Tuesday November 12, 2013 the Oakland City Council’s Public Safety Committee discussed the potential implementation of a youth curfew that would criminalize anyone under 18 found in any public place, and even in businesses, inside the city of Oakland between 10pm and 6am.
Dozens of young people, mostly Black and Latino teenagers, crowded the City Hall’s main chamber in opposition of the law. Oakland teens Guisela Ramos, Diana Bonilla, and Daniel Ramos, accompanied by Pablo Paredes, an organizer with the immigrants rights group 67 Sueños, addressed the city councilors with the following poem. Counterpunch has added links to the text where the authors refer to actual events.
I’m here today, to say
Curfews don’t reduce crime, they
Criminalize us, and our day to day
I’m here to shed a light on some inconvenient truth
About how our society treats youth
They won’t arrest my 40 year old pimp or the 30 year old john
But they will arrest me when my pimp is gone
White kids will puff pot in parks in the hills past ten, and it will all be chill
But if you’re brown and black on the flats, enforcement will have a different feel
They told me once the definition of insanity
Was to try the same thing over and over, expecting differently
Youth curfews don’t recognize our humanity
Haven’t worked and in fact they make us indifferent
Youth weren’t involved at any stage of the process
But we will suffer the losses
5 schools closed at one school board meeting for lack of funds
But we never experience a lack of sexy squad cars, or a lack of guns.
Police ride chargers through impoverished slums
They even “pimped” out a low rider for fun
Being detained for a curfew violation
Led to my deportation, and my family’s separation
Pardon my indignation, but this was never about safety, it was about the insecurity of a nation
They fly drones over borders, and place checkpoints on highways
Ghetto birds over gated communities around my way
Curefews, and Andy Lopez, only 13, bleeds in his own driveway
And you wonder why youth look at pigs sideways?
30 year olds are the ones who commit homicides
But to mess with their freedom is political suicide
So we focus on youth and our future dies, disenfranchised
Marginalized, criminalized, but Gallo wont even look me in the eyes
I wonder what he has to hide
Could it be, that he was me?
Profiled at age 13
In these same streets
And felt the fear, the anxiety that we breathe?
And the guilt of becoming what he
Tried to leave?
Is it making it too hard for him to see
That all we yearn to be, is free?
Are you feeling guilty?
Do you have nightmares of Andy’s death certificate signed in the same ink as this policy?
I couldn’t watch my mom get punched and kicked
Couldn’t sit through, or stomach my family’s shit
Couldn’t watch my mom get battered
Couldn’t listen to her cheek bones shatter
Couldn’t watch her bruised eyes grow fatter
But it was past ten and the fact that I didn’t feel safe in my own home didn’t matter
White people are allowed to feel safe
Black and brown folks have to scatter
When we talk public safety, we never mean the latter
I’m here today, to say
Curfews don’t reduce crime, they
Criminalize us and our day to day.