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CLASP collaborates with movement partners to build abolitionist futures for youth and young adults by uplifting economic, racial, and social justice policy solutions to disrupt the relationship between poverty, race, and punishment. We amplify innovative, youth-led approaches to community safety that invest in life-affirming systems of care and eradicate systems that surveil, police, prosecute, or incarcerate Black, brown, and Indigenous youth and their communities.
Check out our new resources for insights into key issues, strategies, and principles surrounding justice, particularly in observance of National Youth Violence Prevention Week.
“Are We Listening? Youth Mental Health Challenges are Rooted in Community Violence” by Deanie Anyangwe examines how community violence is a traumatic stressor that has damaging effects on young people’s mental, social, psychological, physical, and economic well-being. Deanie also analyzes successful non-carceral community violence intervention strategies, including non-police street outreach and violence interruption as well as hospital-based violence intervention programs.
Youth and young adults currently face an unprecedented mental and behavioral health crisis that has led to an increase in youth suicide rates, mental and behavioral health concerns, and disconnection from school and work. This crisis acutely impacts Black, brown, and Indigenous young people who experience systemic racism. The 988 Lifeline is the official resource for people experiencing suicidal, mental, and behavioral health crises, and it should serve as an opportunity to transform the way young people view and build trust in crisis systems. Instead, 988 has become a new entrypoint into the criminal legal system for Black youth and other marginalized young people.
Deanie Anyangwe and Whitney Bunts explore the challenges and missed opportunities to effectively implement 988 and transform the United States’s existing mental and behavioral health crisis response system through their series of fact sheets, “Challenges to Just and Effective 988 Implementation”:
Check out Kayla Tawa’s newest work, “Forced ≠ Treatment: Carceral Strategies in Mental Health.” In this brief, she discusses how, despite concerns about and awareness of increased mental health challenges, there are still mental health policies that rely on carceral tactics and replicate incarceration, particularly those involving forced treatment. Kayla analyzes state and local policies that adopt carceral approaches to mental health treatment and shows that forced treatment is carceral; subject to less oversight than the same carceral tactics used in other spaces; ineffective and traumatic; and disproportionately harms marginalized communities.
EVENTS
On April 18, Deanie Anyangwe represented the Federal School Discipline and Climate (FedSDC) Coalition at the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent, an entity under the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Deanie was nominated to attend the third session of the Permanent Forum in Geneva, Switzerland. Read an excerpt of her UN statement below:
"To be clear, our demand is Police Free Schools. The role of police in the U.S. has a long, sordid history that is inseparable from the enduring legacy of anti-Black racism.
This is particularly true within the context of schools, where Black children are targeted for exposure to physical, sexual, verbal, and psychological violence at the hands of law enforcement.
As we advance our collaboration, we underscore the necessity for the deliberate and systematic abolition of all anti-Black mechanisms, such as policing, that facilitate violence towards Black people.
Specifically, we offer the following recommendations to the forum:
- First, that a second International Decade for People of African Descent with greater member accountability is established.
- Second, we demand that the US and all member states ratify and/or fully implement existing international human rights standards as it relates to the rights of children and youth of African Descent as reflected in the Conventions on the Rights of the Child and the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
- Third, we recommend that this Permanent Forum collaborate with similarly situated anti-racist UN mechanisms to examine the conditions of Children, Youth and Young Adults of African Descent in schools as it pertains to exclusionary discipline practices such as suspensions, expulsions, and corporal punishment.
- Fourth, we recommend that the High Commissioner studies the impact of digital surveillance and authoritarianism in education and youth serving systems.
- Lastly, we recommend that the Permanent Forum work with Black civil society and similarly situated anti-racist UN mechanisms to develop a comprehensive global digital bill of rights for people of African descent."
read the full un statement
March for Our Lives and Cities United are hosting an event, Empowering Youth, Transforming Communities, for National Youth Violence Prevention Week! On April 25, 7 p.m. EDT, leaders from across the country will speak about Community Violence Intervention (CVI) and other public health initiatives that are combating gun violence. Through this event, we will amplify the impact of CVI and public health strategies and help young leaders connect and showcase effective programs combating gun violence.
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