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THE FREEDOM TO LEARN

Dismantling the School-to-Prison Pipeline in the Southwest

– Pam Martinez –
Padres & Jóvenes Unidos, Denver, Colorado

For twenty years, parents and young people have been working together through Padres & Jóvenes Unidos to stop the school-to-prison pipeline and end the oppression of Chicano, Mexican, and Indigenous communities in Denver and beyond. Parents started organizing to stop a school principal from punishing Spanish-speaking students by forcing them to eat their lunches on the cafeteria floor. In 2008 youth leaders became the first in the nation to win a district-wide commitment to end zero-tolerance discipline practices and move toward restorative justice. Pam Martinez talks about the power of the group’s intergenerational model to combat the racial oppression of Chicanos and Mexicanos in the colonized Southwest, and she recognizes that youth are the most fearless at leading the charge.

IN 1982 THE US SUPREME COURT ruled in the landmark Plyler v. Doe decision that schools cannot deny a free public education to undocumented children living in the US. My husband, Ricardo, and I had been involved in the historic suit when we were organizing for immigrant rights in Houston. Following that victory, we moved from Houston to Denver and continued our organizing for Chicano and Mexican rights.

One day while watching the evening news, we saw parents in front of the headquarters of Denver Public Schools with signs saying that their kids had been forced to eat on the floor as a form of punishment for speaking Spanish at Valverde Elementary School. The injustice was obvious. The parents said, “Anybody who can help us, please come on down and join us. We need your support.”

Ricardo and I immediately joined the Chicano and Mexican parents and became part of the committee to help replace the white principal, since she refused to change. It was a tough fight. The principal was not only punishing students for speaking Spanish, but she also fired a national award–winning bilingual teacher who protested the practice and spoke to the kids in Spanish when needed. It took us a year, but the parents succeeded in removing the principal, rehiring the teacher, and ending a racist and humiliating form of “discipline”

THE DEMAND FOR RACIAL EQUITY

That was the start of a long journey to understand how deeply institutional racism manifested itself in public education. The demand for racial equity has been at the heart of this journey. Placing parents and students of color in leadership of these struggles has proved critical to improving education for Latino and other students of color in Denver and Colorado over time.

The struggle at Valverde inspired Chicanos throughout Denver to stand up and fight for their kids’ rights. People started calling us from all over asking for our help. That was the birth of Padres Unidos, or Parents United, in 1992.

Padres Unidos became well known as an organization led by people of color from the community that openly fought racism and won. After we filed and won a complaint against Denver Public Schools with the federal Office for Civil Rights for violations of civil rights policies, parents at Cole Middle School on the east side asked us to help them organize. Nearly all students at Cole were Chicano or black, and almost all lived in poverty. A long-standing member, Pedro Herrera, invited us to his house along with about fifteen to twenty parents to hear the testimony of Cole students. When we arrived, there was a line of students out the front door, on the front porch, and down the sidewalk. The parents had brought students who were repeatedly being suspended at Cole for minor misbehavior. They told us, “Our kids are missing too much school. They’re being sent home and missing instruction. They are not learning.”

These parents were not against discipline in and of itself. They were against their children missing learning time as a form of discipline. These were immigrant parents who had fought to get into this country and were determined that their children would get a good education once they got here.

That night, the parents introduced us to a key feature of the school-to-jail track: the enormous number of kids being given out-of-school suspensions for minor misbehavior. We learned that the students missed classes so often that they fell behind. They were embarrassed to find themselves unable to understand what was going on in class and, as a result, would drop out. But we called this practice “pushout” to show where the blame belonged.

As parents organized, Cole students got involved too and asked to meet on their own. They said, “We can’t really disagree with our parents in public. It would be disrespectful. We need a space where we can express ourselves and have input. We want to be part of Padres Unidos but have our own space. We will call ourselves Jóvenes Unidos.” So our organization became Padres & Jóvenes Unidos (P&JU), or Parents and Youth United.

FIGHTING PUSHOUT AT NORTH HIGH SCHOOL

During this time, P&JU was invited to a conference hosted by a new national civil rights group called the Advancement Project. At this conference we learned that school pushout was happening across the country and was part of a larger systemic form of oppression for black and brown youth that included over-policing and criminalization of youth of color. Further research revealed a massive surge in the incarceration of young people of color. That was groundbreaking for us. It was the first time people named the school-to-prison pipeline and the systemic and institutional racism that it represented.

In our view, the unnecessary and racially disparate discipline of students of color was a primary obstacle to achieving the freedom to learn in the United States. It represented a continuation of the historic oppression of people of color in this country. Our experiences with school suspensions at Cole and the broader analysis of the school-to-prison pipeline would shape our organizing for the next fifteen years.

