WEBVTT 00:00:00.140 --> 00:00:01.750 - I am a youth advocate. 00:00:01.750 --> 00:00:02.900 - I am a mentor. 00:00:02.900 --> 00:00:04.300 - I am an Oakland native. 00:00:04.300 --> 00:00:05.450 - I'm an attorney. 00:00:05.450 --> 00:00:07.570 - I am formerly incarcerated. 00:00:07.570 --> 00:00:10.820 - I am the father of two wonderful children. 00:00:10.820 --> 00:00:12.800 - I'm a policy analyst. 00:00:12.800 --> 00:00:15.823 - I am an example of redemption. 00:00:17.040 --> 00:00:17.930 - I'm hoping for change. 00:00:17.930 --> 00:00:20.683 I'm hoping that what I went through, 00:00:22.650 --> 00:00:24.789 this generation won't go through. 00:00:24.789 --> 00:00:27.090 (rhythmic drum music) 00:00:27.090 --> 00:00:29.250 - Our mission is to advance justice 00:00:29.250 --> 00:00:31.640 by protecting the rights of children and youth 00:00:31.640 --> 00:00:34.610 and by improving the systems that impact their lives. 00:00:34.610 --> 00:00:37.610 - I was involved in a system, the youth prison system, 00:00:37.610 --> 00:00:42.070 that at the time had 11,000 kids 00:00:42.070 --> 00:00:44.920 in a system designed to hold only 6,000 young people. 00:00:44.920 --> 00:00:48.370 But tremendous amounts of violence, abuse, and neglect 00:00:48.370 --> 00:00:51.029 at the hands of the state and the guards. 00:00:51.029 --> 00:00:54.540 It made me much worse having gone there 00:00:54.540 --> 00:00:55.860 than when I went in. 00:00:55.860 --> 00:00:58.260 - Being in that frame of mind where you think 00:00:58.260 --> 00:01:00.180 that you aren't worth anything, 00:01:00.180 --> 00:01:02.030 that you have no hope for the future, 00:01:02.940 --> 00:01:04.433 it's a dark place to be. 00:01:05.880 --> 00:01:08.280 I just didn't value myself or my life at all 00:01:08.280 --> 00:01:09.700 'cause I thought that, you know, 00:01:09.700 --> 00:01:12.210 I had been told over and over that I wasn't going anywhere. 00:01:12.210 --> 00:01:13.630 - A lot of kids these days, 00:01:13.630 --> 00:01:16.620 they don't feel loved, so they put up a front. 00:01:16.620 --> 00:01:18.270 So that's why they get in trouble a lot 00:01:18.270 --> 00:01:21.830 and they want people to think that they're all big and bad. 00:01:21.830 --> 00:01:23.860 But like once you really get to them, 00:01:23.860 --> 00:01:26.200 you know, they're still kids and they need love too. 00:01:26.200 --> 00:01:29.300 - There's essentially an abuse-to-prison pipeline 00:01:29.300 --> 00:01:32.480 where we're criminalizing foster youth, 00:01:32.480 --> 00:01:34.900 we're criminalizing girls who've experienced 00:01:34.900 --> 00:01:36.990 sexual abuse and physical abuse. 00:01:36.990 --> 00:01:38.910 And we need to disrupt that pipeline 00:01:38.910 --> 00:01:42.170 and do everything we can to actually help people 00:01:42.170 --> 00:01:46.160 instead of just continually pushing them away into prisons. 00:01:46.160 --> 00:01:47.260 - People with imaginations 00:01:47.260 --> 00:01:49.370 and ability to dream only goes so far. 00:01:49.370 --> 00:01:50.837 And so we often say, you know, 00:01:50.837 --> 00:01:54.600 "Well, we have to lock them up because nothing else works." 00:01:54.600 --> 00:01:57.510 Well, the truth is we haven't tried very many other things. 00:01:57.510 --> 00:02:00.370 And so unless we show and prove that these things can work, 00:02:00.370 --> 00:02:03.570 people won't really take them as viable alternatives. 00:02:03.570 --> 00:02:05.640 - The California Youth Justice Initiative 00:02:05.640 --> 00:02:08.360 is really at the center of all 00:02:08.360 --> 00:02:11.870 of the juvenile justice reforms taking place right now. 00:02:11.870 --> 00:02:13.130 - We are working on legislation. 00:02:13.130 --> 00:02:15.500 We're working on a communications campaign. 00:02:15.500 --> 00:02:18.500 We're working on research and civic engagement 00:02:18.500 --> 00:02:21.020 and community capacity building 00:02:21.020 --> 00:02:26.020 to essentially change conditions on the ground 00:02:26.480 --> 00:02:30.580 as well as policies coming from the capitol. 00:02:30.580 --> 00:02:33.420 And we never do that without the participation 00:02:33.420 --> 00:02:36.220 and leadership of directly impacted communities. 