2007-2008 PEN OR PENCIL
NATIONAL B.U.S. BOYCOTT©
Campaign Briefing Points
Table of Contents:
- Introduction
- Overview
- Briefing Points
- Service Learning
- Historical Significance
- Boycotting Gun Violence as a Core Crime Prevention Agenda
- Intensifying Community Engagement
- Disproportionate Minority Contact: A Focus for Social Justice
Introduction
Whether the work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the American Jewish community in the 1930s
and 1940s, or the United Farm Workers led by Cesar Chavez in the 1960s, we are rapidly approaching an era and generations are now in place which cannot fully relate to or appreciate the gravity of sacrifices and accomplishments of historic boycotts.
The National Alliance of Faith and Justice (NAFJ) has conceptualized and proposed the PEN OR PENCIL National B.U.S. Boycotts to impact attitudes, provide an environment for public interest and education, and reignite a spirit and reason to make change by America’s youth. Consistent with the Semester of Service philosophy, this project will tap into the amazing energy, idealism, creativity, and commitment of an extended and specific period of time to address one of the most intractable problem faced by many youth of our nation.
This culturally competent and sensitive approach offers the benefit of neutrality to promote unity and a broader range of participation; it respects and uplifts historic sacrifices; and it offers criminal justice, education, service, faith, family, and business a framework in which to operate which transcends generational and other divides.
Using a boycott organizing theory, NAFJ desires to:
Make it relevant . . . .by presenting a cause which connects with the threat to civil rights in the lives of every youth today - CRIME; the need for reduction and intervention efforts, and equitable justice
Make it meaningful . . . by connecting participation to volunteering to make a difference as Dr. King and thousands of others did during the movement
Make it practical . . . by connecting the program to families (parents and children like the Walls and Carters) whose principles and actions, although decades ago, are still compatible with today’s possibilities
Make it participatory . . . by creating an opportunity open and relevant to all youth, crime versus education (PEN or PENCIL)
Make it creative . . .by engaging the dedication, work, and unique ideas of a new generation of potentially energetic activists - students
^ Return to Top
Overview
As a precursor to the 40th anniversary year and date on which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, any middle and high school-aged youth will be able to volunteer their participation in a series of b.u.s. boycotts as part of a contemporary civil rights movement of non-violent social protest to building unbalanced systems of criminal justice.
^ Return to Top
Campaign Briefing Points
• Unbalanced systems refers to (1) The intolerable burden placed on the lives of youth who choose to dropout of school and the road that leads to the PEN(itentiary) versus the PENCIL (education); (2) Disproportionate minority contact with the criminal justice system (a major concern in 38 states and one of four core issues of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act).
• Incarceration has ceased to be punishment and has become a right to passage and an industry where, in many instances, a percentage of youth and adults detained have abandoned or been driven from the school system into a non-achieving, goal-less framework which builds the capacity for an unbalanced criminal justice system.
• The PEN OR PENCIL Initiative will provide youth with the opportunity to exercise the definition of boycott as defined by Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, 7th Edition. The dictionary defines boycott as a “concerted refusal to have anything to do with (in this case, gun and gang violence and other disruptive behavior), usually as an expression of disapproval or to force acceptance of certain conditions (crime intervention and reduction of contact with law enforcement by youth).”
• When someone requests, “Let me read you your rights,” a youth (or adult) is likely to think first of the police warning given to criminal suspects in law enforcement custody or in a custodial situation in the United States before they are asked questions relating to commission of a crime. This phrase is associated most commonly with arrest and detention, the choice of “the pen(itentiary)”.
• Despite the heavy human toll and other sacrifices to gain freedoms and liberties in the United States, the reference to rights, as described above, are least likely to resonate with freedom.
• The boycott initiative is a national move to reinstate a more favorable reference and presence of mind to rights which supercede those of passage to jail or prison. As an important tool, the initiative uses many of the messages of human/civil rights conveyed through quality public service announcements by Youth for Human Rights International.
• Symbolizing the four decades since his death, for 40 days during a choice of four (4) cycles, youth will be able to stage a contemporary salute to history’s boycott and sit-in movements in hopes of inciting a contagious and indefinite national refusal give up their seats in class or to ride a bus or vehicle to jail or prison.
• Symbolizing the four decades since his death, for 40 days during a choice of four (4) cycles, youth will be able to stage a contemporary salute to history’s boycott and sit-in movements in hopes of inciting a contagious and indefinite national refusal give up their seats in class or to ride a bus or vehicle to jail or prison.
• To qualify to become an official 2007-2008 PEN OR PENCIL B.U.S. Boycott, 40 or more students per school/organization must agree to participate per site for a period of no less than 40 days.
