To understand the need for Changing Ways, one must look at the systems that allow youth, particularly black and brown youth, to be incarcerated for life and the breakdowns in the education system that have become a pathway to prisons. As education budgets are cut to give more and more money to police and prison systems under the guise of cutting down on crime, a self perpetuating system begins to grow of more and more youth falling behind in school, becoming involved in gangs due to a lack of support systems and home places at home and school, eventually dropping out of school or being suspended or expelled for behavior problems which often then leads down a path to prison.

The education system in the United States is taught from the White Male Christian perspective, largely ignoring narratives and cultural perspectives outside of the dominant narrative. Since the vast majority of youth in juvenile detention centers and prisons are youth of color, the constant silencing of their history and the hegemony constantly saying that their story and their cultural perspective isn’t as valid or is lesser than leads to a systemic disempowerment and fatalism among communities of color that, if not dealt with, leads to the disintegration of the community. Without public homeplaces and strong cultural identity, youth may be more likely to seek out a sense of community within the structure of a gang. On top of that, people of color tend to work lower paying jobs, and a parent may have to work two or three jobs just to make ends meet, which leads to a loss of family support structure, further deteriorating a sense of community within poor neighborhoods.

When this system is combined with racial profiling, surveillance and creation of SARs (Suspicious Activity Reports) concentrated mostly in black and brown neighborhoods, people of color find themselves in the category of guilty until proven innocent. In March 2008, the LAPD issued Special Order 11, which gave police the right and obligation to create SARs for anyone caught engaging in what could be considered “suspicious activity” including filming or taking pictures in public, sketching or taking notes or inquiring about hours or shift times at a place of business.2 The LAPD issued Special Order 1 in January 2012, which is a revised version of Special Order 11, which took these surveillance acts even further. Encouraging policing on the grounds of hunches, promoting racial profiling and proceeding on the grounds that each and every person is a subject.3 These orders have been accompanied by encouraging civilians to report on each other and hiring informants to spy on target groups, such as Muslim Americans who have had no evidence of any criminal activity but who are monitored just to be sure and at times even fed inflammatory statements in an attempt to get them to say something that could be potentially incriminating.4