Colorlines covers AB 2015!

by Melanie Tom, Field Organizer

All families matter, no matter how your family was formed or who's in it.

Through the Strong Families Initiative, Forward Together and California Latinas for Reproductive Justice are working to ensure that all custodial parents, regardless of immigration status or language, will have the right to two telephone calls at the time of arrest to arrange for childcare for their minor children.

See coverage of this dynamic bill, which garnered full committee support at the Assembly Public Safety Committee last week at Colorlines.

A Mother's Nightmare- Act Now for SB 1363

Re-posted with permission from Ella's Voice, a blog of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights

by Lina Roldan


I am a mother of four children living in Pico Rivera. In my daily life, I work as an interpreter, lead a girl scout troop, and take my girls to volleyball practice, Karate, and Aztec dance classes. But a part of me is always with my oldest son, who is locked away in the Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ). The DJJ and their abuse of solitary confinement practices has scarred my son forever; will you help me stop the abuse? 

My son is not a tough kid and wasn’t ready for the gladiator school called DJJ. On his very first day, he was beat up. He’s seen things he should never see, like kids fighting each other and guards assaulting and pepper-spraying kids on a daily basis. After experiencing solitary confinement, violence, and humiliation by guards, he now suffers from severe depression and hallucinations. He never had serious mental health issues before. Now he is suicidal.

Try to imagine what it’s like to get a call because your child tried to hang himself with a bedsheet. Then being told that he stabbed himself with a fork. That he slit his wrist with a razor. And after that, hearing he broke a TV and used the wires to choke himself. He’s attempted suicide 6 times in two years.

It gets even worse. Every time he attempts suicide, guards strip him and put him in a small, dirty, empty solitary cell for 21 or more hours a day, sometimes almost 24 hours a day. These “suicide watch” cells are the same cells used to discipline youth. Why would you do this to a kid who is hallucinating and suicidal?

Our son’s body is marked and scarred. He says things like, “They’re making me crazy in here.” Once, he told me that killing himself is his ticket out of DJJ. Imagine for a second what it feels like to hear that from your child.

Every day, I wish I could comfort my son, tuck him in at night, give him the sign of the cross, and kiss him like I used to. Every day I wish he finds some glimmer of hope to keep him alive through this nightmare.

I need you to understand that what happened to my son is the standard procedure. Every living unit at Chaderjian has these same solitary confinement cells used for discipline and suicide watch. There is no treatment. No counseling. No rehabilitation. Just cruelty.

Right now, youth prisons and juvenile halls can hold youth in solitary confinement for as long as they want. There are no standards or regulations. SB 1363 would change that. If we can change the mind of legislators who have the power to pass the bill out of committee. 

I’m only one mother but I represent thousands of families who know my pain- the pain of the DJJ and its abuse of solitary confinement. If we all act now, we can end the torture.



Lina Roldan is a mother and a leader with Families for Books Not Bars.

Forward Together in New Mexico

by Adriann Barboa
After eight wonderful years of working at Young Women United, I am so happy to be blessed with another opportunity to grow my strengths and live a life full of my passion, serving for JUSTICE!
To the next generation of YWU, I have seen the strength in your eyes and fight in your hearts, and that is why I knew that I must make room for you to spread your wings and take flight. I have no doubt that your struggle, your experiences and your wisdom will create an even greater, sharper and more vibrant sisterhood of radical women of color than I could imagine.

So here I stand, in a grounded stance ready to take all that you have allowed me and move forward in a new and exciting journey with Forward Together, formally known as Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice. For years I have been such a fan of ACRJ, the opportunity to work with them, is a dream come true! ACRJ and I are in this place together, looking around us, seeing the need to grow, make additions to our homes, broadening our reach and making room for new leadership, while still tending to our roots. That's why this name change, Forward Together, feels so right. It includes me, it includes my beloved New Mexico, it reaches beyond big city business to include small metro areas like Albuquerque as well as rural and Indigenous communities whose struggle, strengths and victories are so often hidden and therefore under-resourced. That’s what excites me most, that just like Forward Together is taking special care of its roots while expanding its garden to new terrain, I too will be cultivating nuestra tierra, sharing on a larger level the ripeness of JUSTICE and STRONG FAMILIES that my state has to offer. I thank you all for this blessing, and ask for your continued support because I know that within all of you, lives the life sustaining nutrients my communities and I need to thrive.