With our first substantial funding from the National Council of La Raza, we opened an office located near North High School, a historic school for Chicanos and Mexicans from the barrio. In 2003, Northside mothers and members of P&JU started telling us, “Our kids don’t want to go to North High School. They are depressed. They pretend they’re sick in the morning. They’ll do anything to get out of it and we don’t know why.”

So parent members decided to survey the students to get to the root of the matter. Students at North loved the survey and took it on as their own. They ended up collecting more than seven hundred surveys and analyzed the survey findings. Using what we call the “Padres Approach” framework, they identified the problems, analyzed the root causes, and developed concrete solutions to reform North High School, which they published in The North High School Report: The Voice of Over 700 Students.

The report told a powerful story. Many students felt that the atmosphere of the school was like a prison. They felt that discipline was unjust and that teachers did not believe in their ability to learn and go to college. This groundbreaking report showed that while over 93 percent of all students at North wanted to go to college, only 38 percent even graduated from the school.¹

The students compared North to affluent white high schools within Denver Public Schools and revealed vast differences in the number of Advanced Placement classes being offered, graduation rates, and the number of students successfully attending and graduating from four-year colleges. The students filed requests under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the data from the district and used it to support their campaign.

The North students held a press conference to release the report, demanding the reform of North into a college preparatory high school for all and other changes. Young people had never done anything like this before in Colorado, and it caused a sensation. The press conference led to front-page stories in both major newspapers in the area and was covered by thirteen media outlets. The impact of this work was tremendous. The struggle went on for a number of years, eventually leading to new leadership and to the reform and reorganization of North High School.

ENDING THE SCHOOL-TO-JAIL TRACK

But there was a larger problem. You can offer college prep for all students, but if high numbers of black and brown students are suspended and pushed out, they’re not in school taking these courses; they end up railroaded into correctional facilities.

As a result, youth leaders in P&JU began calling for a change in Denver Public Schools’ discipline code. They wanted restorative approaches rather than punitive practices. The youth pressed their demands at every school board meeting, issued press releases, publicized stories of disciplinary injustices from students and their parents, and held direct actions. We met weekly with Denver Public Schools, its attorney, and different stakeholders from the district, including the teachers’ union, to negotiate changes in the code. We got further support from the Advancement Project, a Washington-based civil rights organization, whose attorney helped us to negotiate with district officials and suggested much of the language in the new discipline code. We learned that strategic partners like the Advancement Project could be critical to the struggle when rooted in the community’s demands and direction.

On the day that the school board was going to vote on the new discipline code, the teachers’ union said it could not sign off on the code due to member objections. As a result, it took another year and a half of negotiations to pass the new discipline code!

The code we won in 2008 focused on keeping students in school and learning. The policy was designed to eliminate racial disparities in discipline by using restorative justice practices that tried to get at the root causes of behavioral issues and support students as well as teachers and administrators to resolve conflicts rather than push students out.

This was a huge win nationally. It was the first time that a grassroots organization led by people of color got an entire district to change its discipline code, and we were invited to conferences and meetings across the country to share our experience. P&JU youth leaders traveled to Washington and spoke to the US Department of Justice and the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Education.

The youth followed this victory by raising the bar even higher, seeking to end zero tolerance throughout the state. It turned out that the new district policy conflicted with state law. Youth leaders spent two years crafting legislation and lobbying for it at the state capitol. They strategized with legislative sponsors, testified at committee hearings, and mobilized their peers to rallies. Everyone came wearing our red T-shirts. We stood out. Here came the youth in red who were fighting to make change!

Members learned to use the press strategically to educate the public and pressure decision makers. We consistently messaged that the bill was meant to end racial disparities in discipline using restorative practices. While initially hesitant to discuss race explicitly, by the end of the two years, the press, TV reporters, the superintendent and legislators were all using our message. Our framing on racial disparities in discipline became the popular frame. This was intentional and a win.

In the end, our organization was seen as a pit bull. We did not give up. We were there for the duration and they could not shake us off. Those most affected demanded equity, respect, and equal time. By the end of this battle, significant numbers of parents and students had become freedom fighters for racial justice and educational equity for all.

It took two years, but the Colorado Smart School Discipline Law passed in 2012, another historic victory that inspired local organizing groups across the country to consider state legislation to end zero tolerance and help halt the school-to-prison pipeline. But these wins begged the question of how they were going to get implemented. People must learn how to hold those in power accountable for a real democracy to blossom and survive. It is part of realizing self-determination and justice.

