Video Participants - In Order of Appearance
Robert “Bobby” Scott
United States Congressman
Congressman Robert C. "Bobby" Scott is leading efforts to pass comprehensive juvenile justice reform and crime prevention legislation by sponsoring the Youth PROMISE Act, historic legislation which would provide resources to state and local governments to prevent juvenile crime. Prior to serving in the U.S. House of Representatives, Rep. Scott served in the Virginia House of Delegates from 1978 to 1983 and in the Senate of Virginia from 1983 to 1993. In November 1992, Rep. Scott was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and made history by becoming the first African American elected to Congress from Virginia since Reconstruction and only the second African American elected to Congress in Virginia's history. Rep. Scott currently serves on the Committee on the Judiciary, where he is the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security, and also serves on the Committee on Education and Labor and the Committee on the Budget.
Luis J. Rodriguez
Internationally-renowned Author
Luis J. Rodriguez has emerged as one of the leading Chicano writers in the country with fourteen critically-acclaimed books that have been published around the world. Best known for the 1993 memoir of gang life, Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A., Luis J. Rodriguez is also known for helping start community-based organizations, including Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural, the only cultural-based bookstore and performance space in the Northeast San Fernando Valley located in Los Angeles, California and Chicago’s Guild Complex, one of the largest literary arts organizations in the Midwest. A leading gang expert for over 30 years, Luis has conducted workshops, readings, and talks in prisons, juvenile facilities, universities, and conferences throughout the United States as well as in Canada, Europe, Japan, Mexico, Central America, South America, and Puerto Rico.
Jim Brown
Internationally-renowned Athlete, Actor, and Civil Rights Activist
Jim Brown is a former professional football player who has also made his mark as an internationally-known actor. He is best known for his exceptional and record-setting nine-year career as a running back for the NFL Cleveland Browns from 1957 to 1965, including being named Rookie of the Year in 1958, Player of the Year in 1960; playing in every Pro Bowl game from 1958 through 1965, and being elected to the Football Hall of Fame in 1971. In 2002, he was named by The Sporting News as the greatest professional football player ever and is considered to be one of the greatest professional athletes in the history of the United States. He became a full-time actor upon his retirement from the NFL, starring in various successful films including The Dirty Dozen and Black Gunn. He cut down on his film appearances in the late '70s, devoting most of his time to his many civic activities and business concerns, including founding the Amer-I-Can Program in 1988 where he continues to work with youth caught up in gang violence in Los Angeles, California and Cleveland.
Tony Cardenas
Los Angeles City Councilmember
Councilman Tony Cárdenas has served the people of Los Angeles for over 13 years, first as a three-term State Assemblyman and now as a Los Angeles City Councilman. A nationally-known champion for juvenile justice and youth development issues, Cárdenas spear-headed the passage of The Community-Based Gang Intervention Model, the most comprehensive gang intervention model in the country. Passed unanimously by the Los Angeles City Council in 2008, the model provides a definition to ensure that agencies are held accountable for providing holistic, integrated intervention services. Since then, Congresswoman Diane Watson introduced the “Tony Cárdenas Community-Based Gang Intervention Act,” federal legislation based on the Intervention Model. In 1996, Cárdenas completely reformed California's gang prevention and intervention programs with the Schiff-Cardenas Juvenile Justice Crime Prevention Act, legislation that has provided over a billion dollars for juvenile justice programs, the largest appropriation of state funds for youth crime prevention in the history of California.
Adrian San Pedro
Youth Leader, Santana House Youth Action Center
Adrian San Pedro is a youth leader at The Violence Intervention Program’s (VIP) Santana House Youth Action Center. VIP is a non-profit, hospital-based program located in East Los Angeles at the LAC+USC Medical Center whose mission is to protect and treat all victims of violence. As the first Family Advocacy Center in the United States, VIP is a multi-disciplinary public-private partnership that offers medical, mental health, forensic, and support services to victims of interpersonal violence as well as community and school-based violence prevention and early intervention programs. The Santana House Youth Action Center was created by teens for teens, and offers young people, ages 12-19, a safe and creative place where they can meet other young people, get connected to resources to build a successful future, and participate in variety of classes and after school activities.
Robin Wright
Critically-acclaimed Actress
Robin Wright first became known on television, playing Kelly Capwell on the soap opera Santa Barbara, which earned her three Daytime Emmy nominations. She then shot to international stardom after her roles in The Princess Bride and in Forrest Gump, the latter role garnering her Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild nominations for Best Supporting Actress. Since then, Robin has been nominated for numerous awards and starred in such films as Moll Flanders, She's So Lovely, Empire Falls, and State of Play. In addition to her advocacy around youth development and juvenile justice issues, Robin is the national campaign spokesperson for the Myasthenia Gravis Foundation of America and the Honorary Spokesperson for the Dallas, Texas based non-profit The Gordie Foundation.
