Red Hook Youth Court Case Study

It was hard for me to grab a life jacket or a rope to resist the speed of contaminated water washing people of color down the School-Prison Pipeline. My eyes watered as the speed, caused by zero tolerance, accelerated black men and women tumbling down the hole. I reminisce from my first job at Red Hook Youth Court the fundamentals of restorative justice: a judicial method where instead of incarcerating people for their crimes, offenders direct to a more positive action in the community. Before entering this job, my parents continuously instructed, “be a leader, be black, and be alive”. Questions spiral in my head from the latter. I was in good health, repelled from trouble, and I only loved to film so what was the danger?
“Be alive” struck
My elation soared to working alongside colleagues who share the same passion of cinematic interests, going on tangents on notable directors like Charles Burnett, analyzing the aesthetically-pleasing cinematography of Wes Anderson, and verbalizing limitlessly on the mutinous style of Stanley. However, I entered an internship with young African American and Latino adults who are either enrolled in alternative school, dropped out of high school, or neglected institutional obedience. These students decorated their bodies with polychromatic tattoos, dark-brushed moustaches and beards, and do-rags, like those in East New York. I assumed there would be lack of productivity, lack of cinematic interest, and lack of respect for the teacher. However, my assumption proved wrong when my film teachers assembled us in a circle to discuss their identity, influencing the topic of the passion project I stood dumbfounded to their empathic responses on how they traveled in and out of prison and cops stopping them for nonsensical reasons. My tears rushed down, hearing the painful experience was to have their opportunities revoked because they are blacklisted from not surviving the School-Prison Pipeline. One of the interviewers, Alden, age nineteen, shared the physical qualities of the men in my neighborhood, but exhibited vivacious characteristics, talking passionately about being a black youth with a baby