April 2000

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

No Power Like the Youth

This report, by Robin Templeton, is abridged from AlterNet.org, an online magazine and news service for the independent press. An earlier version appeared in The Nation.

The day after Super Tuesday, Bay Area teenagers demonstrated what it's going to take to get money out of politics. In the winter rain, 500 youth--outraged at the passage of a California ballot measure that will spend $5 billion in the next ten years prosecuting 14-year-olds as adults for as little as $400 in property damage--rallied in San Francisco's shopping district.

They marched to a site they'd targeted once before: a four-star Hilton Hotel, symbolic of W. Barron Hilton's $10,000 investment in passing Proposition 21. The most draconian juvenile justice law in the nation, Prop 21 passed by a margin of 62%. Renamed "The War on Youth Initiative" by its young opponents, Prop 21 has galvanized a new protest movement determined to get money out of prisons and into schools.

If incarceration is today's analogy to Jim Crow segregation, then California is the Deep South of the prison problem. The rowdy but disciplined protesters converted the chandeliered Hilton lobby into one of the first sit-ins by the hip-hop generation. San Francisco police arrested 150 who committed nonviolent civil disobedience in the name of their future. Not bad for a movement that, less than 24 hours before, had gotten trounced at the polls.

"The by-product of the passage of Prop 21 is that we now have a stronger youth movement," says Pecolia Manigo, a 17-year-old student organizer. "We'll keep rising up until we overthrow the system that funds prisons instead of our schools." Manigo's organization, the Third Eye Movement, is part of Critical Resistance Youth Force, a northern California coalition that has swelled to include 38 youth groups united to fight Prop 21. Youth organizers in southern California also mobilized thousands of young people and accomplished unprecedented walk-outs from middle and high schools. A statewide youth summit called "Upset the Set-Up" is scheduled for early May, aimed at launching a pro-active campaign against the prison industrial complex.[See Pieces, p.22]

Prop 21 prescribes year-long prison sentences for 14-year-old graffiti writers and felony charges for middle school students found guilty of any activity construed as "gang recruitment." The Proposition undermines the concept of rehabilitative juvenile justice in California and could conceivably do national damage, given the role of the state's initiative process in spawning tax revolts, "three-strikes" laws, anti-immigrant hysteria, and the dismantling of affirmative action.

The youth movement against Prop 21 struggled to "get out the vote" from an electorate that fears youth of color--and often buys into the demonization of them as "superpredators"--as well as from friends and family who think voting booths have all the relevance of rotary phones.

At the same time, they redefined what it means to "win," using Prop 21 as an opportunity to build long-haul organizing drives and sustainable coalitions. According to Van Jones of the New York and San Francisco-based Ella Baker Center for Human Rights: "Prop 21 was defeated in counties where the youth organized and protested. The youth know what they're doing. They won't stop until they break the back of the prison industrial complex."

That "back-breaking" strategy--which centers on marrying long-term movement-building with short-term electoral fighting--was pioneered in the Golden State by an organization called Californians for Justice. This approach naturally attracts young people: over 40% of the volunteers in CFJ's last campaign were under 20. CFJ's army of young recruits attempts to mobilize those labeled "occasional," even "unlikely" on voter lists. "We take on issues that affect low-income communities of color and screen the voter lists for who's impacted by these issues," explains CFJ Co-Director Abdi Soltani.

California's ballot initiative process, designed to circumvent the state legislature, has historically attacked constituencies marginalized from the electorate. CFJ's counter-strategy is to build political power from the grassroots. Young people are crucial to this plan, but have been disinclined to engage in a political process that has neglected and scapegoated them. Prop 21 transformed cynicism into potent outrage.

Over the past decade, 45 states have made it easier to try kids as adults (in some states, this means children as young as 12), but Prop 21--because of the sentencing power it grants prosecutors, the limitations it places on juvenile probation, the death penalty it creates for certain gang offenses, the manner in which it defines and criminalizes "gang" association, and the confidentiality it breaks of juvenile court records--is the most sweeping and punitive policy in the nation.

The 43-page initiative makes no funding provisions and probably will cost state social programs more than $300 million a year, according to the Califonia Legislative Analyst's Office. In 30 years, Prop 21 will require 22,000 new prison spaces at a cost of $1 billion. Though its proponents and the Columbine-fixated media report otherwise, there is no "juvenile crime wave." From 1990 to 1998, California's juvenile felony arrest rate dropped 30%; juvenile homicide arrests fell 61%. In both categories of crime, African American, Asian, and Latino youth showed far greater reductions than white youth.

CFJ's Emmanuelle Regis doesn't need statistics to state her case: "I take Prop 21 personally." A 19-year-old student in San Diego, Regis lost a family member to police violence and grew up in schools she describes as prisons. Like her Vietnam War protest predecessors, Regis has a vested interest in stopping the US war on crime.

