1 00:00:00,140 --> 00:00:01,750 - I am a youth advocate. 2 00:00:01,750 --> 00:00:02,900 - I am a mentor. 3 00:00:02,900 --> 00:00:04,300 - I am an Oakland native. 4 00:00:04,300 --> 00:00:05,450 - I'm an attorney. 5 00:00:05,450 --> 00:00:07,570 - I am formerly incarcerated. 6 00:00:07,570 --> 00:00:10,820 - I am the father of two wonderful children. 7 00:00:10,820 --> 00:00:12,800 - I'm a policy analyst. 8 00:00:12,800 --> 00:00:15,823 - I am an example of redemption. 9 00:00:17,040 --> 00:00:17,930 - I'm hoping for change. 10 00:00:17,930 --> 00:00:20,683 I'm hoping that what I went through, 11 00:00:22,650 --> 00:00:24,789 this generation won't go through. 12 00:00:24,789 --> 00:00:27,090 (rhythmic drum music) 13 00:00:27,090 --> 00:00:29,250 - Our mission is to advance justice 14 00:00:29,250 --> 00:00:31,640 by protecting the rights of children and youth 15 00:00:31,640 --> 00:00:34,610 and by improving the systems that impact their lives. 16 00:00:34,610 --> 00:00:37,610 - I was involved in a system, the youth prison system, 17 00:00:37,610 --> 00:00:42,070 that at the time had 11,000 kids 18 00:00:42,070 --> 00:00:44,920 in a system designed to hold only 6,000 young people. 19 00:00:44,920 --> 00:00:48,370 But tremendous amounts of violence, abuse, and neglect 20 00:00:48,370 --> 00:00:51,029 at the hands of the state and the guards. 21 00:00:51,029 --> 00:00:54,540 It made me much worse having gone there 22 00:00:54,540 --> 00:00:55,860 than when I went in. 23 00:00:55,860 --> 00:00:58,260 - Being in that frame of mind where you think 24 00:00:58,260 --> 00:01:00,180 that you aren't worth anything, 25 00:01:00,180 --> 00:01:02,030 that you have no hope for the future, 26 00:01:02,940 --> 00:01:04,433 it's a dark place to be. 27 00:01:05,880 --> 00:01:08,280 I just didn't value myself or my life at all 28 00:01:08,280 --> 00:01:09,700 'cause I thought that, you know, 29 00:01:09,700 --> 00:01:12,210 I had been told over and over that I wasn't going anywhere. 30 00:01:12,210 --> 00:01:13,630 - A lot of kids these days, 31 00:01:13,630 --> 00:01:16,620 they don't feel loved, so they put up a front. 32 00:01:16,620 --> 00:01:18,270 So that's why they get in trouble a lot 33 00:01:18,270 --> 00:01:21,830 and they want people to think that they're all big and bad. 34 00:01:21,830 --> 00:01:23,860 But like once you really get to them, 35 00:01:23,860 --> 00:01:26,200 you know, they're still kids and they need love too. 36 00:01:26,200 --> 00:01:29,300 - There's essentially an abuse-to-prison pipeline 37 00:01:29,300 --> 00:01:32,480 where we're criminalizing foster youth, 38 00:01:32,480 --> 00:01:34,900 we're criminalizing girls who've experienced 39 00:01:34,900 --> 00:01:36,990 sexual abuse and physical abuse. 40 00:01:36,990 --> 00:01:38,910 And we need to disrupt that pipeline 41 00:01:38,910 --> 00:01:42,170 and do everything we can to actually help people 42 00:01:42,170 --> 00:01:46,160 instead of just continually pushing them away into prisons. 43 00:01:46,160 --> 00:01:47,260 - People with imaginations 44 00:01:47,260 --> 00:01:49,370 and ability to dream only goes so far. 45 00:01:49,370 --> 00:01:50,837 And so we often say, you know, 46 00:01:50,837 --> 00:01:54,600 "Well, we have to lock them up because nothing else works." 47 00:01:54,600 --> 00:01:57,510 Well, the truth is we haven't tried very many other things. 48 00:01:57,510 --> 00:02:00,370 And so unless we show and prove that these things can work, 49 00:02:00,370 --> 00:02:03,570 people won't really take them as viable alternatives. 50 00:02:03,570 --> 00:02:05,640 - The California Youth Justice Initiative 51 00:02:05,640 --> 00:02:08,360 is really at the center of all 52 00:02:08,360 --> 00:02:11,870 of the juvenile justice reforms taking place right now. 53 00:02:11,870 --> 00:02:13,130 - We are working on legislation. 54 00:02:13,130 --> 00:02:15,500 We're working on a communications campaign. 55 00:02:15,500 --> 00:02:18,500 We're working on research and civic engagement 56 00:02:18,500 --> 00:02:21,020 and community capacity building 57 00:02:21,020 --> 00:02:26,020 to essentially change conditions on the ground 58 00:02:26,480 --> 00:02:30,580 as well as policies coming from the capitol. 59 00:02:30,580 --> 00:02:33,420 And we never do that without the participation 60 00:02:33,420 --> 00:02:36,220 and leadership of directly impacted communities. 