Say It!: Story-telling as Organizing was a program that trained 15 youth interns in the skills of participatory research and storytelling as organizing. The youth story-tellers engaged over 400 local youth in their communities, neighborhoods, and schools to identify key issues youth are facing, the potential root causes of those issues, and strategies for organizing youth movements to transform those issues.

For us, story-telling is political. Every story raises young people’s voices, sheds light on their most pressing issues, and inspires visions and strategies for local social change. These stories are political beginnings of the political change we want to make in our homes, neighborhoods, communities, schools, and worlds.

Acting Our Age was a project created by SYPP member Gionna Vaughn.  It was a theatre group where youth wrote, directed, and performed short theatre pieces that raised awareness about the struggles that young people face each and every day.  As Gionna says, the strength of Acting Our Age is showing, not telling, why issues of social justice and youth empowerment are so important.

If you are interested in re-initiating a social justice theatre project like Acting Our Age, please contact SYPP!

SYPP ran a two-year campaign against the WASL graduation requirement. The WASL is the Washington Assessment of Student Learning, a standardized test  law-makers wanted students to pass in order to graduate beginning June 2008.  A core of 25 youth organizers coordinated and led this effort.

The EJC Analysis:

1. High Stakes standardized tests hurt our communities and the lives of young people of color, low income youth, immigrant youth, young people with disabilities, and other marginalized youth. They aggravate and support inequities, and institutional and cultural oppressions that already exist within the education system and do not motivate marginalized students to do better in school.

2. If the WASL test gets used as a high school exit exam, what will happen to the hundreds and thousands of students that will be denied their diploma? Having a high school diploma is critical to having opportunities for higher education and finding living wage work. Exit exams separate students and predetermine their likely roles in society. They track high performing students into an elite group and track low performing students into a disposable societal class that fill our military, prisons and criminal justice system, and create a low wage labor force.

3. The WASL is an unfair measure of assessment. Conditions that encourage good performance are not equitable or accessible to all students or even all schools. Obvious examples of this are English Language Learner students who are expected to take the WASL test in English but clearly have a language barrier that prevents them from being able to accurately reflect their knowledge and severely diminishes their chances of passing the test.

4. High stakes standardized tests are not a real solution to the low academic achievement of our public education system. They use punitive motivation that increase the barriers for marginalized students to succeed in school while at the same time redirecting resources from our already depleted educational funding to support the tests. Funding based on test performance also hurts schools – tests do not generate new resources, instead they take funding away from low performing schools which puts them in cycles of poverty that might lead to closure or privatization.

Our Vision:
The Education Justice System envisioned a school system that:

- Provides quality education to all students by offering a broader curricula that encourages critical thinking instead of ‘teaching to the test’, uses a multicultural perspective & is relevant to students’ experiences, allows students to access courses that correspond to their career goals and interests and holds all students to high academic standards (No TRACKING);

- Is a safe environment for all students, especially those students who are targeted because of their gender, sexuality, ability, class, ethnicity or religion; and protects student privacy;

- has protected funding so that schools can remain free and public, keep a variety of electives and bilingual education, continue to offer college prep programs like running start, find and retain qualified and diverse teachers and staff, offer smaller classes, maintain clean and safe environments, and provide up-to-date technological resources and equipment;

- encourages student success by providing teachers and counselors of color, encouraging all students to reach for high standards, and encouraging parent involvement, and;

- represents students’ opinion by allowing students to have equal power in decision-making.

The Action!

Over the course of two years,  we did some pretty cool things!

- We created a WASL Haunted High that showed why the WASL is detrimental to student futures and communities of color. About 300 people attended.

- We sent nearly 500 Christmas Cards to Governor Gregoire. The cards were petitions that read “All I Want for Christmas is to Graduate” and were signed by high school students.

- We crashed a meeting of the Student Learning Committee of the Seattle School Board to deliver over 400 Anti-WASL Valentines. The Valentines were Anti-WASL petitions signed by high school students.

- Youth organizers went to Olympia and lobbied their representatives!

- Were guests on two radio shows (KKWF 100.7 and KBCS 91.3)

- Held a student forum so youth could give their opinions and suggestions about the graduation requirement. Future Superintendent Randy Dorn attended.

In the end, we scored a partial, but significant victory. SYPP contributed to the public outcry which resulted in the postponement of the science WASL until 2012 and the indefinite postponement of the math WASL.  In 2009, the new superintendent of public instruction decided to undo and replace the WASL altogether.  Go SYPP!

Youth and staff created a two-month program that combined anti-oppression analysis-building around gender and sexuality with youth-designed mini-projects.

From our 15 Gender Justice School participants, we recruited 3 new youth members, created a new button campaign, and adopted new institutional practices that helped us better live our new gender analysis—such as trans-inclusive preferred gender-pronoun checks, banning the “b-word” in our space, and expanding our racial justice framework to intersect with a gender and reproductive justice framework.  Graduates of the Gender Justice School represented youth in the Community Voices phase of the NW Reproductive Justice Coalition.

African Youth United (AYU) was started in the hopes of educating  African youth with the history and legacies of their cultures. The project leaders recognized that in uniting African youth it meant not just African immigrant youth but all  African youth.

AYU took a large step in bridging the gap between African immigrant and African American youth. In the beginning, as with all things, it was not a simple task to undertake. A common bond was created between the youth through education, trust, and understanding. After respect and trust were established among the youth many lasting friendships were formed.

AYU was passionate about uniting all youth in the struggle for equality and understanding. Its members strongly believed that no matter where you come from we are all members of the same family, the human family.

In , AYU became its own agency.  For more information please contact Ayan Musse at amusse27@msn.com