Youth Organizing
Young Adults Striving for Success (YASS)
Young people have always been involved, in some form, in the work of JJPL. Beyond its engagement with hundreds of children over the last decade through legal advocacy, JJPL has partnered with incarcerated children to produce the publication Ya Heard Me?, a collection of their writing and poetry, and hosted numerous events throughout the years targeted at engaging youth in different campaigns. In the last three years, however, JJPL has made the commitment to institute a permanent youth engagement project.
Launched in the fall of 2008, the twenty five core members of Young Adults Striving for Success (YASS) meet weekly to develop their leadership skills, to increase their knowledge on civic issues, and to participate in campaigns to improve their community, such as increased funding for recreation and improved security practices in the New Orleans schools. Their voices in New Orleans are desperately needed to ensure real opportunities for youth, and particularly low-income youth of color. YASS works to combat the negative media stereotypes of youth in the city, and instead to project positive examples of young people working to make real change.
The mission of YASS is to provide an open and positive space that allows youth to reach their full potential. The three goals of the group are to 1) foster leadership skills 2) to bring awareness to the issues that face youth in New Orleans and 3) to work as a collective internally and externally to bring about positive social change in our community.
In the past three years, YASS has:
- Organized a youth- led event called the Central City Youth Summit partnering with State Senator Cheryl Gray Evans and State Representative Walt Leger to engage in a dialogue on the issues impacting youth and public policy solutions. The event was attended by over 150 community members, generated positive media coverage of youth in New Orleans, and resulted in the publication of a set of policy recommendations generated by the summit;
- Wrote and recorded a song, as both an outreach tool to increase membership in the organization and to spread a positive message to their peers on how to achieve success in life, outside of the streets;
- Organized a Youth Summit attended by over 250 young people from all over the Gulf Coast, including Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, to learn how to make change in their community. A follow up to the first summit, this conference included a plenary from community leaders, local hip-hop performers, and workshops for the youth on issues including the History of the Juvenile Justice System, an Intergenerational Dialogue, and how youth can get involved in making change;
- Launched a campaign to improve security in the New Orleans public schools, with recommendations for a model policy on how to improve relationships between students and school resource officers to foster a more positive learning environment in the schools; and
- Partnered with four other youth organizations in the city of New Orleans to form Power of a Million Minds (POMM), a city-wide collaborative for youth to demonstrate greater leadership in the future of New Orleans.
Power of a Million Minds (POMM)
YASS has partnered with four other youth organizations with comparable missions, to form the New Orleans Youth Organizing Collaborative, or Power of a Million Minds (POMM). Founded three years ago, POMM is a city-wide coalition of youth organizations who work collectively to amplify the power and voices of youth in New Orleans, as well as to bridge divisions of race, ethnicity, class and neighborhood. While JJPL headquarters the coalition, it is an equal partner with the other four organizations, whose members include: Fyre Youth Squad (FYS), Vietnamese American Young Leaders Association (VAYLA), Kids Rethink New Orleans Schools (Rethink), and LatiNOLA Youth Leadership Council (LYLC).
In 2011, the New Orleans youth organizing collaborative, POMM, continues to expand the membership of our collaboration, both through our respective organizations and through our engagement with other community partners over time, to develop the structure of POMM, and to amplify the impact that we have on policy change in New Orleans as well as youth leadership in the city overall. POMM is expanding the number of youth participating in collaborative events and meetings, increasing our formal partnerships with other organizations and coalitions in the city, and is also developing a POMM platform, with a pro-youth agenda inclusive of the policy recommendations that each of our organizations is focused on for the city of New Orleans as a whole, as well as our collective goals for educational equity.
Using this platform as a tool, we are collaborating on several campaign focused events, highlighting different components of the POMM platform and with leadership provided by alternating members, as well as to host city-wide youth events, including a summit bringing together youth from across New Orleans to participate in civic engagement and public actions, advancing the POMM platform overall.
For more information please contact Miguel Nunez
BreakOUT!
Recognizing the importance of also working directly with LGBTQ youth who were formerly-incarcerated or otherwise directly impacted by the juvenile justice system, the need to hone in on a smaller geographical location, and the need to expand the lens to take a critical look at other ways LGBTQ youth are criminalized in New Orleans, including the adult criminal justice system and discriminatory policing, JJPL launched BreakOUT! in 2010. BreakOUT! builds the power of LGBTQ youth most impacted by the criminal justice system to affect concrete policy change regarding the criminalization of LGBTQ youth in New Orleans, LA.
BreakOUT!’s major activity currently is our campaign to fight harmful discriminatory policing practices against LGBTQ youth in New Orleans. The New Orleans PoliceDepartment (NOPD) was recently named the most corrupt police department in the country, as evidenced by the recent investigative report released by the Department of Justice. Specifically, BreakOUT! would like to see a LGBTQ policy within the NOPD, LGBTQ training for the NOPD, and an Advisory Board to the NOPD made up of LGBTQ youth who are directly impacted by police targeting and profiling.
In addition to this ongoing campaign work, BreakOUT! is concurrently developing the leadership of LGBTQ youth, focusing on our core BreakOUT! members, through our ongoing “Building Our Power” and “Building Our Potential” series. The workshops occur every Monday and alternate between campaign meetings and political education and workshops of the members’ choosing. So far, BreakOUT! youth have planned “Hittin’ the Streets: Tips on Finding a Job,” a self-defense workshop, and a harm reduction for sex workers and street youth workshop. BreakOUT! has also hosted two “Know Your Rights with the NOPD” trainings with the Independent Police Monitor. BreakOUT! seeks to 1) develop formerly-incarcerated or “at-risk” LGBTQ youth voices in New Orleans 2) inject these voices into every aspect of criminal and juvenile justice reform in New Orleans 3) help bridge social justice groups in New Orleans working toward similar goals and 4) challenge the current discourse in Louisiana on what defines an “LGBTQ issue” or a “criminal justice issue,” with the understanding that these are not separate and distinct from one another. Our current campaign to fight discriminatory policing in New Orleans has three main goals: 1) pass a policy within the NOPD on the treatment of LGBTQ people 2) get ongoing training in the NOPD on LGBTQ/ youth issues and 3) develop an Advisory Board to the NOPD made up of LGBTQ youth who are directly impacted by the NOPD’s harmful policing practices.
However, BreakOUT! plans to target Orleans Parish Prison (OPP), as alarming numbers of LGBTQ young people and adults are incarcerated there, in part due to the same discriminatory policing practices we are currently fighting against. Once incarcerated, they face horrendous conditions and abuse, both from guards and others incarcerated. Ultimately, BreakOUT! will be working toward the implementation of a LGBTQ policy in OPP that includes proper housing of transgender people and access to medical care, including hormones.
Thanks in large part to the Open Society Institute, individual donors, and community support, BreakOUT! now serves as a youth organizing and leadership development project with its own programming and space specifically for LGBTQ youth in New Orleans.
Read more about BreakOUT! and the BreakOUT! youth.
For more information please contact Wes Ware.