Youth organizers shout out to young people in the juvenile detention center. Isiah ThoughtPoet Veney
AFSC Chi Peace’s youth programming this year is focused on the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) and the juvenile justice complex. These are not so different from anti-militarism work.
We do a lot of abolition-based work that lifts up alternatives, but we haven’t done a lot of work with incarcerated youth themselves. If we want our work to be more grounded, then we need to talk with youth inside prison and learn how we - as people on the outside - can help.
Chi Peace is collaborating with the Final 5 Campaign, which is currently in a revamping phase, refreshing their coalition and principles. We reached out to them about working together.
Their work centers youth who are currently or formerly incarcerated as they seek to close the final five youth prisons in Illinois. They go into prisons and collaborate with Liberation Library to bring books and programming to youth. Youth serve as interns both inside and outside prison.
The current Chi Peace YAP cohort of about a dozen youth is centered on impacted youth, both those who were formerly incarcerated or youth with family members who’ve been incarcerated or detained, either formerly or currently. We’ll be looking at abolition, its history, the Final 5 campaign, the juvenile justice system, and the school-to prison pipeline.
Final 5 does an event at the end of every year called Loud and Lit Up. Community members go outside the youth prison in Chicago and sing and share chocolates. Youth inside put signs in their windows. It’s over the holidays and is done in solidarity with youth inside. We’ll do it again this December.
Alicia Brown, a former Chi Peace Michael McConnell Fellow, continues work with Final 5 as one of their main organizers. We look forward to working closely with Alicia.
For more info, check out this reel on Chi Peace Instagram.