The report we release today, Listening to Our Youth: From Parkland to Oakland, lists results from all of our programs. It includes two very frank and very honest stories from two of the young people we work with, stories that perfectly express the resilience and hope that sustain them against the terrible barriers of violence and inequality they face every day.
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There’s more than one way to change the world. The East Oakland students who started our Teens on Target youth leadership program back in 1989 sought to create a safer community through two approaches: education and advocacy. Today, TNT youth leaders continue to influence the policymakers and community leaders on issues like gun violence and police-community relations. Youth ALIVE! has an advocacy arm that works to design and pass legislation to increase safety and equality an d to promote healing. We also work with our partners in the National Network of Hospital-based Violence Intervention Programs to fight for justice and safety. This month, Governor Brown si
These are electric times for the young violence prevention activists like those in our Teens on Target (TNT) leadership program. Since the tragedy at Parkland, and now our latest sorrow in Texas, there is a new national receptiveness to the voices of youth affected by violence. There’s a new eagerness to listen. TNT, housed at East Oakland high schools Castlemont and Fremont, both of which are located at the nexus of Oakland’s decades-long struggle with violence, is the very embodiment of what our community and nation are looking for: resilient, energetic young people of color, informed by hard experience, whose innate abilities to create change are being nurtured and facilitated. Recently, Youth ALIVE!’s talented board member Caitlin Lang spent time capturing some terrific images of our 2018 youth leaders. See some of Caitlin’s wonderful images here. And then join TNT youth leaders from East Oakland, Mayor Libby Schaff, State Senator Nancy Skinner, Youth ALIVE! staff and many other friends and supporters of our work on Thursday, June 21, at our Celebration Dinner & Silent Auction at Blind Tiger Restaurant in Uptown Oakland. We’ll be honoring our long-time partners, Castlemont High School.
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Last Thursday in Sacramento Youth ALIVE! and Teens on Target youth leaders stood up and said “Enough is enough” and reminded the world that while mass shootings are extremely tragic and must be stopped, it has always been communities of color who suffer the most from gun-related violence. And these communities are where change will come from, if the world will listen. A day of briefings and rallies was organized by State Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer (D-LA), joined by Women’s March Sacramento and folks from the Brady Campaign for Gun Violence.
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On the eve of last month’s March for our Lives, the Guardian sought commentary from current and former Teens on Target youth leaders, including former TNTer Smooth Wickliff. With insight and clarity, Smooth wrote about growing up surrounded by violence in Oakland, about the lure of the gun, and about what TNT taught him about breaking the cycle of violence. Read his Guardian piece, which the publication called “I used to be a gun-toting teenager. If I stepped away from guns, we all can.”
TNT youth leader Dymond Garrett has written a searing but hopeful piece for Youth Radio about the #NeverAgain movement, growing up around violence, and the frustration felt by those who have been talking about – and living with – gun violence for years.
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We’re sold out! See you at our annual celebration dinner and auction.
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The outrageous, unnecessary destruction of lives in Parkland, Florida, has rightly inspired great sympathy for the grieving. For many (though somehow not all), it has reinforced their will to make our country a safer, more peaceful place. It has also opened the nation’s ears to the energizing voices and fresh ideas of young peo
On a sun-splashed, blue-sky, spring-like winter day in February, some of our Teens on Target youth leaders went behind the walls at San Quentin. They spent an eye-opening day with a group of inmates called SQUIRES, men whose devastating crimes had earned them a life behind bars, and whose collective message to our young men was clear: it takes only a few seconds to end up here, just one bad decision that can ruin many lives, including your own. So be wise, stop and think, find someone you can talk to about life. Stay free.
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