• By signing a Freedom of Choice Agreement (a component which aligns with the story on which PEN OR PENCIL is based - See Historic Significance), youth will be able to rally their peers in voluntarily cooperative education exercises at site locations where they unanimously abstain from (boycott) acts of potentially violent, criminal, and harmful behavior.
^ Return to Top
Service Learning
• The PEN OR PENCIL B.U.S. Boycott Initiative aligns with the priorities of Learn and Serve America, a program management division of the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNS), to help youth make meaningful contributions to their communities while building that academic and civic skills.
• The National Alliance of Faith and Justice serves as an intermediary for CNS in mobilizing volunteers in conjunction with the MLK Day of Service. Cycle 3 of the PEN OR PENCIL B.U.S. Boycotts is specifically aligned with the MLK Day of Service. Other cycles align with the full year of service known as the Justice Sunday National Continuum. For more details on the continuum, visit the organizational website at www.nafj.org.
• Two of the boycott cycles will launch in conjunction with a new national initiative called the Semester of Service, a partnership of the Learn and Service America (CNS and Youth Serve America). The Semester of Service will begin on the MLK Day of Service, January 21, and will end April 27, 2008, Global Service Day.
• Consistent with historical leadership of high school students in the civil rights movement, Communities in School High Point, NC, will kickoff the national PEN OR PENCIL B.U.S Boycotts at two High Point high schools on October 24, 2007. These 40-day boycotts will include Make A Difference Day.
• In 2006, the program received its endorsement from the National Council for the Social Studies.
• Engaging student voice is a primary objective of service learning which commonly seeks to entwine classroom learning objectives with community service opportunities. Student voice is also present in student government programs, experiential education activities, and other forms of student-centered learning.
• As a condition of participation in the b.u.s. boycott, each youth must also participate in eight hours of service which may be conducted as a cooperative act or individual act of volunteerism.
•To enrich each participants’s knowledge of civic education, social studies, law education, and inspire a lifelong commitment to service and leadership, each local boycott will, in principle, also provide each site with the ability to translate the experience into its own student non-violence coordinating committee to salute the sacrifices and successful and productive engagement of students in making social change during the civil rights era.
• NAFJ has developed a document which applies terms from the National Service Clearinghouse to the implementation of the PEN OR PENCIL B.U.S Boycotts. This document serves as an excellent tool to expound further upon its unique service learning benefits.
Historical Significance
• Within the academic year of the 40-day boycott, the PEN OR PENCIL: Let Me Read You Your Rights Initiative (which includes the B.U.S. Boycott Series), requires reading of “The Road That Led to Somewhere,” the historic journey of the Walls family from Rockingham County, North Carolina to Canada in the quest for freedom and equal brother and sisterhood.
• This story, by Dr. Bryan Walls, a descendant, helps to promote tolerance, inclusion, and diversity which exemplifying the equal rights and freedoms sought for hundreds of years through today. It also helps to exemplify the strengths of marriage and family and allows us to begin the project with a snapshot of one of our nation’s earliest civil rights movements in contrast to today’s.
• The second of two required readings for participants of the PEN OR PENCIL B.U.S. Boycotts is the novel, “Silver Rights,” by Constance Curry, a veteran of the civil rights movement.
• The Carters were Mississippi Delta sharecroppers living on a cotton plantation in the 1960s when they dared to send seven of their thirteen children to desegregate their local school system in 1965 after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Enduring tough challanges, ultimately the seven who performed this historic act in Sunflower County each graduated from college at Ole Miss. Silver Rights and supporting media by NAFJ provides insight into the family's determination to obtain an education for their children despite the struggle, the point we wish to emphasize through this project.
• The more intensive implementation format of PEN OR PENCIL uses the family’s determination, as told page by page of the text, to provide a parallel experience to examine risk and resilience factors of participating students through structured reading activities conducted with caring and pre-screened adult mentors.
• With permission from the author, a 15-minute adaptation of the documentary, The Intolerable Burden, film has been created by NAFJ with supporting public service announcements produced by Youth for Human Rights International which helps youth to better and quickly grasp the correlation between the lack of education and the fast track to prison.
• The service learning aspect is inspired by the civic responsibility of youth during the boycott and sit-in movements of civil rights. The true story of Mrs. Mae Bertha Carter and her family's struggle for education in Sunflower County, Mississippi around freedom of choice forms the nucleus of the initiative’s learning and parallel experience.
• Sit-ins have been successfully used as forms of non-violence to draw attention to protest. This experience offers an opportunity for youth to successfully police themselves and to make relevant the generational divide.
• Students will initiate “sit-ins” where, in principle, they will refuse to relinquish their seat in their classrooms (demonstrating their individual and collective protest of life in the criminal justice system) and to promote the value of the pencil (education) to increase the benefit of civil and human rights against the consequences of truancy, dropping out, or other contentious acts.
