'Homeroom': Teens Raising Their Voices and Winning
“When our children act like leaders and our leaders act like children, you know change is coming.” This quote rang through my head as I watched Homeroom, a film directed by Peter Nicks. The film follows a group of students at Oakland High School through the 2019-2020 school year.
Many students watching the film agreed that it served as a time capsule for the past year, depicting the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of the Black Lives Matter Movement. The way that youth have engaged with these events has been critical. They have acted as a common thread among the experiences of our generation. This movie is a microcosm of events happening in schools across the nation.
I have attended two high schools in the US; one significantly more diverse than the other. The more diverse high school also happens to have significantly more policing. This is the case even though they are a part of the same school district and don’t have drastically different security concerns. The student subjects in Homeroom made it clear that this is also an issue in their school. One of the main subjects of the film, a student named Denilson Garibo, was fighting for this exact cause. He was a member of a club called All City Council (ACC) and was one of two student representatives for the Oakland Unified School District, of which his school is part. In that position, he represents 36,000 students. One moment the documentary captured was during a school board meeting where they voted over whether to remove police from their campuses. Before the vote took place, Denilson explained that as a DACA recipient, the constant surveillance in his school created a feeling of instability for him and his family’s placement in the country. This is a narrative that I’m sure rings true for many of the thousands of other DACA students in the same situation.
Unfortunately, the board voted against removing police even after Garibo’s statement. The cause had already been established as a spark for the students of Oakland High School. The school to prison pipeline is one of the most insidious aspects of institutionalized racism and is heavily ingrained in the US education system. The film beautifully portrays the students fighting against it. After the board decides against the youth vote, the students choose to keep fighting, even harder this time. In the end, the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement brings about the question again. Garibo delivers a speech about the criminalization and policing of BIPOC. We are reminded that the police that the whole country is so vehemently protesting against killing civilians are the same police that walk through schools every day. This time, the board votes in support of removing police from campuses as a triumph for the Oakland High students the film has caused us to become so attached to.
This documentary portrays success in a wonderfully unique way. Most films about people of color describe only their struggle, their trauma. Homeroom not only displays the triumphs of young people of color, but it shows them achieving that without any form of assimilation. Often, children of color, like myself, are taught from a very young age to remove our culture from the way we speak and present ourselves to be viewed as more “intelligent”. A similar form of assimilation is shown all too often in media. Seeing people do the opposite was incredibly empowering.
Homeroom is a huge source of inspiration for youth, and hope for adults. It reminds us to take hold of the agency we have in the community and to make our voices heard. It also reminds us that this can be done in a multitude of ways. Whether it may be through writing poetry, attending protests, or even becoming a student representative, youth are often the initiators of change, and we all find our own channels.
Written by Scheherezade Banuri
