Towards Community Rooted Research and Praxis: Reflections on the BSS Safety and Youth Justice Project

Uriel Serrano, David C. Turner, Gabriel Regalado and Alejandro Banuelos
Additional contact information
Uriel Serrano: Sociology and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA
David C. Turner: Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA
Gabriel Regalado: Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, Brown University, Providence, RI 02906, USA
Alejandro Banuelos: Brothers, Sons, Selves, Los Angeles, CA 90023, USA

Social Sciences, 2022, vol. 11, issue 5, 1-16

Abstract: This article focuses on the Brothers, Sons, Selves (BSS) Safety and Youth Justice project to describe what we refer to as a Community Rooted and Research Praxis (CRRP) approach. BSS is an organizing coalition for boys, young men, and masculine-identifying youth of color that works to decriminalize communities of color. In 2018, BSS developed a survey to capture how safety and justice is experienced by youth of color across multiple contexts and institutions in Los Angeles County. With over 3000 surveys collected, the findings have now been used to promote racial equity and decriminalize youth at the local and state level. Building on a Black Radical Tradition, including abolitionists struggles against the carceral state, in this paper, we name CRRP as a framework to describe BSS’s community engaged scholarship. In other words, we contend that the CRRP approach is a mode of community engaged scholarship that brings together youth, university affiliated adults, and community organizations to engage in youth participatory action, research, political education, and collective struggle.

Keywords: community-based research; youth participatory action research; youth organizing; youth activism; Black Radical Tradition; abolition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/11/5/195/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/11/5/195/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:11:y:2022:i:5:p:195-:d:805429

Access Statistics for this article

Social Sciences is currently edited by Ms. Yvonne Chu

More articles in Social Sciences from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().