about their experiences and took action on their own behalf:

“Black women did not keep their stories secret. African-American women reclaimed their bodies and their humanity by testifying about their assaults. They launched the first public attacks on sexual violence as “systemic abuse of women” in response to slavery and the wave of lynchings in the post-Emancipation South.”

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