Know Your Rights Presentations in the Gang Allegations Context

Latinx youth are increasingly at greater risk of removal due to unreliable and overbroad gang allegations resulting from an upsurge in gang policing on Long Island that disproportionately targets black and brown communities.

In collaboration with the Make the Road New York (MRNY) office in Brentwood, Long Island the CUNY School of Law’s Immigrant & Non-Citizen Rights Clinic (INRC) has been facilitating Know Your Rights (KYR) presentations to help inform parents and students about their rights when questioned about gang allegations at home and in schools. INRC has also created and compiled a web-based Toolkit to Challenge Gang Allegations against Immigrant New Yorkers that contains school advocacy materials.

Our current presentations have been offered throughout Nassau and Suffolk County. The workshops are geared towards Long Island residents in the gang enforcement context and focus on interactions with law enforcement as well as rights of students in schools when questioned by law enforcement or school officials/staff or facing disciplinary action in school. They are offered in Spanish or in English.

Contact

To inquire about access to our Know Your Rights materials or to schedule a workshop, please contact:

City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law | Immigrant & Non-Citizen Rights Clinic (INRC)
Main Street Legal Services, Inc.
2 Court Square, 5th Floor
Long Island City, New York 11101-4356

Tel: (718) 340-4305 or (718) 340-4300
Fax: (718) 340-4199

Social Advocacy Materials

Preventing and Protecting against Gang Allegations in Schools

CUNY School of Law, Immigrant & Non-Citizen Rights Clinic (INRC), Template Letter for Students and Parents to Give to Schools Regarding Rights with Police in Schools (December 2018).
a. English version
b. Spanish version

CUNY School of Law, Immigrant & Non-Citizen Rights Clinic (INRC), Template Letter for Students and Parents to give to Schools Regarding Rights during Enrollment and Registration (December 2018).
a. English version
b. Spanish version

CUNY School of Law, Immigrant & Non-Citizen Rights Clinic (INRC), Know Your Rights When Interacting With Law Enforcement at Home, on the Streets, or in Schools (December 2018).
a. English version
b. Spanish version

CUNY School of Law, Immigrant & Non-Citizen Rights Clinic (INRC), My School Thinks I am in a Gang (December 2018). 
a. English version
b. Spanish version

New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), Palm Card, Know Your Rights with Police in Schools (2011), https://www.nyclu.org/en/publications/palm-card-know-your-rights-police-schools-2011

New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), Know Your Rights When Facing a Suspension (2015), https://www.nyclu.org/en/know-your-rights/know-your-rights-when-facing-suspension-2015

Long Island Advocacy Center (LIAC), Student Suspension LIAC Fact Sheet, http://nebula.wsimg.com/dd73a85e55cc35a14bb09c015690ca2f?AccessKeyId=5FA11D39B78CC67CC07D&disposition=0&alloworigin=1

Long Island Advocacy Center (LIAC), Links/Law/Info, http://www.theliac.org/links–laws-info.html

New York State Education Department FOIL Requests, http://www.nysed.gov/new-york-state-education-department-foil-requests

Select Gang-Related School Suspension Decision, Appeal of LL, Decision No. 15,835 (Oct. 1, 2008), http://www.counsel.nysed.gov/Decisions/volume48/d15835 (“a student’s mere reference to MS-13, without more, does not constitute an ‘activity, affiliation and/or communication in connection with a … gang.’”).

Unreliability of Gang Allegations and Aggressive Police Practices in Schools

Nikki Marquez & Rachel Prandini, Fact Sheet, The School to Prison to Deportation Pipeline: The Relationship between School Delinquency and Deportation Explained (Feb. 2018), https://www.ilrc.org/sites/default/files/resources/school_delinq_faq_nat-rp-20180212.pdf

Laila L. Hlass, The School to Deportation Pipeline, 34 Ga. St. U. L. Rev. 697 (2018), https://readingroom.law.gsu.edu/gsulr/vol34/iss3/4

The New York Equity Coalition, Stolen Time: New York State’s Suspension Crisis (Dec. 2018), https://s3-us-east-2.amazonaws.com/edtrustmain/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2018/12/09090556/Stolen-Time.pdf

Additional Materials

Know Your Rights Presentation (Spanish) PDF

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the organizers at Brentwood Make the Road New York (MRNY) for welcoming us into their community spaces and working with us to develop effective materials.

Special thanks to INRC law students Stephanie Rivera, JP Perry*, and Colin Bruscia for their preliminary work on this project, to Wilkiris Batista, Katherine Dennis, Matias Gonzalez, Bianca Granados, and Andrea Velasquez for developing a Spanish-language curriculum and for taking the first plunge in presenting to community members on Long Island, and to Andrea Natalie and Lea Rios O’Leary-Tagiuri for creating and compiling audio-visual materials to supplement the presentations. Thank you to CUNY’s Student Advocacy Project (SAP) and Annemarie Caruso for their support and ongoing feedback.

*JP Perry drafted the Letter Template for Students and Parents to Give to Schools Regarding Rights with Police in Schools, Letter Template for Students and Parents to Give to Schools Regarding Rights during Enrollment & Registration, worked on the Long Island Directed Referral List, and created the My School Thinks I am in a Gang Know Your Rights Palm Card.