Youth Development Is Security

During a class discussion on The Freedom Writers with my students at the Juvenile Detention Home School one afternoon, I asked my students why they thought kids joined gangs. Time and time again, from students who had not met one another, the same answer came.

Family.

Students shared in class debate, and in the privacy of their journals, that at the most basic level, gangs are a replacement for family.

Identity needs, such as esteem and relationship, are not negotiable, as we know from John Burton. If our students cannot get their need to belong, to feel safe, and be loved met by family or another group, the appeal of a gang (or similar group) can be overwhelming. Area gang task forces report that MS-13 and other gangs are recruiting not just at middle schools any longer, but increasingly at elementary schools.

Nor is this dynamic limited to the United States. States which have nearly failed have struggled with civil wars and ethnic violence. Sierra Leone is one example; combatants in this war were as young as eight! Ismael Beah, in one particularly harrowing scene from his memoir A Long Way Gone, describes two of his fellow soldiers who had to drag their AK-47s because the weapons were bigger than they were! We can see the same dynamic in the history of Liberia.

As Nick Kristof wrote in a fantastic op-ed today, fundamentalist madrassas are too often the only game in town for young people (let’s say 10-24) to imagine for themselves a meaningful future. Writes Kristof, “I can’t tell you how frustrating it is on visits to rural Pakistan to see fundamentalist Wahabi-funded madrassas as the only game in town. They offer free meals, and the best students are given further scholarships to study abroad at fundamentalist institutions so that they come back as respected ‘scholars.’ We don’t even compete. Medieval misogynist fundamentalists display greater faith in the power of education than Americans do.”

Conflict prevention necessitates that basic human needs are met. This requires the coordination of a number of practitioners who perhaps do not immediately view themselves as partners: those responsible for security and those responsible for education. As many students remind me daily, some feel impelled to join a gang or otherwise engage in violence because they feel they’re not safe otherwise. One young man from Washington, DC, shared his story with me. He told his father one night that he did not feel safe walking to school. His father told him to “man up”, so the boy bought a gun. He was arrested and served his time; months after his release, he shot and killed another young person. My latest understanding is that he will be tried as an adult. Had this young man’s security needs been met, this conflict could almost certainly have been avoided.

This student’s story, Ismael Beah’s and the students of whom Kristof writes, as well as the countless students who have come through my “juvie hall” classroom with tattoos from MS-13 or the Bloods, speak to an urgent need for peace education in every classroom globally. This can’t happen until we act on the clear truth that youth development is security.

We Just Met a Girl Named Maria

With support from my principal, other staff and community members who want to see better futures for local kids, the students of Room 5C yesterday received a visit from one Ms. Maria Reyes, Freedom Writer. If you have seen the movie, she's the one the character of Eva was based on. Jumped into a Latino gang before she was even 10, Maria became "third generation", meaning both her father and grandfather were in the same gang, believing it was what was necessary to protect and provide for their families. As she puts it, she was raised "a warrior". Otherwise, there might not be heat or food in the house. (Folks like David Brooks, who seem to think poverty in America means not being able to afford the newest Air Jordans, might do well to take note.)

To prepare for her visit, we spent the day prior making a welcome banner and generating a list of questions the kids wanted to ask her. Most of them wanted to know how she left the gang (after all, it's not like they just let you walk away) and how she found the courage to tell the truth on the witness stand and admit it was her friend and fellow gang member who had shot a bystander one night in a convenience store, not the rival gang kid who had actually been charged with the murder. That was the beginning of the end of her gang association, and ever since, she's reached out to kids who have been struggling with similar issues. To answer their question, she said that "when you know better, you choose better." She related the courage she found on the witness stand to risk her life by telling the truth to the power of education, specifically to the power of words and writing to help you find your own voice. Once education had helped her find her own voice, she said, it wasn't so hard to do "the right thing just because it was the right thing to do". (I loved that Maria was quoting Miep Gies here, the woman who risked her life to shelter Anne Frank and her family during the Holocaust.) My students had all written her letters asking her to comee, and she made a point of telling the kids that it was those letters that convinced her to make time for us. An audience for a young writer can hardly get more real!

Maria is warm and passionate in person, and she directly challenged my kids to not blame others for the choices they've made. That, I think, is the beginning of freedom. My favorite moment was when one of my students responded to Maria by saying that was being a "true warrior". If there is such a thing as "assessing" peace education, that's what it looks like. She'd truly internalized what Maria was trying to say.