People of color increased from 20 to 30% of California's electorate in the 1990s, but they vote 10% less frequently than the general electorate. CFJ sees a huge pool of potential voters and targeted 500-600 precincts in low-income communities of color in its "No on 21" campaign.

The racial divide in voter participation is linked to a deeper disparity. Two-thirds of Californians over 40 are white, but over 60% of those under 20 are youth of color. The "browning" of California is disproportionately young. This shift, combined with the fact that only 14% of voters have children in school, corresponds with a dismal disinvestment from public education. California is ranked 41st in the country in school spending.

Prop 21 scapegoated youth of color while ignoring the record of older white people. Since 1990 the violent felony arrest rate for white Californians over 30 has increased 20%. For every other racial group over 30, this rate decreased.

Given the public's misinfomation and its fear of "violent gang youth," the movement against Prop 21 had a significant PR problem. The media messages important to seekers of social justice were not necessarily the ones that would prove effective with the increasingly diverse, yet still largely white, middle class Californian electorate. For instance, the young campaigners' instincts were to focus on Prop 21's racist implications--it makes graffiti and gang recruitment felonies and tracks more youth of color into adult courts and prisons. The results of focus groups said this was incorrect and would not resonate with traditional voters; pre-election polls showed most voters supporting any alleged attempt to crack down on gangs and not particularly caring about disproportionate racial impact.

Nevertheless, media-savvy youth organizers reminded their elders in the civil rights and juvenile justice establishments that progressives never win by playing to the middle. Youth campaigners schooled themselves on the mistakes of past campaigns. Concessions that "yes, there is an immigration/crime problem, this just isn't the best way to resolve it" or insinuations that "yes, youth are predisposed to behave violently, but we just need to prevent it" not only fail to win the battles--they also end up costing the war.

Instead, youth organizers framed hard-hitting messages about the human and fiscal impact of Prop 21 and soundbited the reduction in youth crime. They leveraged new resources and support from the entertainment industry, labor, teachers, and gay and faith communities and kept their eyes on the prize of sustaining the grassroots movement.

For emergent California youth organizers, it was never about winning or losing, but always about building the movement. Prop 21 was an opportunity to develop political unity, train lifelong leaders, and build an unshakable foundation. Says youth organizer Ryan Pintado-Vertner: "We were determined to come out of this fight with something we could hold on to--and that's the movement. We got momentum. So we didn't lose."

To request information or offer support, contact Critical Resistance Youth Force at 510/444-0484; 1212 Broadway, Suite 1400, Oakland, CA 94612; www.YouthEC.org or Californians for Justice at 510/452-2728, 1611 Telegraph Avenue, Room 206, Oakland, CA 94612.

Review

Democratic Organizing for a Democratic Society, by Roni Krouzman, with a preface by Howad Zinn, 1999, 87 pages

I know the following scene will sound familiar to many of you reading Peacework: A few activists get together for a meal or for tea and before long, the conversation turns to griping about how the leadership of your beloved organization or campaign has become unbearably autocratic. As the heat turns up on your issue, the "participatory approach" you all held so dear seems to be withering away. Your passion for the issue is undiminished but you don't know if you can stand another meeting where "members" get bulldozed in the name of efficiency and effectiveness. It's the sorry secret of activists: we often become bullies in fighting for what we believe in.

Well, Roni Krouzman, an activist recently moved on from studies at Boston University, offers us some much needed guidance in his book, Democratic Organizing for a Democratic Society. Krouzman reminds us that in organizing, "the medium is the message" or, as we more regularly put it, "process is purpose." In the introduction, we are told: "This guide will help you discover how to hold on to your ideals and apply them to your organizing. Whether you direct a national nonprofit, are your union local's shop steward, or are just starting a group on campus, this guide offers you advice about how to be a democratic organizer--about how to organize democratically for a democratic society."

We already know that we should try to embody our ideals of respect and equality in our activism; Krouzman insists that there can be no other way if we are going to effect meaningful change. And then he offers some very concrete suggestions of how to go about it (my favorite section dealt with emergency decision-making). By and large, Democratic Organizing sets you in the right direction, although it is a little densely written to be used as a quick organizing reference. It serves rather as an inspiring and thought-provoking read for activists who want to reflect on their actions. Drawing mostly on campus organizing experiences, this book doesn't focus on the issues of class, gender, and ethnicity/race that are at the forefront of so many organizing initiatives, both in terms of issues and day-to-day organizing experience. Krouzman takes a more generalized approach, perhaps in the faith that if activists truly follow democratic principles, we will overcome our usual stumbling blocks.

In a day and age when professionals have risen to the helm of many community groups and other non-profits, this book is a welcome reminder that we aren't just trying to achieve our goals. We're trying to achieve them differently. If we believe that equality and participation in a democratic society are our rights, then we should organize that way!

It won't surprise you that this book cannot be found on Amazon.com or at Borders. To get a copy of Democratic Organizing, contact Roni Krouzman himself at: rkrouzman@hotmail.com

--Jill Hanley