Abstract
Few people have heard of the Youth Task Force (YTF), but those who
have speak about it as a transformative force in young people’s lives. In the
same breath, they brag about the coordinator of the group, Victor Damian.
I am told he is “powerful, energetic, passionate” and that he “challenges his
youth to do more and become more.” I learn that the young people he works
with are incarcerated or in foster care, receive mental health services, and/
or are in special education. In fact, to be part of the YTF, youth must have
experience in two or more of these systems. As Victor will later tell me, this
means that some of the teenagers he works with “have seen so much that
they have attempted suicide six or seven times.” This includes youth who
have been ordered into “residential placements for substance abuse . . . crack
babies . . . their fathers had put guns to their head . . . been former prostitutes
. . . really high-risk. High-risk meaning they just been through so much stuff
that it’s hard to work with them because they don’t know what to do cause
nothing’s working.” He insists: “Those are the youth that I need. If they’re
youth that are cool and never had anything go wrong in their lives, those
aren’t the youth that I’m looking for. Even if it’s a young person that wants
to change the system but has never been in it, I don’t work with those youth.
Those youth are just hopefuls, they can find other programs. I have a specific
base of young people, young people where nothing else is working and then
they choose me.”