| Taking their side Tamara Milagros helps kids change their lives and those around them by Matt Broersma
(return to main
story) Milagros, 26, was working for Oakland’s Rape Crisis Center, making presentations on rape issues in junior high and high schools. "I don’t look much older than the kids I was presenting to," she explains, "and I used to wear my hair back in a ponytail. So sometimes I would be going through the halls on my way to the class where I was going to make the presentation, and I would be approached by faculty members who thought I was a student." Their attitude was always the same, she says. Angry and disrespectful. "They would demand, Why aren’t you in class? And then, when they found out who I was, they’d apologize and say, Oh, I thought you were a student." "It made me go, Wow, you guys are supposed to be working with young people, nurturing and supporting them, " Milagros recalls. "That didn’t feel like encouragement to me." For Milagros, those moments of mistaken identity, and other experiences she had in the schools while working for Rape Crisis Center, were a window on the way young people are treated in their daily lives. She saw a profound lack of real support and encouragement for young people. And she knew she had found a calling. "I started to realize how few resources there were for young people," she says. "And I realized how just a little help could really make a difference." After working with Rape Crisis Center, she took her current position with Teens On Target (TNT) in the fall of 1995. As a coordinator, she is one of two people in their 20s who oversee all the operations of the program; the other is Sherman Spears, who was paralyzed from the waist down as the result of a gang related shooting when he was a teenager. Founded in 1989 at Fremont High School, the organization’s mission is to train the young people who are at risk of becoming the victims of urban violence to become advocates for violence prevention. The organization runs recruiting meetings at the beginning of each school year at Fremont and Castlemont high schools; those who join are paid a small monthly stipend for their participation. In after-school meetings three times a week, the students learn the facts and statistics behind urban violence, from the price of one bullet (33 cents) to the drug that most frequently causes violence (alcohol), and prepare to teach what they know to junior high school students. The program’s participants feel that they can make a difference, because they are on the same level as the classes they’re talking to. "If we talk to them we know they’ll listen," said eleventh grader Yolanda Lopez. "You just really got to work into their brain, You got to be serious with them." On a recent Tuesday, Milagros crammed three girls from Fremont High School into her pickup truck for a drive to a nearby junior high school, where they were to make their first presentation of the day at 8 a.m. It was followed by two more presentations to two different classes. Milagros watched from the back of the room, videotaping the class for a critique that afternoon, as the girls took turns talking about the facts to a room full of middle school kids. Some of them seemed uncomfortable or bored; many were raptly attentive. The presentations were not polished, but the middle schoolers seemed curious and willing to listen to the girls, only a few years older than themselves. Occasionally Milagros would jump in with a choice fact or two. "Can anybody tell me how much the average cost is for a bullet wound?" she asked. "What do you think? One thousand dollars? Five thousand? Not quite. It’s about $33,000." A murmur of shocked disbelief went through the room. Teens On Target’s approach to urban violence prevention is part of a movement to treat urban violence as a matter of public health, as opposed to strictly a question of criminal justice. The movement began in the late 1980s when then Surgeon General C. Everett Koop identified urban violence as a public health crisis. According to Dr. Vernon Henderson, a trauma surgeon at Highland Medical Center who works with Teens On Target and advocates violence prevention himself, there is some resistance to the idea of urban violence as a problem that should be analyzed and treated. "The criminal justice system has no vested interest in violence prevention," Henderson says. "[The money spent on] violence prevention is a mere fraction of what is spent on locking people up." To Milagros, it makes perfect sense that the people most endangered by urban violence should be the ones promoting violence prevention. "It s amazing, people who don’t work with young people have all these stereotypes about them, but when you work with them you understand why they act that way," she says. "Young people have none of the power, while [adults] have all this power over their lives We want to put [young people] in the forefront of deciding what’s going to happen to them." Milagros was born in Puerto Rico, where she still visits every year, but her family moved to Florida when she was four. Her first experience working with young people came when she was in high school there, coaching younger kids on the swim team and giving swimming lessons. She always enjoyed activities like coaching and camp counseling, and when she graduated from UC Berkeley with a BA in psychology, she went to work at Rape Crisis Center specifically so that she could work with young people. In Teens On Target meetings, she talks to the high school students on their own level, encouraging them to be themselves around her. At the same time, she is clearly in control of the discussions, acting not so much as an instructor but as a moderator. The meetings are designed to give the high school students the facts about subjects like guns and domestic violence, and to encourage them to think about the underlying issues that give rise to these problems. A recent Thursday afternoon meeting centered around the issue of rape, and turned into a frank debate over what is and isn’t rape, and about the peer pressures around sex in high school. One girl talked of her sister, who she said was held down by five boys and raped at the age of 12. Milagros says that these students probably have no other forum in the school where they could hold such a discussion. "In other forums, certain things are taboo," she says. "Here, they’ve come to trust that they won’t get into trouble if they say what they feel." While the problems her work targets are immense, Milagros says she feels some satisfaction that her work can make a difference. "It’s the most rewarding thing, being able to train a small group who’ll affect hundreds more." |
Milagros runs TNT meetings
on a day-to-day basis. The
experiences Milagros had in the schools while
working for Rape Crisis Center were a window on the way
young people are treated in their daily lives. She saw a
profound lack of real support and encouragement for
teenagers. And she knew she had found a calling.
Teens On Target |