• The sit-in movement furthered Dr. King’s idea of peaceful protest for social change. After the first sit in in Greensboro, North Carolina by students, the very next day, there were 24 students who joined the original four. In just two months, the sit-in movement spread to 54 cities in nine states, to include the first in High Point, NC, by 26 students of William Penn High School.
• Using a student-led framework of historic bus boycotts, the PEN OR PENCIL National B.U.S. Boycott Initiative will offer a chance to build capacity for improved behavior, reduced crime, increased enjoyment in learning, academic, and social skills, and emphasize the value to retain a seat in the classroom.
Boycotting Gun Violence as a Core Crime Prevention Agenda
• Although boycotts are encouraged to include a broad range of criminal behavior, because of the method by which Dr. King was killed, each boycott will advocate non-violence as a core priority, and will include the boycott of gun violence (whether random, by gangs, or provoked) as a central crime prevention focus.
• In a single year, 3,012 children and teens were killed by gunfire in the United States, according to the latest national data released in 2002. That is one child every three hours; eight children every day; and more than 50 children every week. And every year, at least 4 to 5 times as many kids and teens suffer from non-fatal firearm injuries. (Children's Defense Fund and National Center for Health Statistics).
• American children are more at risk from firearms than the children of any other industrialized nation. In one year, firearms killed no children in Japan, 19 in Great Britain, 57 in Germany, 109 in France, 153 in Canada, and 5,285 in the United States. (Centers for Disease Control)
• Every day, more than 80 Americans die from gun violence. (Coalition to Stop Gun Violence). The rate of firearm deaths among kids under age 15 is almost 12 times higher in the United States than in 25 other industrialized countries combined. (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) American kids are 16 times more likely to be murdered with a gun, 11 times more likely to commit suicide with a gun, and nine times more likely to die from a firearm accident than children in 25 other industrialized countries combined. (Centers for Disease Control)
• October, one of several critical factors for Cycle One of the boycott series, has become the official month for recognizing and celebrating the practice of crime prevention, while promoting awareness of important issues such as victimization, volunteerism, and creating safer, more caring communities.
• The PEN OR PENCIL B.U.S. Boycott Initiative builds upon the following principles exemplified by the National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC):
- Preventing crime requires tailoring to local needs
- Preventing crime is linked with solving social problems
• As part of the strategic plan of NCPC, through this initiative, NAFJ will be able to synchronize the b.u.s. boycott campaign with the National Crime Prevention Month campaign to achieve maximum national impact and youth personal responsibility against crime.
Intensifying Community Engagement
• The PEN OR PENCIL B.U.S. Boycott Initiative provides an excellent opportunity to connect faith and community constituents with law enforcement and educational constituents.
• Religious institutions played a key role as staging locations for many of the country’s non-violent social protests. True to the history of other movements such as the bus boycotts of Montgomery, Baton Rouge, and Tallahassee, youth must stage a mass meeting (student orientation) to commence their boycott during which they clearly rally and motivate partners of all discipline to help support their goals to abstain from personal and collective involvement in crime for the duration and hopefully beyond the boycott.
• Partnering with other organizational stakeholders for expertise and community insight, the mass meeting will provide an excellent opportunity for non-traditional and previously uninvolved citizens, parents, organizations, religious institutions, and others to unite around current pressing community issues adversely affecting youth which have close ties to local boycott objectives.
Disproportionate Minority Contact: A Focus for Social Justice
• While families/communities are significantly impacted by the results, there is a SEVERE gap between a practical down-to-earth understanding of this problem’s existence and variables versus the extensive effort to measure DMC. The void is most severe with affected populations, to include knowing the contact points and defining any partnership the public can have in reducing DMC.
• Adopting disproportionate minority contact as an option for the social justice element of each boycott will provide youth and adults with the opportunity to learn about a core component of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act.
• Social justice refers to a concept of a just society where “justice” refers to more than just the administration of laws. It is based on the idea of a society which gives individuals and groups fair treatment and a just share of the benefits of society.
• The civil rights movement in this country has been instrumental in making changes in our society. The dismal outcomes experienced by many youth of color-epitomized by their over-representation in the juvenile justice system-attest to the fact that our nation continues to struggle.
• Pursuant to the above, among the pressing social justice issues in juvenile justice to be a focus of the boycotts, states are required to assess and address the disproportionate contact of youth of color at all points in the justice system – from arrest to detention to confinement. Studies indicate that youth of color receive tougher sentences and are more likely to be incarcerated than white youth for the same offenses.
• With youth of color making up one-third of the youth population but two-thirds of youth in contact, boycotts will call attention to the need for states to go beyond the current requirement to merely gather information and assess the reason for disproportionate minority contact to more intensive action.
• Much like the unfair conditions during the civil rights movement, until broader visibility and more accountability is focused on this matter, it will continue to lack sufficient juvenile delinquency prevention efforts and the system improvements to assure equal treatment of all youth.
