Action Committee
Too often, students have decisions made about them that impact them and their lives without ever being brought to the decision-making table. Action Committee exists as a revolutionary intervention in one of the most segregated school systems in the country.
Action Committee serves as the organizing and campaigns arm of The YA-YA Network. We dream of a world free of over-policed schools and well-funded restorative justice programs, and build campaigns to make those visions a reality. AC is currently seeking applicants to take up the challenge of building this world. We do so by:
Engaging political leaders and elected officials
Recruiting other youth participants to engage in our work
Planning direct actions, protests, workshops, and other events
Creating story-based strategic media campaigns that raise awareness
For more information contact: joinyaya@yayanetwork.org
Action Committee Application is always open.
In NYC, 1 in 2 Black high school students go through metal detectors compared to 1 in 7 of their White or Asian peers.
There are 5,000 SSA agents in NYC Public schools.
That is more than the number of guidance counselors (2,881 ) and social workers (1,335) combined that are divided amongst the entire population of 1.1 million students attending public schools in NYC
The entryway to the School-to-Prison Pipeline
Metal detectors are figuratively and literally the first step in criminalizing working students and students of color.
Students that Go through a Metal Detector
Our campaign to bring greater transparency and accountability around metal detectors and scanning in NYC schools.
Catch Us at PEP
YA-YA’s Campaign operates on two fronts: media-based, and policy-based.
When it comes to policy, here’s what we do:
Every month or so YA-YA’s give testimonies at the Panel for Education Policy, the governing body of the DOE. We give testimonies around our experiences with metal detectors and as students within the education system. We also give real-time policy recommendations to the panel, specifically on Chancellors Regulation A-432. Listen below to some of our testimonies!
Leah testifying at a PEP meeting
Gillian testifying at PEP
Amirat’s testimony
Tenzin’s testimony
We’re Not Done!
Because of our testimonies and our constant outreach and agitation of key targets within the DOE, YA-YA was able to get a meeting around our recommendations with key members of the DOE, where they were approved of. But we’re not done! Our recommendations have yet to be implemented and our foot is still on the gas!
Our Social Media Campaign
Since 2018, YA-YA’s have interviewed stakeholders from students to teachers, to parents around their experiences around metal detectors, the education system, their visions for safe schools that utilize restorative justice, and much more as a part of our media campaign.
We interviewed folks from many different community-based organizations like HOLLA, Brotherhood-Sisterhood Sol, RYTF, and Parent Action Committee to put a face to these numbers, and humanize the issue. What we came away with were testimonials of experiences that no student or parent should endure while being in the education system
One of these testimonies stuck with us; The Tale of Two Schools.
Right across the street from one another. One predominantly white, the other predominantly Black. Can you guess which one had permanent metal detectors? Members of RYTF who came from these two schools shared with us what this was like, and what they concluded from their experiences. Check it out below.
“They actually find it really dehumanizing, they often compare it to prisons, like they feel like they’re prisoners. And oftentimes... having to go through them is just dehumanizing”—
Tofumi, RYTF member, speaking on the experiences of her peers. Tofumi went to Scholar’s Academy, the school across the street without metal detectors