00:02:36.220 --> 00:02:38.400 - Through the work we do, policy work, 00:02:38.400 --> 00:02:40.820 we can impact thousands of kids at a time. 00:02:40.820 --> 00:02:42.770 Hundreds of thousands of youth at a time. 00:02:42.770 --> 00:02:45.500 - How healing it is to have been disempowered for so long 00:02:45.500 --> 00:02:47.830 and then to take your power back and to speak 00:02:47.830 --> 00:02:50.300 from your own experience about what matters to you. 00:02:50.300 --> 00:02:52.790 - When they know that I share those experiences 00:02:52.790 --> 00:02:54.120 of having an incarcerated parent, 00:02:54.120 --> 00:02:56.484 of being incarcerated myself, 00:02:56.484 --> 00:02:58.710 it allows 'em to let their guard down 00:02:58.710 --> 00:03:00.691 and it allows them to reach them. 00:03:00.691 --> 00:03:01.810 - My name's-- - So we bring young people 00:03:01.810 --> 00:03:04.730 up to the capitol, we give them space 00:03:04.730 --> 00:03:07.370 to tell their stories to legislators and to staffers, 00:03:07.370 --> 00:03:11.580 to testify at hearings, write letters to the governor. 00:03:11.580 --> 00:03:13.770 However they want to share their stories, 00:03:13.770 --> 00:03:15.250 we give them the space to do so. 00:03:15.250 --> 00:03:17.790 And we educate them about the policy process 00:03:17.790 --> 00:03:19.320 here in California. 00:03:19.320 --> 00:03:22.220 - We recognize that the policies 00:03:22.220 --> 00:03:24.270 that we're putting into place, 00:03:24.270 --> 00:03:26.210 the movements that we're trying to build, 00:03:26.210 --> 00:03:28.970 the campaigns that we are putting together, 00:03:28.970 --> 00:03:31.220 the people who are going to be most impacted 00:03:31.220 --> 00:03:32.270 are the people on the ground. 00:03:32.270 --> 00:03:33.670 It's gonna be the communities, 00:03:33.670 --> 00:03:36.167 it's gonna be the families, and it's gonna be the youth. 00:03:36.167 --> 00:03:38.950 - Our youth justice work is not just 00:03:38.950 --> 00:03:40.410 some of our most important work, 00:03:40.410 --> 00:03:44.450 it's a piece of the work that we've grown significantly 00:03:44.450 --> 00:03:47.770 over the past three years because of the momentum 00:03:47.770 --> 00:03:49.890 that we've generated here in California 00:03:49.890 --> 00:03:52.370 and the moment for change being right now. 00:03:52.370 --> 00:03:53.590 - When you think about where 00:03:53.590 --> 00:03:55.370 is some of most progressive change 00:03:55.370 --> 00:03:57.630 regarding juvenile justice happening, 00:03:57.630 --> 00:03:59.950 we need to look no further than the Bay Area. 00:03:59.950 --> 00:04:03.460 - Kids today are so much more engaged. 00:04:03.460 --> 00:04:05.930 They are so much more informed about the issues. 00:04:05.930 --> 00:04:07.580 Kids are so much more tolerant 00:04:07.580 --> 00:04:09.670 than older generations have been. 00:04:09.670 --> 00:04:12.609 Like I really think that kids, that youth 00:04:12.609 --> 00:04:17.608 are really ready to take the reins and fight for themselves 00:04:18.529 --> 00:04:20.760 in ways that we haven't seen before. 00:04:20.760 --> 00:04:23.500 - This movement inspires me because it's my people. 00:04:23.500 --> 00:04:25.580 It's people from the streets 00:04:25.580 --> 00:04:27.530 or from the jail cells, things like that. 00:04:27.530 --> 00:04:29.380 People who turn their pain and experience 00:04:29.380 --> 00:04:32.330 into inspiration, into education, into power. 00:04:32.330 --> 00:04:34.660 - [Frankie] Right now is the time to be really aggressive 00:04:34.660 --> 00:04:38.070 and aspirational about what we expect out of our government, 00:04:38.070 --> 00:04:40.530 out of our leaders, for our communities 00:04:40.530 --> 00:04:42.330 and for our children and our future. 00:04:50.970 --> 00:04:52.550 - [Man] We have to do more to acknowledge 00:04:52.550 --> 00:04:54.660 not only the harm of incarceration, 00:04:54.660 --> 00:04:56.670 but the promise that the communities possess 00:04:56.670 --> 00:04:58.420 in being able to deal with our young people 00:04:58.420 --> 00:05:00.810 in a much more responsible and healthy fashion. 00:05:00.810 --> 00:05:03.340 So that's what this conversation here is about. 00:05:03.340 --> 00:05:04.393 We're talking about.