Glen Upshaw

Glen Upshaw is a native Oaklander. He was doing violence interruption work before there was a name for it, as a street outreach worker at Oakland California Youth Outreach, where he discovered an ability to talk to youth on the street, to listen, and to defuse tense situations. Now he is the leader of Youth ALIVE!’s Violence Interruption team. He says he looks for two primary things in a Violence Interrupter: compassion and a gift for problem solving. Glen has lost friends and close family members to the gun, and to the life of the street, but says he was fortunate to realize, before he was dead or in jail for life, that he needed to get out. He says his memories and experiences of the street motivate him every day to fight for Oakland’s young people. It’s hard, important work, but the reward comes in seeing lives change for the better.