Moving Forward, Together

by Shanelle Matthews

Last weekend I attended the Civil Liberties and Public Policy (CLPP) conference at Hampshire College. This conference provides a space for reproductive justice activists and activists in sectors that intersect with reproductive justice to engage in dialogue about how to meaningfully move our work forward. I’d been to CLPP before. I knew there would be a diverse group of presenters who brought with them years of experience working in reproductive health. I was prepared for the abortion speak-out where people told both empowering and disempowering stories of abortion and abortion access. I expected some healthy debate around language, accessibility and cultural appropriation. What I wasn’t prepared for was the response I would get when I told dozens of our allies, supporters, friends and family that we were no longer Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice. Effective immediately we’d be known as Forward Together.

There were activists at this conference who knew our organization in its humble beginnings as Asian Pacific Islanders for Choice and who supported us through our transition as we became Asian Pacific Islanders for Reproductive Health. As our work evolved and the intersections of class and race revealed themselves as ever present, we emerged as Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice, an organization who supports and develops the leadership of Asian youth and leverages the voices of the Asian communities, who often go unheard – and there we stayed for over a decade. Our allies and friends knew all of this about us. They supported and trusted us as a steadfast leader in reproductive justice and movement building. We worked together, learned together and grew together and here I was, at this conference, asking them to support us once more as we revamped ourselves and chose a name that reinforced the multiracial and cross-sector work we are so loyally committed to.

As I introduced us as Forward Together, formerly ACRJ, I scoured the room for reception. I wanted so badly for our people to be as excited about this name change as I was - to pump their first high in the sky in accidence and acceptance. I hoped, through osmosis, I was transferring all of my knowledge and enthusiasm about what an important change this was for us and how our new name was a better fit for what we were doing. I was met with a few cracked smiles, some inquisitive, searching eyes and deafening silence. Fuck! I thought. They hate it! Going back to the drawing board wasn’t an option so I quickly searched for ways to sell them on our new name, until I remembered – we’d been here before. Our previous name changes predate my work here but I detected in myself nostalgia for the embracing reception we’d been granted before and I breathed a sigh of relief. I continued to share about the importance of being outwardly authentic about how we are engaging in community to transform policy and culture in ways that support individuals, families, and communities in reaching our full potential. Resonance grew, smiles appeared and I could breath again.

Over the next couple of days I received a lot of questions about why we changed our name, how it affected our work with Asian communities and how it tied to our Strong Families initiative. It felt good, warm to be able to tell people face-to-face about our process and to share how important it is to us that we represent our intersectional work meaningfully and with as much direction as possible. It reminded me that a name is just a name until the work attached to it makes it more – that with time comes equity and knowing firsthand the level of commitment of the staff at Forward Together, there is no doubt in my mind that the connection will soon be made.

Shanelle Matthews is the Communicatins Manager for Forward Together

Becoming more of us

By Moira Bowman

I have never been party to naming a child. I’ve given my opinion many times but (usually) only when asked.  So when Eveline told me we were going to rename ACRJ I feel like I had the tiniest bit of understanding of how daunting the task of naming can be.  But we weren’t naming a child.  Maybe what we have done is closer to the experience of many of my friends who have renamed themselves over the years.  We were renaming an organization with a personality, a history, and expansive web relationships crossing many communities and places.  We were the same organization but we wanted to be more “us.”

Yep, it was daunting.  First I felt excited and then overwhelmed by all the questions in my head:  How do you even pick a name?  Are there any names left? Can you capture the essence of an organization in a name?  Will people think my ideas are corny?  Can someone else just decide?

While I was not responsible for the final outcome, I was responsible for managing the process.  So we did what anyone who doesn’t know what they are doing would do.  We brought in professionals – Lightbox Collaborative and Mission Minded – two firms that steadily guided us through the morass of questions and anxieties.  And then we brought in friends.  My favorite moment in the naming process was sitting in a room with over 20 loving supporters of ACRJ brainstorming over 200 possible options for a new name.  It was a glorious explosion of ideas generated from a circle of friends that truly wanted to help us become more us.  Each one of them deserves a toast for their work to help us see who we are. 

In the end, I’m so excited about Forward Together: So All Families Can Thrive.  It says two things that help me feel at home in this organization.  Forward Together speaks to me of the potential of collaboration and creation in community.  I like exploring all the possibilities for change but I don’t want to do it alone.  So All Families Can Thrive steers all this forward motion in a direction I want to go – a place where the courageous and innovative ways we create family for ourselves is met with dignity, support and justice.  The goal was to feel and be more of what we already are –  I’m satisfied. 

Happy Equal Pay Day!

by Tavae Samuelu

What was that? You had no idea that today was a day that warranted celebration? It’s okay, womyn of color, our day is actually in June. For those of you not in the know (i.e.: me five hours ago), today is the 108th day of 2012, which marks the number of days into the new year that women have to work to earn as much as men did in 2011.

