As I arrive at the Redshield Community Center, a diverse group of teenagers are gathered around a table. They are going around the room, talking about their week, the good and the bad. The responses are typical. “I’m sick,” “I was late to class,” “I’m tired,” until they’re not.
One of the young women shares: “The best thing about the week was seeing my daughter.”
Another student talks about having the police in her school crack down on a family member for being tardy and absent.
In this neighborhood, unfortunately, it’s not surprising that students may have a little more on their plate than the typical suburban student. Poverty rates in the Whittier and Five Points, especially among black and Hispanic families, are very high. And the systems at play in contemporary culture are complicated and unseen, permeating like a fog through unsuspecting corners of their lives.
Candi CdeBaca, founder of Project VOYCE, a Denver nonprofit organization that trains inner-city youth to become leaders in education reform, knows intimately what these kids are going through. She grew up in this part of town, and attended Manuel High School. No one in her family had ever gone to college, but she worked hard to get into school, and got a scholarship for college, and then went on to complete a Masters degree at University of Denver in Social Work.
Her young niece is hanging on her shoulders as she speaks to the class. And another organizer gets the ball rolling on the event Love Us Through It, she says as she talks about the plan for the day, acknowledging that things don’t always go as planned. One thing is for sure: There’s a lot of love in the air.
After spending a couple of years in D.C. working as a lobbyist, CdeBaca decided to return to her roots and started Project VOYCE. Having an intimate understanding of how change is made at a national level, she wanted to teach young people how to make change in their communities and schools, through self-reflection and understanding the civic process.
Teaching these young people about the ways in which they face oppression is just one way to help see through the fog. “How is oppression spread in our society?” one of the organizers asks. The students know the answer: “Idealized, internalized, intrapersonal and institutional,” the kids answer. I’m impressed.
A lengthy discussion ensues about “ageism” and “adultism” in society. “What is an adult? How do you know when you are one?” It’s a bit of a moving target. Some of these kids have more responsibilities, between school, work and parenting, than many 30-year-old hipster trust funders.
So age is a concept, not a destination.
And the distinction is an important one, especially when you think about the ways youths are targeted in this country. School works more like a prison, where kids are subjected to testing at a frantic pace. Young people are saddled with tens of thousands of dollars of debt, just to participate in society. And school boards decide the curriculum with sometimes very reactionary goals in mind.
Recently, students in Jefferson County banded together to protest a change to the American History curriculum, suggested by the school board, which would make discussing revolutionary movements in recent history forbidden.
Posters around the room show young people standing up to the status quo in cases around the country. It inspires the students who say, “Wow, I didn’t know kids could do this.”
And afterwards, an organizer teaches them the more practical details of the civic process, like how to get a bill passed. The discussion certainly opened my eyes to the many ways in which youth have been victims of systemic inequality in our society, in addition to the other groups whose voices are more commonly heard.
One of the posters in the room shows a group of students organized in the Hitler Youth, which provides a frightening reminder that young people can be used by the powerful to perpetrate violence and hatred. I think these students have enough on their plate, to get into the dark side of the human psyche.
It’s the love and encouragement that the day started out with, which is really the radical teaching.
