Equal opportunities for all

“In Chicago (as in other cities in the United States) young black men are more likely to go to prison than college.” This shouldn’t be the case in America. Another stat showed that in Illinois, 20,000 more black men were in prison than enrolled in college. A big root cause is the war on drugs and how that leads to mass incarceration. This is a big structural issue because in order to come out of a low income situation you need to attend college to have a better chance of getting a better job, but if people are being put in prison before they even have a chance than the cycle just continues and nothing changes in these neighborhoods.

I think what she is saying is that people know of certain issues but rarely speak up or act in a way to help these issues. Instead of finding a way to change certain things we just leave it be and don’t try and help out. Well many students are undocumented at NextGen so DACA being repealed was big and hopefully that can get put back in place. Another thing is that many of these students are first generation college students. This past week a student accepted his admission to Chapman and his whole family was there. He was the first to go to college in his family and you could see how big of a deal it was to his family. With the help of NextGen, he was able to use his talents and get to a great college.

I read about the Human Rights Coalition. I agree with some of their messages but not all. I think that showing the public the injustice in our justice and prison systems is a good strategy, but they say the ultimate goal is to abolish prisons. Prison is necessary for those who commit crimes but what we should be focusing on is making sure that people know they have other options than a life that can lead to prison and to make sure we don’t have this school to prison pipeline. They also help with the rehabilitation of prisons once they are released so that they can function in society after being in prison. I think that is a good thing because currently prisons just release people without anything. They have gone through a lot in prison and need to find a way to get back into a normal life.