It’s less celebration, more of a reminder that as a womyn, I was paid a whopping 77 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2011, an average of $10,622 in lost wages every year. That’s 88 student loan payments, 53 trips back home to Long Beach, and a year’s worth of birth control for me and 87 of my insured friends with ovaries who don’t want babies. And there’s the rub. Womyn are not only underpaid, but they are also far less likely to receive health care coverage through their employer.

Our friends over at the Center for American Progress just released a briefing revealing how the inequity in health insurance coverage between men and womyn only further expands the gender wage gap. “Women are significantly less likely than men to have access to their own employer-based coverage… So although two-thirds of mothers are either breadwinners or co-breadwinners, their jobs often do not come with health benefits. This translates into women losing an average of $4,508 for single coverage and $10,944 for family coverage in employer contributions to health benefits each year.” The numbers are undeniably shocking, but the impact of this injustice is worse. Low wages paired with rising out-of-pocket medical expenses mean that womyn are being forced to choose between paying medical bills and other necessities.

This briefing doesn’t just name problems. It also proposes viable solutions to what has been misdiagnosed as a womyn’s issue. So, read this and find a way to commemorate Equal Pay Day.

New name, same values

By Eveline Shen

When I first came to this organization twelve and a half years ago, a Texas Governor was announcing his candidacy for President, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 10,000 for the first time and a revolutionary music downloading service called Napster was making its debut. We have seen a lot of changes since then.

During this time, our organization has evolved as well. The organization I walked into had three staff people and was housed in a tiny office in Chinatown. Over the years, our work grew from local organizing to a national vision for change in which all of us have what we need to thrive.

In Oakland, what started as an organizing project for 15 young Asian women has graduated over 500 members and now includes young Asian men working with their sisters for reproductive justice. And with the realization that the change we seek affects and engages many many communities, we are now a multiracial organization.

Given these changes, one thing became increasingly clear to me.  We were outgrowing our name, Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice.

While our local youth organizing work continues to focus on Asian youth, our national work engages organizations and communities serving Latino, African American, Native and white women, children and families.

While we continue to understand the world through the lens of reproductive justice, we also are working increasingly across sectors--with our partners in labor, immigrant rights, criminal justice, and queer and trans people of color.

As our Strong Families work engages organizations and individuals around the country in working to change policy and culture to reflect the way our families actually live, and what we need to thrive, we realized we needed a bigger name. A name that captures how we work, what we want, and how we are moving our big vision for change.

We worked together to drill down and get clear about what name, what words, what images could convey all of that.  So now we have a new name.  We are Forward Together: so all families can thrive.  We have a new website, a new look, a new Facebook and a new Twitter.  We took a great leap forward so our organization can be as big and bold as our vision.

In the midst of this growth, what has remained consistent is the recognition that:

1. our health and well-being are impacted by many societal factors so we need a comprehensive vision to effectively tackle the challenges our communities face; 
2. to win real change, we must proactively move together and lift up the voices and concerns of those who are most marginalized; 
3. transformation starts from within so we need to take care of each other as we go.

As we take this next step as Forward Together, I want to thank all our youth, staff and board members as well as our friends, supporters, and funders for contributing to our growth and development through the years and helping us land where we are today. And true to our nature, we continue to move ahead boldly as we bring reproductive justice to new communities across the country. But we are not moving alone. We are walking in stride with all of you to create a world where all individuals, families and communities can reach their full potential.

The power of a good story

by Nina Jacinto
 
Here's something to get your heart beating on hump day this week. A video has been circulating the internet that tells the story of nine-year old Caine. Caine is in love with arcades - so much so, that his father encourages Caine to build his own games at his auto parts shop.

So with cardboard boxes, Caine sets his sights on creating something really wonderful, complete with a ticket system and business cards.This is a wonderful piece of story telling, that reminds us how an excellent tale and compelling visuals can rattle our souls. And, at the end of the day it's the story of love and family. Caine's dad tells viewers that his shop doesn't get many visitors anymore - most of his business has moved to the internet - he's worried that his son may never have people come by to play his games. It's a powerful and sad moment - we can see a father's hope that his son can be happy and have every dream fulfilled. We also see the impact that the economy and technology has had on his family. He's not just a businessman or a father - he's both.

Caine has his dream met, thanks to the compassion of one individual and the wonders of the internet. I won't spoil the ending but encourage you to watch until the end - if only to see the joy on this young boy's face.

Caine's Arcade from Nirvan Mullick on Vimeo.

What do you want from your sex education?

Vy Truong, a Core youth leader leading a focus group of middle school students.

By Laura Harris

“Where do you go to get information about sex?”

