Next Steps Liaison Project

In 2014 I walked into the San Francisco Juvenile Hall for the first time as a volunteer. What I saw was a shock to my system. I could feel the trauma kids carried ... and I knew that locking them up wasn't gonna begin a healing process, or "correct" them. It certainly wasn't calling out all they had already survived at the hands of systemic racism. Seeing primarily black and brown youth locked up, knowing that white kids were protected by their privilege... the idea for Next Steps Liaison Project began forming in my heart, though I didn't know it at the time. In 2016, we launched and have been fighting for the lives of black youth every day ever since. This is my protest.