Roby Dyrdek
Professional Skateboarder, Entrepreneur, and Philanthropist
Besides a long and influential career as a professional skateboarder, Rob Dyrdek is also a TV star, filmmaker, entrepreneur, and multi-faceted philanthropist dedicated to supporting skateboarding. Rob Dyrdek has leveraged his creativity, business savvy, and professional skateboard career in order to launch a long list of non-profit foundations, innovative businesses, and noteworthy productions in film and television. This includes the introduction of safe and legal Skate Plazas through the Rob Dyrdek/DC Shoes Skate Plaza Foundation, a children's toy line, Wild Grinders, a feature film production titled Street Dreams, the widely distributed brands Rogue Status, Silver Trucks, and Reflex Bearings, and of course the wildly successful MTV programs Rob & Big and Rob Dyrdek’s Fantasy Factory. With almost 20 years as a professional skateboarder, Mr. Dyrdek's illustrious career is a rare exception to the short-lived nature of being a professional athlete.
Timothy Watters
Artist and Entrepreneur
Born and raised in the wine country of Northern California, Timothy Teruo Watters (TTW) followed his namesake and Grandfather, Teruo Iyama, into the world of art. TTW would sit in Teruo Iyama’s red-tiled art studio eagerly taking in Impressionistic paintings of Sausalito, custom-built Japanese wood tables, artistic stained glass windows and beautifully kept gardens. TTW began feeding his hunger for creativity and expression by drawing in sketchbooks during family dinners and teaching himself painting as a teenager. Today, he occupies the title of Chief Creative Officer and Head Designer for Teruo Artistry, a creative lifestyle clothing brand. Recently, TTW designed the stage and backdrop for the Sunset Strip Music Festival and presented paintings from his ICON series to Snoop Dogg, Ozzy Osbourne, Chris Cornell, P. Diddy, Pitbull, Rodney "Darkchild" Jerkins, Timbaland and DJ Skee.
Cory Booker
Newark Mayor
The Honorable Cory A. Booker, 39, is the Mayor of Newark, New Jersey. Elected with a clear mandate for change, Mayor Booker has begun work on realizing a bold vision for the City by setting a national standard for urban transformation by leading the nation among large cities for reductions in shootings and murders, achieving decreases of more than 40% reductions in both categories. Among other recent notable achievements in the past two years, under Mayor Booker’s leadership, the City of Newark has committed to a $40 million transformation of the City’s parks and playgrounds through a ground-breaking public/private partnership, doubled affordable housing production within the last two years, and been instrumental in setting up model programs for returning ex-offenders and innovative programs dealing with at risk youth and empowering fathers to thrive in meeting their obligations. For this work, Mayor Booker has been recognized in numerous publications, including, among others, Time, Esquire, New Jersey Monthly (naming him as one of New Jersey’s top 40 under 40), Black Enterprise (naming him to the Hot List, America’s Most Powerful Players under 40) and The New York Times Magazine.
Baron Davis
NBA Basketball Star
Baron Davis has shattered the traditional mold of sport’s star, proving himself as creative, committed and successful off the court and on; giving of himself far beyond the obvious talent that has made him a two-time NBA All-Star and one of the league’s most celebrated players. Growing up in Los Angeles, Davis attended UCLA where made First Team and All-American honors before being drafted by the Charlotte Hornets during his sophomore year. He has made two All-Star appearances (2002-04) as point guard for the Golden State Warriors and is only the eighth player in league history to win Player of the Week twice consecutively. Off the court, Davis created Team Play, a non-profit foundation for underprivileged kids; served as a spokesman for LA’s Best; an after-school mentoring program; and formed Verso Entertainment, his own production company which recently produced the award-winning documentary Crips and Bloods: Made In America examining the story of South Los Angeles and the gangs that inhabit it by renowned documentarian Stacy Peralta (Dogtown and Z Boys, Riding Giants).
Gang Intervention Specialists:
Aquil Basheer
Executive Director, Maximum Force Enterprises
As one of the most well-known and respected Gang Prevention and Intervention specialists in Los Angeles, Aquil Basheer instructs educational entities, gang intervention teams, private industry, and law enforcement personal throughout the country in the understanding of youth violence and gangs. Having trained all 26 schools involved in the City's former L.A. Bridges Safe Passage Program, Aquil is continually on the front line in helping to redirect young people and families from criminal activity. As one of the premier training facilities in Los Angeles, Maximum Force Enterprise’s provides crisis response counseling, prevention and intervention training, comprehensive threat assessment and specialized youth development instruction.
