Upsetting The Set-UP!!

by Alexandra Cuff/PNN Community Journalist

Every time I step into a high school I am brushed with the nostalgia which loosens a vague emotional response. I think of silence and the sound of my feet on hard floors and that generic school smell which all schools seem to house. I was met with a different feeling when I rushed into McClymonds High School in West Oakland for the annual Upset the Setup conference. Rather than a sense of school pride and restlessness for the close of the day, I was met with a bustling of both high school students, organizers and other comrades that were there to teach and to learn about issues that just aren’t included in the standard high school curriculum.

After Joe and I dropped off the box of magazines and flyers with Tiny and Mari who were womaning the POOR Magazine table, I wandered into the auditorium where folks were gathered for the opening session of the conference. Following Raymundo, a talented youth rapper whose act I caught the tail of, Luis from United Playaz, climbed on stage wearing a "Who’s got your back?" tee shirt.

"The schools are set up. This whole thing is a set up" spoke Luis with a conviction that called us to look up and wait for more. He went on, "We’re losing the war. We’re dying. My father got murdered, my brothers are lifeless. If you don’t represent the real shit you are part of the set up. We’re losing the war! If you don’t believe that, go to prison. It’s an industry. Our schools are 45th in the country, our prisons are 1st. I’m not above being square, this is about survival."

The seeds for Upset the Setup, now in its 4th year, were sown in September 1998 at the Critical Resistance: Beyond the Prison Industrial Complex conference. During the youth strategy sessions over 250 young folk got together to discuss what type of movement would be possible to improve the lives and chances of young people. It was agreed upon that in a country with a growing prison industry, what youth needed was not more incarceration but more support in the form of education, community programs, and decent employment. Now the Youth Force Coalition (YFC) is comprised of over 20 youth organizations which are building youth leadership and mobilizing young people to create a collective strategy for social change.

While primarily focusing on the prison industrial complex, the YFC and the Upset the Setup conference also address the issues that are inter-related including: irrelevant education, racial profiling, lack of living wage jobs, police brutality, environmental injustice, inadequate healthcare and homelessness. When I checked out the agenda for the conference, I was overwhelmed. There were so many cool workshops to choose from. To name a few: Know Justice – How to advocate for yourself in the Juvenile Justice System; Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade, Not In Our Name, The Beat Within, Poor Magazine, and the  Prison Activist Resource Center.

The second workshop I attended was called "Schools Not Jails - Education Is A Human Right" It was facilitated by four members of YOC (Youth from Youth Organizing Communities). Again we began by discussing what is wrong with high schools today and again I was impressed by the insight of the youth at the conference.  My response to the question of what problems there were in my high school (if asked at the time) would have been that I had to take 3 years of math or that winter break wasnít long enough. The list that compiled Saturday afternoon looked more like this: negative environment in schools, no critical thinking on studentís part in regards to the mediaís effect on youth or the peer pressure around gang violence, teachers and administrative staff having low expectations for some students, no ethnic studies, putting non-native English speakers into ESL and special ed classes, more police in school than counselors, books from 1973.

One woman who had gone to high school in Oakland talked about assumptions that were made about students based on their dress or race. Because of the presumption that all Latinas/Latinos were gang members, she wasnít permitted to wear red or blue belts to school (while other races could). She was also pulled aside freshman year in high school to have her tattoos photographed ñ she was 14 years old! A current high school student told us that a teacher of hers has said repeatedly, ìEven if you learn nothing, I still get paid.î Most of the students agreed that it wasnít chiefly a problem with the teachers but with the Setup - young people just aren't a priority in our country.

We then talked about the correlation between the defective education system and the high disappearance rate among inner city schools in California. Out of a class of 900 in a high school near LA, only 600 graduated and only 43 were eligible for University of California system schools. There is a 40-60% disappearance rate for California inner city schools. We didnít use the much used term "drop out rate" because it is misleading in that it doesn't acknowledge the youth that are shouldered out of the race.

What happens to the youth that are pushed out of school? Some get low wage jobs, some go to jail. Then there is the military. What we canít find in our hoods, the military offers: job training, $75,000 for college and believe it or not, help with papers for non-citizens. When we look at the lack of living wage work and the inadequate funding for education or human resources in general compared to the monstrous amount of tax money spent on the military, the rising incarceration rate begins to look less like an enigma. I was never very good at fathoming the worth of numbers in the billions so I was blown away with this fact: For each $1 of income tax 50 cents is spent on the military and 3 cents goes to schools. There are over 2 million people incarcerated in the United States. There are over 2 million people incarcerated in all of Europe, over 50 countries.

How do we challenge these facts and statistics and the state of the system affecting youth today? Towards the end of the "What's Going Down In Our Schools?" workshop, the youth present contributed ideas of their own which included students taking action to speak up about their needs, having counselors who know whatís up, recognition of students with different learning styles by administrators and teachers, and finally youth educating one another. I think that list is just a hint of what was happening on Saturday at McClymonds High School. This conference is part of a growing movement that is providing a space for youth to organize, to discuss issues negatively affecting the world, and the need for education that will inspire respect and knowledge of different histories and cultures.

Rocio, who has organized the conference for the past 3 years, got involved with youth advocating when she was 11 years old through friends who started an after school program. They later started UNITE, a youth component of BOSS (Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency), with which Rocio was involved for 3 years and then became the program manager.  From there she became involved with YWUFO (Young Women United for Oakland) which was part of the Youth Force Coalition and was later recruited to YFC. "It's kind of ironic that weíre educating them on what they really should be educated about in school, but being able to get into the schools has helped us. There are a lot of teachers that aren't involved with anything but that have good politics so we started to pull them towards our side to help out with the conference as well as knowing about other schools that are progressive."

Under 5 feet tall, Rocio stood glowing, herself an example of the power, intelligence and self-respect that was demonstrated by all the youth at the conference. While we were driving back over the bridge I was thinking about what Luis was saying during the opening session: "We are losing the war."  I was in the car with Mari, a Youth in the Media - Poor Magazine community member. Once again in the presence of a beautiful, strong, young woman, I couldnít help to think we must be winning.