Oakland Leaf :: Community Transformation Through Creative Education. After school programs for youth. Art, murals, food gardening, media, music, performance arts, leadership, peace, justice.

What's New Top



Vision Top

At Youth Roots, our vision is that youth earn their rightful place in society by rooting themselves in their community as prominent leaders, culture producers, and change agents. They engage in a regular practice of critical examination, production, self-reflection, healing, critique, and love. Equipped with New Media advocacy tools of the 21st century, Youth Roots use a foundation of critical social theory and knowledge of self to act & interact as Street Scholar ARTivists* (Asante, 2008), event organizers, & multi-media public communicators against intersecting oppressions By Any Medium Necessary (Asante, 2008). ARTivists do not do art for art's sake. They use their talents to produce a public counterculture of ideas, images, words, music, and performances. Their performance of power is through the power of artistic performance. They stand on the shoulders of the traditional activists & artists who came before them and who are among them, but because art can critique, influence, and inspire change, they are not the same as those who organize through those commonly used direct action methods. By not using those traditional methods do not make them any less activist. There are multiple roles for people to make change. Youth Roots does that through their actions. They do that through their art. They do that through their ARTivism. They dig deep. Root in. Reach out. Rise up.

Referenced Work: * Asante Jr, M.K. (2008). It's bigger than hip hop: The rise of the post-hip-hop generation. New York: St. Martin's Press.

Program Overview Top
Youth ROOTS, or Youth Reaching deep to Overcome Oppression by planting Transformative Seeds of change in the community, grows from 6 Core Beliefs and Commitments:
     1. We Believe in Love;
     2. We Believe in Respect;
     3. We Believe in Becoming;
     4. We Believe in FAMily;
     5. We Believe in Hustle & Discipline; and
     6. We Believe in the Street Scholar Artivist.

Youth Roots is the first line of high school leadership branches within Oakland Leaf. It provides youth with out-of-school opportunities for anti-oppression work, critical inquiry & examination, media production, visual, performing, & video arts, rites of passage, adventure education, event production, workshop facilitation/conference presentations, and character development. The program offers diverse opportunities for personal growth for up to 30 high school students directly for a minimum of 2 days per week (Tue & Thu) from 4:30-7:30 pm at the Oakland Leaf Mother Garden in the Fruitvale District of Oakland. In addition to the regular program days, there are 10 more days required for Rites of Passage activities, Brotherhood-Sisterhood Cyphers, Performances, Events, and Celebrations.
Departing from the Youth Development Model, Youth Roots employs these "10 Seeds to Critical Collective Cultivation":
     1. Critical Social Theory and Intersecting Oppressions as a Sociological Framework
     2. Sisterhood & Brotherhood Cyphers as an adulthood rite of passage Framework
     3. Language, Literacy, & Knowledge of Self as a Critical Pedagogical Framework
     4. Hip Hop as a Cultural Production Framework
     5. Youth Development as a Structural Framework
     6. Rites of Passage as a Spiritual & Physical Training Framework
     7. Artivist Culture Production as a Youth Outcome
     8. Young Elders as a Youth Outcome
     9. Street Scholar Public Intellectualism as a Youth Outcome
     10. Power of Performance as a Youth Outcome

Each Youth Root develops 4 personas to round out themselves as effective communicators: Word Warriors, Just Journalists, Cyba Souljas, Image Infiltratas.

From these personas, each Youth ROOT develops their agency by learning and getting authentic practice to use concrete skills in Spoken Word Poetry, Emceeing, Music Production, Graphic Design, Digital Photography, Digital Video, Digital Journalism (via Podcasting, Digital Storytelling, & Video Production), and Event Production.


Find more photos like this on our Oakland Leaf ning.com site.

A Photograph Goes Here: Define VIA the CSS only!

"Either we’re gonna tell our own history or our oppressors will make a history for us."Assata Shakur

Older Video Work Top

Digital Poems by Youth ROOTS 2008-2009
Welcome 2 Oakland

iMovie Digital Poems - Deconstructing Our Identity










Digital Poems from Previous Years
Murder Dubbz                                                          Durty 30z

From High St. to the 70s                                          The Town

Visit Oakland Leaf's online Store for Youth ROOTS CDs and T-shirts:
www.oaklandleaf.org/html/store.html

Contact us at Youth Roots: Top

     Jonas Juhlin, Lead Instructor
     Daniel Gray Kontar, Program Coordinator

For more information about our programs...
phone: (510) 564-4334
fax: (510) 969-5694
or email us here...

Love is an Action