Shelan Joseph
Los Angeles County Public Defenders Office
Shelan Joseph has been an attorney with the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office, the largest and oldest Public Defender’s Offices in the country since 1996. She is currently assigned as a resource attorney in the Department’s Juvenile Division. For the last five years she has been assigned to the Office’s Division of Juvenile Justice Unit where she represents youth committed to Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ). She monitors conditions of confinement for youth detained at DJJ, does education advocacy, and mental health advocacy. Ms. Joseph serves on the Board of Southern California ACLU, as well as the on the Board of the National ACLU working on Juvenile Justice Issues. She is an adjunct Professor at Loyola Law School and received her B.A. from UCLA and her J.D. from Loyola Law School, Los Angeles.
Kenny Green
Gang Intervention Specialist, Toberman Neighborhood Center
Kenny Green has been a gang intervention specialist for over fifteen years working for Toberman Neighborhood Center, a non-profit organization that provides social services to low-income individuals and families in the Harbor area of Los Angeles, California, helping them move from poverty to self-sufficiency. As the director of The Toberman Gang Intervention Unit, Kenny works with 30 plus gangs in the Harbor area to maintain the 12-year Harbor-Area Truce. The unit provides case management and wrap-around services to gang-involved clients and their families. The Toberman Gang Intervention unit helps more than 100 individuals per year positively change their lives around.
Kim McGill
Organizer, Youth Justice Coalition
Kim McGill is an internally-known expert on youth development and juvenile justice. Spearheaded the grassroots movement of the Youth Justice Coalition since its beginning in 2002, Kim has helped the group advocate for changes to stop trying kids as adults and to end the imposition of life without the possibility of parole for juveniles, a sentence imposed nowhere else in the world except for the United States. The Youth Justice Coalition’s membership and leadership is made up exclusively of young people who’ve been locked up or have been directly affected by the incarceration of a family member and have been at the forefront of juvenile detention reform in Los Angeles, California.
William “Blinky” Rodriguez
Executive Director, Communities in Schools
Executive Director William “Blinky” Rodriguez is the Executive Director of Communities in Schools (CIS), one of the foremost gang intervention agencies in the United States. A former middle-weight kickboxing champion, Blinky received the Medaille d’Excellence in Switzerland in conjunction with the 50th Anniversary of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and has been recognized for his peace building initiatives, including the Valley Unity Peace Treaty which was brokered by CIS and signed by over 75 gangs with more than 1,000 members. The treaty successfully reduced gang related deaths from 52 to 2 in the following year and has been a national example of the benefits of community-based gang intervention. The work of Blinky and CIS has been recognized by national and international leaders such as Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter, Dr. Jane Goodall, and Al Gore, along with numerous other public and private organizations and elected officials.
Members of the Youth Justice Coalition
The Youth Justice Coalition has emerged as one of the leading advocacy organizations in the country since its inception in 2002. Its membership and leadership is made up exclusively of young people who’ve been locked up or have been directly affected by the incarceration of a family member. Stemming from individuals with first hand experience, the group has advocated for changes to stop trying kids as adults and to end the imposition of life without the possibility of parole for juveniles, a sentence imposed nowhere else in the world except for the United States. The Youth Justice Coalition and has been instrumental in ending the practice of billing low-income families for room and board while their children are incarcerated and in developing the country’s first gang injunction removal process. In response to a significant number of youth being pushed out of work, the Youth Justice Coalition created Free LA its own charter school for young people ages 16-24 two years ago.
Father Gregory Boyle
Executive Director, Homeboy Industries
Father Greg Boyle is world-renowned as the Executive Director of Homeboy Industries, the largest gang intervention program in the country. In 1986, Father Boyle was appointed as Pastor of Dolores Mission in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles where he served through 1992. He then served as Chaplain of the Islas Marias Penal Colony in Mexico and Folsom Prison, before returning to Dolores Mission where he created “Jobs For A Future” in an effort to address the escalating problems and unmet needs of gang-involved youth. Father Boyle’s program offered positive alternatives, including establishing an elementary school and a day care program, and finding legitimate employment for young people. JFF’s success contributed to the launch of its first business, Homeboy Bakery, with a mission to create an environment that provided training, work experience, and above all, the opportunity for rival gang members to work side by side. The success of the Bakery created the groundwork for additional businesses, thus prompting JFF to become an independent non-profit organization, Homeboy Industries, in 2001 with a number of businesses, including Homegirl Café and a number of other businesses.
