Earlier this month, an innovative youth program called We’Ced Youth Media, located in Merced, California, co-hosted an event called #SchoolsnotPrisons Merced. The event’s stated purpose was “to educate the Merced community about the impact of the school-to-prison pipeline and mass incarceration.” A portion of the event included poetry that expressed the pain of incarceration, both for the one who is locked-up, and for those who lose a family member to jail or prison.

What is particularly affecting about the poems, three of which you can read below, is the fact that each is clearly written from personal experience. In fact, one of the poems was written by Claudia Gonzalez, the program’s director, whose own background of former gang membership and run-ins with the criminal justice system before she rerouted her life and got a full scholarship to U.C. Berkeley, give her an unusual facility for connecting with the youth she now helps to mentor and inspire.

[For more of this story, written by Celeste Fremon, go to http://witnessla.com/youth-of-...other-urgent-issues/]