Saturday morning at 8am on WCLK's The Local Take I spoke with Kisha Bird, director of Youth policy with CLASP - the Center for Law and Social Policy. This is part of our our ongoing conversation about the school to prison pipeline and the struggles for justice and equality for the young people in our community.
I ask Ms. Bird to tell us about CLASP, this national, nonpartisan, non-profit agency with the mission of advancing policy solutions for low income people. She shares that CLASP is celebrating fifty years and that they came into being to lobby our government on behalf of low-income citizens who can't afford lobbyist.
Ms. Bird speaks to CLASP providing support for young people not from the perspective that they need to be fixed but that they need to be heard. I ask about research showing 1 in 10 youth in Georgia's 4th and 5th congressional districts who are coming of age in this period of mass incarceration are not being aligned with school or work.
When I asked if we were poised to lose a generation, she said that we won't lose today's young people, but we have to address their challenges with new ideas. Our education systems needs to be able to engage with young people in different ways.
The CLASP conversation is taking place in Atlanta on April 16th with Congresswoman Lucy McBath and Ian Bridgeforth founder of Georgia Shift. It will be streamed online here.