Tom Hayden
Former California State Senator
After over forty years of activism, politics and writing, Tom Hayden still is a leading voice for juvenile justice, ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, saving the environment, and reforming politics through greater citizen participation. Most famous for his involvement in the anti-war and civil rights movements of the 1960s, Tom Hayden was elected to the California State Assembly in 1982 and the state senate ten years later, serving eighteen years in all. A recipient of numerous awards, Hayden was named legislator of the year by the League of Conservation Voters and the Sierra Club, the Rainforest Action Network, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Association of Salvadorans in LA, the American Lung Association, Paw-PAC (animal welfare), the California public interest research group (Cal-Pirg), the Irish-American Unity Conference, and the Liberty Hill Foundation. The author or editor of seventeen books, Tom is currently writing for The Nation where he serves on the editorial board, about the global justice movements in Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, Chiapas, and India.
Adrian San Pedro
Youth Leader, Santana House Youth Action Center
Adrian San Pedro is a youth leader at The Violence Intervention Program’s (VIP) Santana House Youth Action Center. VIP is a non-profit, hospital-based program located in East Los Angeles at the LAC+USC Medical Center whose mission is to protect and treat all victims of violence. As the first Family Advocacy Center in the United States, VIP is a multi-disciplinary public-private partnership that offers medical, mental health, forensic, and support services to victims of interpersonal violence as well as community and school-based violence prevention and early intervention programs. The Santana House Youth Action Center was created by teens for teens, and offers young people, ages 12-19, a safe and creative place where they can meet other young people, get connected to resources to build a successful future, and participate in variety of classes and after school activities.
Russell Simmons
Business Entrepreneur and Philanthropist
USA Today recently named Russell Simmons one of the “Top 25 Most Influential People of the Past 25 Years,” calling him a “hip-hop pioneer” for his groundbreaking vision that has influenced music, fashion, finance, television and film, as well as the face of modern philanthropy. Russell has been instrumental in bringing the powerful influence of hip-hop culture to every facet of business and media since its inception in the late 1970s. From producing and/or managing such early hip-hop artists as Run DMC, and the Beastie Boys to signing seminal luminaries like Jay Z, and Ludacris, Simmons’ groundbreaking vision was crystallized with partner Rick Rubin in the creation of the seminal Def Jam Recordings in 1984, launching the cultural revolution known as hip-hop. Since then, Russell has been the master architect of that phenomenon, envisioning and creating the trends in popular culture. His fashion empire Phat Farm, which begat Baby Phat and Run Athletics put the definitive stake in the ground for hip-hop clothing and others followed. His film and television production company with partner Stan Lathan – Simmons Lathan Media – created the wildly successful HBO’s “The Def Comedy Jam,” “Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry,” “The Nutty Professor,” the Tony Award-winning stage production “Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry Jam on Broadway” and the international hit on MTV, “Run’s House.”
Star Jones
Television Personality
Star Jones is an American lawyer and television personality, best known for her role as a co-host of the ABC weekday morning talk show The View. A former Brooklyn, NY Assistant District Attorney in the homicide bureau, Jones earned her law degree at the University of Houston and was The View's first African-American co-host. Since then, she has continued to remain in the public eye and has written two books, including You Have to Stand for Something, or You'll Fall for Anything, a collection of autobiographical essays published in 1998 and Shine: A Physical, Emotional, and Spiritual Journey to Finding Love, detailing changes she made to re-shape her life, including her marriage and dramatic weight loss.
Big Duke (Gustavo Gonzalez)
Music Producer
As a member of Psycho Realm, one of Los Angeles’ most respected underground Hip-Hop groups, Big Duke has been at the forefront of speaking against gang violence for over a decade. Duke stated the legendary group along with his brother Jack Gonzalez (aka Jacken) in 1989 in the Pico-Union area of downtown Los Angeles. The first recorded Psycho Realm song, “Scandalous,” was released on the soundtrack of the film Mi Vida Loca in 1994, the same year B-Real of the rap super-group Cypress Hill joining the group. Psycho Realm aims to inject pride and knowledge into those who live in poverty ridden neighborhoods, but at the same time wants to open the minds of the ones on the outside who look down upon them.
On January 29, 1999, one month before the expected release of the second Psycho Realm album, Duke was shot in the neck in a confrontation while trying to split up a fight in Los Angeles which left him paralyzed from the neck down for life. The shooter, a 24 year old, was on parole at the time of the shooting was later imprisoned for attempted murder. Since then, Psycho Realm has continued to grow a worldwide fan base and has performed in Japan, Mexico, and Europe. Today, Duke continues to work with a number of well-known musicians and runs Psycho Realm’s website and clothing line.
“Promises” Poem
Written by Mike de la Rocha
Offering an alternative view of dealing with youth violence, Mike de la Rocha has emerged as one of the country’s top new voices on youth development and juvenile justice. With over thirteen of experience in coalition-building and implementing innovative youth development programs, Mike works as a legislative deputy for Los Angeles City Councilman Tony Cárdenas. “Promises” is a poem from Truth…the Real Shortcut, Mike’s forthcoming debut collection of poetry and music that will be released summer 2010.
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