"It Is Our Duty to Win": Youth Participatory Action Research in Community

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 11
  In Roundtable Session: Research for Transformation: Power and Possibilities of Community Engaged and Collaborative Research

Abstract

Objective: At the most fundamental level, community based research projects are a collaborative process between a community and researcher(s). By involving members of a community at multiple levels, and incorporating and validating multiple sources of knowledge, researchers have argued that a central goal of this method is to understand and support the specific community’s needs and foster social change accordingly (Merenstien, 2015). From this premise, other research methodologies have emerged, such as Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR). YPAR challenges traditional social science research approaches to teach “young people how to inquire about complex power relations, histories of struggle, and the consequences of oppression directly related to their lives” (Desai, 2019). This paper highlights that formulation of a YPAR project initiated by Black, Latinx, and South East Asian youth activists in Los Angeles County.

Theoretical framework: In this paper, we draw on the YPAR literature and writings in the Black Radical Tradition to reflect on the possibilities of a youth initiated YPAR approach. As Robin Kelley writes about the Black Radical Tradition “progressive, social movements do not simply produce statistics and narratives of oppression; rather, the best ones do what great poetry always does: transport us to another place, compel us to relive horrors and more importantly, enables us to imagine a new society” (Kelly, 2002: 9). We ground our reflections on the possibilities and limitations of YPAR in the context of a coalition nine youth community-based organizations working to decriminalize youth of color.

Methods and Findings: The findings of this paper are presented in three parts. The first part draws on participant observations to detail what a youth initiated YPAR approach entails and its significance for Black, Latinx, and South East Asian youth. The second part presents survey findings from the Safety and Youth Justice Survey. The primary themes presented here are related to school climate, community safety, law enforcement accountability, positive youth development, and justice reinvestment. The third and final section presents reflections from two of the co-authors who discuss the importance of being in community as opposed to partnering with community. We define being “in community” as having a material stake in turning research into legitimate campaigns and struggles. To be in community is to occupy a fugitive space in the university - it means that we have stolen university knowledge, resources, and capital and have redistributed to the community (Harney & Moten, 2013).

Significance: As Community-Based Research projects continue to become common-place in practice-based fields such as public health, education, and social work, it is critical for scholars to begin shifting the nature of knowledge production. Being in community works to unsettle the ways that PAR work is imagined, as even community-based researchers are often implicated in the dichotomy of university and the community that removes the researchers own material stake in the claims of the project.

Authors

• Jonathan Calles, Inner City Struggle

• Donald Sum, Khmer Girls in Action

• Amir Casimar, Social Justice Learning Institute

• David Turner, University of California - Berkeley

• Uriel Serrano, University of California - Santa Cruz