The Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition

Our nation is currently undergoing a major racial, social, and economic crisis. Our people, our communities, and our school systems are more segregated now than ever. Students from low-income communities, and communities of color across the board, are forced to travel along a pipeline that stripes them from their identity as students, and places them in isolation behind bars. As of 2008, the United States has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world, at 754 persons in prison or jail per 100,000. With less than 5% of the world's population, our nation makes up 23.4% of the world's prison population. More disturbing is the reality that we, the US, incarcerate more youth than any other country. Students in the US are under attack by over policing in schools, metal detectors, security cameras, barbed windows, surprised scanning, zero-tolerance policies, and underfunded schools. More emphasis is placed on ‘disciplining’ students than in producing well-educated citizens to compete in the global job market. Breaking the Pipeline will serve three purposes: the first is to educate the masses on the school-to-prison pipeline, to deepen our understanding of the root causes and examine alternatives to policing like restorative justice practices, and finally, to build a core group of organizations nationally that are all like-minded in bring forth true educational revolution. Through multimedia, panel presentations, and small group discussions, we hope to open up a space for people to challenge us, and each other, and leave with a deeper responsibility for their own people who suffer from this injustice.

This workshop will demonstrate a leadership development model that builds leaders who are accountable to each other, the organization, and their own values about the type of leader they want to be. This involves creating space for everyone to provide critical feedback in the short-term and agitation around long-term self-interest – providing a challenging environment that is intentional about building individual strengths and organizational power. This is done through feedback and agitation. In providing critical feedback, this follows the “4 I’s of Feedback” – Intention, Incident, Impact and Invention. This positive feedback loop opens with an honest and direct statement of the intention of the feedback. The person giving feedback would then identify a specific incident and the impact it left on either the individual or the group. The feedback cycle would close with an invention about how similar situations could be handled in the future. Agitation, the second method of accountability, is more direct and challenges the person being held accountable to think critically about their actions and its relation to their stated self-interest. It holds individuals accountable for actions that are unproductive for the greater movement. Agitation allows leaders to confront each other in an honest a direct way. In addition, creating accountable youth leaders, creates a leadership pipeline, where leaders are trained to not only be in the forefront of the social justice movement, but also to become paid staff and organizers training the new generation of student leaders.

Our nation is currently undergoing a major racial, social, and economic crisis. Our people, our communities, and our school systems are more segregated now than ever. Students from low-income communities, and communities of color across the board, are forced to travel along a pipeline that stripes them from their identity as students, and places them in isolation behind bars. As of 2008, the United States has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world, at 754 persons in prison or jail per 100,000. With less than 5% of the world's population, our nation makes up 23.4% of the world's prison population. More disturbing is the reality that we, the US, incarcerate more youth than any other country. Students in the US are under attack by over policing in schools, metal detectors, security cameras, barbed windows, surprised scanning, zero-tolerance policies, and underfunded schools. More emphasis is placed on ‘disciplining’ students than in producing well-educated citizens to compete in the global job market. Breaking the Pipeline will serve three purposes: the first is to educate the masses on the school-to-prison pipeline, to deepen our understanding of the root causes and examine alternatives to policing like restorative justice practices, and finally, to build a core group of organizations nationally that are all like-minded in bring forth true educational revolution. Through multimedia, panel presentations, and small group discussions, we hope to open up a space for people to challenge us, and each other, and leave with a deeper responsibility for their own people who suffer from this injustice.

This workshop will demonstrate a leadership development model that builds leaders who are accountable to each other, the organization, and their own values about the type of leader they want to be. This involves creating space for everyone to provide critical feedback in the short-term and agitation around long-term self-interest – providing a challenging environment that is intentional about building individual strengths and organizational power. This is done through feedback and agitation. In providing critical feedback, this follows the “4 I’s of Feedback” – Intention, Incident, Impact and Invention. This positive feedback loop opens with an honest and direct statement of the intention of the feedback. The person giving feedback would then identify a specific incident and the impact it left on either the individual or the group. The feedback cycle would close with an invention about how similar situations could be handled in the future. Agitation, the second method of accountability, is more direct and challenges the person being held accountable to think critically about their actions and its relation to their stated self-interest. It holds individuals accountable for actions that are unproductive for the greater movement. Agitation allows leaders to confront each other in an honest a direct way. In addition, creating accountable youth leaders, creates a leadership pipeline, where leaders are trained to not only be in the forefront of the social justice movement, but also to become paid staff and organizers training the new generation of student leaders.