61 00:02:36,220 --> 00:02:38,400 - Through the work we do, policy work, 62 00:02:38,400 --> 00:02:40,820 we can impact thousands of kids at a time. 63 00:02:40,820 --> 00:02:42,770 Hundreds of thousands of youth at a time. 64 00:02:42,770 --> 00:02:45,500 - How healing it is to have been disempowered for so long 65 00:02:45,500 --> 00:02:47,830 and then to take your power back and to speak 66 00:02:47,830 --> 00:02:50,300 from your own experience about what matters to you. 67 00:02:50,300 --> 00:02:52,790 - When they know that I share those experiences 68 00:02:52,790 --> 00:02:54,120 of having an incarcerated parent, 69 00:02:54,120 --> 00:02:56,484 of being incarcerated myself, 70 00:02:56,484 --> 00:02:58,710 it allows 'em to let their guard down 71 00:02:58,710 --> 00:03:00,691 and it allows them to reach them. 72 00:03:00,691 --> 00:03:01,810 - My name's-- - So we bring young people 73 00:03:01,810 --> 00:03:04,730 up to the capitol, we give them space 74 00:03:04,730 --> 00:03:07,370 to tell their stories to legislators and to staffers, 75 00:03:07,370 --> 00:03:11,580 to testify at hearings, write letters to the governor. 76 00:03:11,580 --> 00:03:13,770 However they want to share their stories, 77 00:03:13,770 --> 00:03:15,250 we give them the space to do so. 78 00:03:15,250 --> 00:03:17,790 And we educate them about the policy process 79 00:03:17,790 --> 00:03:19,320 here in California. 80 00:03:19,320 --> 00:03:22,220 - We recognize that the policies 81 00:03:22,220 --> 00:03:24,270 that we're putting into place, 82 00:03:24,270 --> 00:03:26,210 the movements that we're trying to build, 83 00:03:26,210 --> 00:03:28,970 the campaigns that we are putting together, 84 00:03:28,970 --> 00:03:31,220 the people who are going to be most impacted 85 00:03:31,220 --> 00:03:32,270 are the people on the ground. 86 00:03:32,270 --> 00:03:33,670 It's gonna be the communities, 87 00:03:33,670 --> 00:03:36,167 it's gonna be the families, and it's gonna be the youth. 88 00:03:36,167 --> 00:03:38,950 - Our youth justice work is not just 89 00:03:38,950 --> 00:03:40,410 some of our most important work, 90 00:03:40,410 --> 00:03:44,450 it's a piece of the work that we've grown significantly 91 00:03:44,450 --> 00:03:47,770 over the past three years because of the momentum 92 00:03:47,770 --> 00:03:49,890 that we've generated here in California 93 00:03:49,890 --> 00:03:52,370 and the moment for change being right now. 94 00:03:52,370 --> 00:03:53,590 - When you think about where 95 00:03:53,590 --> 00:03:55,370 is some of most progressive change 96 00:03:55,370 --> 00:03:57,630 regarding juvenile justice happening, 97 00:03:57,630 --> 00:03:59,950 we need to look no further than the Bay Area. 98 00:03:59,950 --> 00:04:03,460 - Kids today are so much more engaged. 99 00:04:03,460 --> 00:04:05,930 They are so much more informed about the issues. 100 00:04:05,930 --> 00:04:07,580 Kids are so much more tolerant 101 00:04:07,580 --> 00:04:09,670 than older generations have been. 102 00:04:09,670 --> 00:04:12,609 Like I really think that kids, that youth 103 00:04:12,609 --> 00:04:17,608 are really ready to take the reins and fight for themselves 104 00:04:18,529 --> 00:04:20,760 in ways that we haven't seen before. 105 00:04:20,760 --> 00:04:23,500 - This movement inspires me because it's my people. 106 00:04:23,500 --> 00:04:25,580 It's people from the streets 107 00:04:25,580 --> 00:04:27,530 or from the jail cells, things like that. 108 00:04:27,530 --> 00:04:29,380 People who turn their pain and experience 109 00:04:29,380 --> 00:04:32,330 into inspiration, into education, into power. 110 00:04:32,330 --> 00:04:34,660 - [Frankie] Right now is the time to be really aggressive 111 00:04:34,660 --> 00:04:38,070 and aspirational about what we expect out of our government, 112 00:04:38,070 --> 00:04:40,530 out of our leaders, for our communities 113 00:04:40,530 --> 00:04:42,330 and for our children and our future. 114 00:04:50,970 --> 00:04:52,550 - [Man] We have to do more to acknowledge 115 00:04:52,550 --> 00:04:54,660 not only the harm of incarceration, 116 00:04:54,660 --> 00:04:56,670 but the promise that the communities possess 117 00:04:56,670 --> 00:04:58,420 in being able to deal with our young people 118 00:04:58,420 --> 00:05:00,810 in a much more responsible and healthy fashion. 119 00:05:00,810 --> 00:05:03,340 So that's what this conversation here is about. 120 00:05:03,340 --> 00:05:04,393 We're talking about.