My name is Veronica Martinez. I am a high school student and youth organizer at the Youth Justice Coalition. I am also a single parent of two little girls. I live in South Central Los Angeles. In elementary school, my mom wasn’t able to care for me and my two little sisters, and I was trying hard to raise all of us. The system discovered that we were alone, and I spent four years in foster care until the age of twelve. In elementary school, I loved to learn. I was an honor student and was at the top of my class at my fifth grade graduation. But I was also becoming more and more angry and lonely without my family.
In junior high school, I started acting out not in ways that were violent, but just disrespectful. I was never sent to counseling. The school never asked what it was like for me without my family, or even why I was acting so mad. The only thing they did was punish me, suspend me, and that just pushed me into the streets where I had no guidance or discipline. Eventually, my junior high school permanently expelled me. I was twelve years old.
When I was pushed out of school, I hit the streets, drinking, getting high, and running into trouble. The streets only offer two futures: incarceration and death. At the age of thirteen, I was arrested and went to juvenile hall for the first time for vandlism. My fighting skills really improved as my skills as a student disappeared.
I was never prepared in juvenile hall or lock-down placements to come back to the community. I wasn’t given any transcripts, any identification such as a birth certificate or a state ID, or provided with any real educational options or referrals to schools, community-based organizations, or access to free healthcare. So, when I came home from being locked up, it was very difficult for me to get back into school. Schools and even entire districts would deny me due to my criminal background. That also happened with job opportunities. Meanwhile, probation officers threatened to “violate” me and incarcerate me again if I didn’t find a school.
I was getting recycled in and out of jail without any guidance. I started to believe that there was no future for me besides being a shame to my family and a menace to my community.
In 2010, my friend and I were having a conversation and she said she had graduated from Free L.A. High School. Little did I know, the school was run by the Youth Justice Coalition. When I was thirteen years old and homeless on the run, the YJC helped me get into a shelter. So I felt relief when I heard that they now had a high school. They started the school because so many YJC youth were banned from educational opportunities because they had been arrested. In three years, over one hundred youth have graduated.
I have testified many times in Sacramento in order to pass laws to reduce suspension and end the discrimination against youth returning to school upon release from incarceration. In Los Angeles we were active in the struggle to reduce fines and court appearances for truancy. We are fighting to get police out of our schools and replace them with community intervention/peace workers. We have fought to end the practice of billing families for the incarceration of their children. (Families were losing their wages, tax refunds, and even homes.) We have blocked the County Sheriff’s proposed $2.6 billion expansion of the county jail system. Los Angeles already has the biggest jail system in the world.
For nearly all of us at the Youth Justice Coalition, our push into the prison system started with our push out of school. I hope that all U.S. citizens will support Justice for Families and build schools not jails, investing in college prep and not prison prep. Without school, we have no future beyond bare survival in low-wage jobs, death in the streets, or a lifetime in and out of prison.
My name is Veronica Martinez. I am a high school student and youth organizer at the Youth Justice Coalition. I am also a single parent of two little girls. I live in South Central Los Angeles. In elementary school, my mom wasn’t able to care for me and my two little sisters, and I was trying hard to raise all of us. The system discovered that we were alone, and I spent four years in foster care until the age of twelve. In elementary school, I loved to learn. I was an honor student and was at the top of my class at my fifth grade graduation. But I was also becoming more and more angry and lonely without my family.
In junior high school, I started acting out—not in ways that were violent, but just disrespectful. I was never sent to counseling. The school never asked what it was like for me without my family, or even why I was acting so mad. The only thing they did was punish me, suspend me, and that just pushed me into the streets where I had no guidance or discipline. Eventually, my junior high school permanently expelled me. I was twelve years old.
When I was pushed out of school, I hit the streets, drinking, getting high, and running into trouble. The streets only offer two futures: incarceration and death. At the age of thirteen, I was arrested and went to juvenile hall for the first time for vandlism. My fighting skills really improved as my skills as a student disappeared.
I was never prepared in juvenile hall or lock-down placements to come back to the community. I wasn’t given any transcripts, any identification such as a birth certificate or a state ID, or provided with any real educational options or referrals to schools, community-based organizations, or access to free healthcare. So, when I came home from being locked up, it was very difficult for me to get back into school. Schools and even entire districts would deny me due to my criminal background. That also happened with job opportunities. Meanwhile, probation officers threatened to “violate” me and incarcerate me again if I didn’t find a school.
I was getting recycled in and out of jail without any guidance. I started to believe that there was no future for me besides being a shame to my family and a menace to my community.
In 2010, my friend and I were having a conversation and she said she had graduated from Free L.A. High School. Little did I know, the school was run by the Youth Justice Coalition. When I was thirteen years old and homeless on the run, the YJC helped me get into a shelter. So I felt relief when I heard that they now had a high school. They started the school because so many YJC youth were banned from educational opportunities because they had been arrested. In three years, over one hundred youth have graduated.
I have testified many times in Sacramento in order to pass laws to reduce suspension and end the discrimination against youth returning to school upon release from incarceration. In Los Angeles we were active in the struggle to reduce fines and court appearances for truancy. We are fighting to get police out of our schools and replace them with community intervention/peace workers. We have fought to end the practice of billing families for the incarceration of their children. (Families were losing their wages, tax refunds, and even homes.) We have blocked the County Sheriff’s proposed $2.6 billion expansion of the county jail system—Los Angeles already has the biggest jail system in the world.
For nearly all of us at the Youth Justice Coalition, our push into the prison system started with our push out of school. I hope that all U.S. citizens will support Justice for Families and build schools not jails, investing in college prep and not prison prep. Without school, we have no future beyond bare survival in low-wage jobs, death in the streets, or a lifetime in and out of prison.