We started producing annual school-discipline report cards, which parents and youth used to give grades to school districts throughout Colorado on the results of new discipline policies. This required collecting data, interviewing students, and gathering stories. The report cards became news items. Who was being called out? Which districts were improving? People wanted to know. And both district and school leaders started to want better ratings. In the end the report cards have helped push the state, districts, and local schools to change deep-seated institutional practices of racial discrimination and inequity. Our campaigns and new policies have made a difference: out-of-school suspensions for students of color in Denver fell by 58 percent between 2003 and 2013.²

POLICING THE POLICE

Our next campaign was to limit the overuse of police in schools and reduce their presence. Police had become so prevalent in schools that they were being involved in minor behavioral issues, which has never been their job. Too many schools would send a police officer into a classroom to pull a student out in front of their peers and in some cases handcuff them for nonviolent, low-level misbehavior.

Students in Jóvenes organized to convince the Denver Public Schools and the Denver Police Department to sign a new intergovernmental agreement in 2013 to end unnecessary student referrals to law enforcement, to eliminate racial disparities in discipline, and to limit the role of police in schools.

We were breaking new ground here too. This was the first intergovernmental agreement where youth demanded to be involved in brokering the deal—and won. As a result, youth leaders from P&JU were asked to serve on President Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper task force. This put us in a position to explain and struggle for our viewpoint with federal decision makers, eventually influencing the federal guidelines on school discipline issued by the Obama administration in 2014.

We know that in order to truly create change, teachers, administrators, parents, and students have to be the ones to implement new discipline practices. So we collaborated with the Advancement Project, Denver Classroom Teachers Association, and the National Education Association on a project with the University of Denver and Denver Public Schools to create a training center for administrators, principals, teachers, and members of the community to learn how to implement restorative practices. This year we began training parents—the ones who fought for change—to lead restorative practices at two elementary schools.

We see the gains made in this work in the context of our quest for a society rooted in economic, social, and political equity—a world where humanity, justice, and equality are front and center in our decision making and policies. Self-determination, self-governance, and holding those in power accountable to the people are important components for realizing the democracy we all want and are trying to build. This is the spirit and vision that guides all of our work.

THE ROOTS OF CHICANO AND MEXICANO OPPRESSION IN THE US

We believe that the school-to-prison pipeline, a substandard education, and mass incarceration represent a continuation of historic efforts to maintain the subjugation, oppression, and colonization of people of color in the US. P&JU believes that racism is an ideology that has been developed to support and justify the extreme exploitation and oppression of people of color. However, the minority are becoming the majority and driving a demand for change on many fronts.

But most of us do not understand the origins of the oppression of Chicanos and Mexicanos. Chicanos are people whose ancestors lived here when the Southwest was part of Mexico. During the bloody Mexican War of 1846–1848, the United States invaded the Southwest, which was a part of Mexico at the time; Mexico was able to push the US back to the tip of Texas. The people living in the Southwest Territory that the US stole in the war were colonized, lynched, and raped into submission. But they never gave up the struggle. Early on, Las Gorras Blancas and Joaquin Murrieta were inspirational freedom fighters; later the United Farm Workers Union and civil rights movement gave birth to the Chicano Movement and many revolutionary organizations. In the 1990s the government was forced to return a large piece of land in Colorado’s San Luis Valley to families who had fought for many decades for their rights. The families won back their lands as well as their communal water, grazing, fishing, and timber rights.

People of color are becoming majority populations and have won significant gains. We are now seeing the right wing and the old-boy white networks resisting their loss of power. Donald Trump’s presidential victory is pushing back on all the gains we have made. We need a more organized voice from the Chicano, Mexican, and black communities to address these issues and be a collective force in this country.

THE FREEDOM TO LEARN

To fight for educational equity and justice means we must end the school-to-jail track, stop the over-incarceration of people of color, and win the freedom to learn as a basic human right. In all of these struggles, we are striking back against the root causes of colonization, slavery, and genocide that follow people of color to this day. The more that elected officials, the police, and others attack, the more that people of color resist. There are thousands of students and communities fighting for immigrant rights and to support the “Dreamers”—young undocumented people who qualified for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA program—to end the school-to-prison pipeline, and to stop police brutality and murder. People are organizing to redistribute wealth by replacing police with counselors, moving public funds out of prisons and into communities, and using taxes to have free college education instead of increasing the wealth of the 1 percent.

In P&JU we fight for the basic human right to a quality education and life. And in all of this, people are organizing for their humanity, self-determination, and justice for as long as is needed to be free.

Our intergenerational model of organizing is powerful because it unites parents and youth. All parts of our communities play critical roles in the struggle. We recognize elders for their historical knowledge and the wisdom acquired through years of struggle. Young parents, especially mothers, are powerful and fight fiercely for their families and children. Youth are fearless and thirsty for change—and the world is theirs for the taking.