This is the opening question for a presentation on sex education given by ACRJ’s Core youth organizer group. These youth are pushing forward a campaign to inform other young people about Sex Education Justice and find out what their peers think about the sex education they’re currently receiving. As part of their Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR), they’ve developed a presentation, focus group guide, and survey. This past month, they’ve presented and led focus groups at many schools and youth organizations in Oakland.

I’m a grad student in UC Berkeley’s school of public health. Seeing this YPAR process to unfold has been an honor and a pleasure – and a great counterpoint to my more theoretical courses! As I watch the youth lead the presentations, it’s hard to choose what I’m most excited about: how despite some initial awkwardness they’re gracefully facilitating a tough conversation, the way they’re forming a safe space for their peers to talk about sex and to think critically about their sex education rights, the fact that all this information is going to get funneled to the Oakland Unified School District school board and other key stakeholders…

“Stand up if your school has taught you the difference between sex and gender.”

Now Core youth leaders are leading a stand-up, sit-down game designed to see what comprehensive sex education topics students are getting information around, and where.. Sex education shouldn’t only teach youth about STIs, it should empower them with knowledge about important questions of sex and gender identity, so that they can better understand their own experiences and the experiences of others, and can feel more comfortable in their own skin. Some participants stand up in response to the question, indicating that they’ve learned about the difference sex and gender. Then one says, “Oh, wait, you mean in school?” and most participants sit down again. Sex education in schools can provide a safe space for youth to learn about these sensitive issues, but sex education curricula often take a narrower, disease and safety-based focus.

A few more rounds of standing up and sitting down, and the conversation moves on to comparing which schools teach which subjects. The participants are getting more comfortable with each other – they’re ready to talk about how they feel about their current sex education and any changes they’d like to see.

The focus group discussion is wide ranging. It’s encouraging to see everyone in the group making efforts to articulate what sex education means to them, what they’d like to be learning, and why. To paraphrase one participant: we need to learn about sex in a way that’s relevant for LGBTQ folks, for all races, because what we don’t know about we fear. What we don’t understand, we hate. We need to learn so that we can feel comfortable with one another and accept each other.

That sounds like a great lesson to me.


Laura Harris is a graduate student at UC Berkeley, in the school of public health and has been supporting ACRJ's youth participatory action research.

My family is part of the 78%

Chloe J has been a member of the Strong Families Story Collection Street Team since last fall, and has been focused on developing best practices for our story collection project.  Here, she shares her strong families story.

By Chloe J, Story Collection Street Team Member

I am a graduate student sitting in my Family Therapy classroom in Social Work school, learning how to be a therapist and a social worker. The professor talks on and on about families, what they look like, and how to do family therapy. The whole time I think to myself, “I can’t think of a single family that looks like the ones we are talking about.”

Ideas of what families should look like are everywhere. We all know it. We see images of nuclear ‘Leave it to Beaver’ families in the media, legislation, and surprising places like my liberal social work classroom and my $100 text books. But I certainly do not see it in my life and not in the clients I am learning how to work with.

I am queer and I am the child of immigrants. This particular identity combination has pushed me to look at the idea of family in a different light. It has been painful to see my parents, who I thought would always support me emotionally, tell me I am wrong, that I am betraying them, and that I am messing with God and nature-- all because I have dated women.

I could write about how this has affected me for pages, but I will go in a different direction. Due my parents’ inability to love and support the many aspects of who I am, I have formed other connections. I grew close to other people in my life. I have a community of chosen family who support me and love me in ways my parents cannot and will not. Thus, I have formed different ideas of what family can be. 

To me family is people who love and support me for who I am. I love and care about my parents and I know they feel the same way about me, but in addition, I created my own family who help me thrive and grow. I created my own family filled with people who do not care that I am gay. I moved towards people who see and accept more of me. I have two families: my blood family and my chosen family. 

This is also the case with so many other families. 78% of families are not the “Leave it to Beaver” nuclear family. 78% of families in the United States are not married, heterosexual families with biological children (and when class and race are taken into account, the number is even higher). The majority of families are comprised of single parent families, divorced couples, undocumented immigrants, LGBTQ identified, and those of extended families. Yet everything in our media, policies supporting families, and my social work books imply that there is only one type or model of a legitimate recognizable family. 

This is where the Strong Families Story Collection team comes into play. We are collecting stories to bring visibility to the 78% of families that are not seen as legitimate. We are collecting stories to get legislation passed for the 78% of families that don’t have a voice. We are bringing light to the extra vibrancy and struggle that 78% of families have to go through. We are redefining who is legitimate and who is deserving of support. We are redefining family values and instead, honoring our strong families.