I wish I didn’t have to choose sides. My friends are totally against the police because they think cops are all out to get them. On the other hand, my cousin is a police officer and also a single mother of three.
Every 28 hours a police officer kills an unarmed black man in this country. I fear that one day it could be my dad, my brothers, or my cousins who comes in contact with the wrong police officer.
Youth Radio’s Joi Smith interviewed young people and long-time residents of Oakland for their reflections on police violence in the city. Sergeant Joseph Turner of the Oakland Police Department heard the piece, and responded in a letter which was published alongside Joi’s piece in the San Francisco Chronicle. Read both stories here.
Young people await a Ferguson grand jury’s decision of Officer Darren Wilson who fatally shot 18-year-old Michael Brown. Here is what young people in Oakland had to say.
Am I worth as much as a candy bar? Or am I worth a Play Station? What would it take for killing me to be excusable?
Our friends at Youth Speaks launched the Off/Page Project to combine original storytelling and arts with investigative data. The project is soliciting poetry from young people that explains and expresses how Brown’s death and the nationwide response have affected their lives.
Many in the black community have hit the streets in protest of the verdict in the murder trial of George…
OAKLAND, Calif. — The crowd let out a monstrous applause just before the private screening of Fruitvale Station began inside Oakland’s Grand Lake Theatre. The majority of the audience then turned away from the screen, toward the back left corner of the room to honor Oscar Grant’s mother. I saw her acknowledge the crowd with a wave of her hand.
