One visit to Ricker's Island

I went out with one of my debaters, the Queens College coach and IMPACT's intern to the Island Academy, a high school for inmates under 19 on Riker's Island. We are doing debate training out there around a model we call Community Forum Debate (CFD).

When we walked in there was one young man sleeping. The teachers left to gather up some others. Twoothers then came in and put their heads down intending to sleep. Apparently, no one had thought it necessary to tell them we were coming today. The English teacher assigned to the room looked on in
silence. Once about six others trickled in, I introduced myself and explained that I was hear to help them learn how to advocate. A couple of people asked if this was health class because there program cards told them they had "Health" this period. One young brother named Desmond Body took the lead and
set the grounds for introduction. Standard fare: name, age, and what crime did you commit that landed you here. Tito wouldn't answer and explained he "wasn't feeling this." Everyone else woke up and stated who they were. Five violated probation, three drug sales conviction, one for assault.

We went through our first demo about a person with AIDS. Two students volunteered. Mr. Body left to go see the principal. As I was sitting there and watching the dynamic, I wrote up a new CFD scenario about a police officer who heard about a planned attack about by the Bloods against the Crypts at his son's highschool. I asked should the cop try and stop the fight. Tito leaps out of his seat and said, "Yo, I'm negating this bad boy." Another student's eyes widened and he agreed to affirm. They had an interesting discussion about the cop's son actually being a Blood and not having told his father (Tito is an ex-Blood). Tito described that the Bloods will shoot anybody indiscriminately. Not his word, he simply said "Yo, I'm
telling you, when the Bloods come, you dead if you're not careful." He then detailed that school attacks are generally quick cuts. "Yeah, they'll cut five, six folks and then bounce before the cops show and leave folks bleeding on the ground. So how's the cop gonna stop that." Tito handed off to his homeboy, Jamal in the middle of the speech and high-fived him on his arguments. Jamal made amazing arguments and refuted the claims of his opponents. Donald and Mr. Wiggles voted negative. Jose vote for the affirmative.

Eight hands flew into the air to debate the next scenario on the school privacy and weapons. Every student who stayed in the room (some left in search of health class), debated or judged one of three rounds. All of them spoke. Teachers kept walking by outside as if mystified by the verbally gifted discussion proceeding inside. We found out later that the "good" inmates had been taking the GED and people were shocked at how interactive this group was.

My staff left excited. I was pleased with the result but saddened that Mr. Body had left, saddened that students were not told about our presence, saddened that there are good and bad inmates and curious how many of them might not be here if the powerful tool of debate and self-expression had entered their lives earlier. I wonder if the next Malcolm languishes in prison somewhere because the light stopped shining in his eyes from all the betrayals he experienced.

Incidentally, the English teacher signed up to judge and recruited two others for when we hold our tournament next month.

This gift of debate, as Dr. Carrie Crenshaw terms it, has few limits. Thank you all for thinking outside the box. There is a great big community out there waiting to be defined.