Before I was old enough to get my driver's license or cast my first vote, I came face-to-face with one of the biggest issues facing young Black and Brown people today: the school-to-prison-and-deportation pipeline.
I was eight years old the first time police arrested me in school. I was in my classroom when I got called out to the administrator’s office. I was told I was in trouble for an altercation, a police officer came in, handcuffed and detained me, and questioned me until my mom came to pick me up. I was expelled from school.
When I was 12 I was arrested again and this time I was taken straight to juvenile detention. The whole school saw me as I was taken away. I was confused. I was scared. I was alone. For the three months I was in detention, I wasn’t me. I was a barcode. Cell B 1 Martinez.
That incident set me on a path that changed my life forever. When you put little kids behind brick walls for so long without helping them it’s a guarantee they are going to turn to whatever outlet comes their way. For me, that was drugs. For the next few years I was in and out of the juvenile system, moving between detention, an alternative school, and rehabilitation facilities, while also dealing with homelessness. I know firsthand how the internalized trauma from those experiences can follow you long after people stop talking about it.
The sad reality is that my story isn’t unique. There are too many young people, especially low-income Black and Brown young people — including many I’ve met through the youth justice movement — who are unfairly punished and inadequately supported as they are pushed out of a public school system that should be a safe haven where we can grow and learn. In my school district in Salem, Oregon, Latinx students with disabilities are about 38% of the student population, but they are more than 62% of the students with disabilities who get expelled. But the problem is much bigger than any single school.
A 2018 report by the Government Accountability Office found that Black students are overrepresented in every disciplinary category studied, including arrests, referrals to law enforcement, suspensions, and expulsions. Black boys are suspended three times more often than their white peers and Black girls are suspended six times as often, according to a 2015 report from the African American Policy Forum and the Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies. In 2012, Department of Education data from 2009-2010 revealed that Black and Latinx students account for 70% of students involved in in-school arrests or referred to law enforcement. Data for the 2015-2016 school year from the DOE’s Civil Rights Data Collection found that male students who were Black, Latinx, or Indigenous faced harsher discipline than their white counterparts.
Fortunately for me, I’ve found advocates through youth-led organizations like Latinos Unidos Siempre (LUS), that have helped me see that I’m not broken, the system is. And it’s the system that needs to be fixed.
Over the last couple of months, I’ve seen presidential candidates roll out their plans for public education and criminal justice reform. From where I stand, what’s noticeably missing is their unequivocal commitment to tackling the school-to-prison-and-deportation pipeline directly.
We know this election is important. We have a stake in shaping that future. We won’t let our voices be silenced or ignored.
That is why hundreds of youth leaders like me across this country are calling on presidential candidates to sign on to the Youth Mandate for Presidential Candidates: Permanently Dismantle the School-to-Prison-and-Deportation Pipeline. It outlines the actions needed to create inclusive and supportive schools. The Youth Mandate calls for schools that are free from police and criminalizing infrastructures and calls on the federal government to restore and strengthen the civil rights of all students and end the private takeover of the school system.
It includes demands that should be obvious — things like stopping the provision of military equipment to school districts (yes, this actually happens) or ending the use of strip searches, corporal punishments, and confinement to solitary rooms (yes, all these happen too). It demands funding for things that schools should or are already required to do but are often too underfunded to implement, like providing equal educational opportunities for students with disabilities and low-income students and funding mental health care services for all students.
The mandate demands that the Office of Civil Rights within the U.S. Department of Education is properly funded and staffed in order to make sure schools don’t violate our civil rights by doing things like systematically kicking out Black and Latinx students or referring them to police, or failing to ensure that trans students can use the right bathroom and be safe in schools. It also builds on a growing grassroots movement calling for the repeal and replacement of the 1994 Crime Bill, which created the Department of Justice’s Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program that ultimately gave way to the largest sustained source of direct federal dollars to put police in schools.
The Youth Mandate recognizes that in order to protect undocumented and immigrant students, we must abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and, in the meantime, prohibit schools from participating in deportation.
At its core, the Youth Mandate is centered on the belief that students’ fundamental rights must be honored and protected. We have the right to a quality education. And we have the right to that education free from fear of criminalization and persecution.
Spearheaded by the youth-led organizations in the Center for Popular Democracy Action and Alliance for Educational Justice networks, the vision has already been endorsed by over 130 youth organizations and our allies, including groups who have already claimed major victories toward dismantling the pipeline in their communities.
This summer, thanks to years of organizing by young people from the Urban Youth Collaborative, New York City made significant changes to its school climate policies including limiting the use of arrests and summonses, reducing the number of days schools can suspend students for most offenses from 180 to 20 days, and adding restorative justice training to all middle and high schools.
And last month in Milwaukee, months of pressure and advocacy by Leaders Igniting Transformation helped stop a $217,600 contract that would have purchased 16 replacement airport-style X-ray machines to put in Milwaukee public high schools.
These are powerful moves in the right direction. But in order to permanently dismantle the pipeline and ensure young people have what we need to thrive, we need the next president of the United States to throw his or her weight behind it. And that starts with adopting the full Youth Mandate.
This systematic criminalization of youth of color in schools is one of the most blatant and egregious examples of structural racism and violence in this country. As young people of color, we're looking for acknowledgment from candidates that they understand how we experience our systems and institutions differently because of our racial identity and because of the foundational racism of this country. This means that candidates need to proactively talk about institutional racism in all its forms. But beyond talk, we need action. We need policies that will protect our freedoms.
Instead of having the resources we need to deal with the stresses of life — including unstable housing situations and mental health needs — we’re punished for the failures of a system we’re just trying to navigate at a formative time in our lives. We’re labeled as “difficult” or “delinquents” instead of being seen as the artists, survivors, leaders, and students that we are. We’re written off and left behind, never given the opportunity or benefit of the doubt to succeed.
I’ve seen the power that young people have when they come together and fight for immigrant justice, against police violence, for climate justice, and for the freedom to thrive in schools that don’t criminalize us. This is our life and we are unapologetically demanding that all politicians, including the presidential candidates, act to protect it.
Want more from Teen Vogue? Check this out: How the School-to-Prison Pipeline Works
