AMERICA'S MOST UNWANTED, the newest short-form documentary from award-winning filmmaker Shani Heckman, reveals untold stories of homophobia in the foster care system in the countrys most gay-friendly state: California. California is also one of the first states to pass the Foster Care Achievement Act and A.B.21, which will allow foster youth access to care until age 21. For decades, policy changes are making life better for foster youth, but as bullying campaigns across the country have shown, life needs to be improved for LGBT youth at all levelsour hope is this film can help with this step.
LGBTQ foster youth are often kicked out of their homes for defining as LGBTQ and then enter state-sanctioned homes that treat them even worse: 75% of LGBTQI foster youth in state care had experienced physical abuse, 66% preferred to live on the streets CWLA, 2007.
AMERICA'S MOST UNWANTED lends the case for more access to LGBT foster parenting and adoption by providing a human face these three youth whose lives would have benefited from such support. Connor was in foster care since age 7 and used education achievement to survive. Savi too entered the system at age 7, stifled by a learning disability and presenting as an out queer, Savi experiences difficulties fitting and has 52 different foster care placements in 10 years. Teruko signed herself into foster care at age 17 after more than a decade of difficulties living with a drug-addicted mother and life in Hunters Point. Teruko also uses education to help herself, entering University of California Berkeley as a fresh-person. Valerie, was born into orphanages and lived in foster homes and on the streets until she entered the prison system at age 15 as an adult. Turning her life around completely, Valerie is a successful published author of six books, a former international journalist and a mentor and teacher of Buddhism. Together, they represent a nexus of challenges facing foster youth in America today: economic and academic inequities, homophobia in the system, threats of homelessness, drug addiction, life in and out of prison, and how self preservation and personal well-being can enable youth to overcome unfathomable challenges.
Director: Shani Heckman
Stars: Tom Riska
LGBTQ foster youth are often kicked out of their homes for defining as LGBTQ and then enter state-sanctioned homes that treat them even worse: 75% of LGBTQI foster youth in state care had experienced physical abuse, 66% preferred to live on the streets CWLA, 2007.
AMERICA'S MOST UNWANTED lends the case for more access to LGBT foster parenting and adoption by providing a human face these three youth whose lives would have benefited from such support. Connor was in foster care since age 7 and used education achievement to survive. Savi too entered the system at age 7, stifled by a learning disability and presenting as an out queer, Savi experiences difficulties fitting and has 52 different foster care placements in 10 years. Teruko signed herself into foster care at age 17 after more than a decade of difficulties living with a drug-addicted mother and life in Hunters Point. Teruko also uses education to help herself, entering University of California Berkeley as a fresh-person. Valerie, was born into orphanages and lived in foster homes and on the streets until she entered the prison system at age 15 as an adult. Turning her life around completely, Valerie is a successful published author of six books, a former international journalist and a mentor and teacher of Buddhism. Together, they represent a nexus of challenges facing foster youth in America today: economic and academic inequities, homophobia in the system, threats of homelessness, drug addiction, life in and out of prison, and how self preservation and personal well-being can enable youth to overcome unfathomable challenges.
Director: Shani Heckman
Stars: Tom Riska
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00🎵Piano music plays🎵
00:30🎵Piano music plays🎵
00:45Until I started to make this film, I knew nothing about foster youth.
00:52Even though I was once one myself.
00:55🎵Piano music plays🎵
01:00One of the few things my mother taught me before she died,
01:05is that life is unfair.
01:09Like other foster youth,
01:11I was not included in the decision to put myself in foster care,
01:16nor was my placement any result of my own doing.
01:20🎵Piano music plays🎵
01:23My 65-year-old aunt, with high blood pressure and diabetes,
01:28was ill-prepared to take care of her 13-year-old.
01:31One night, during a fight, she signed me over to the state.
01:36🎵Piano music plays🎵
01:40A week later, I was living with a new family,
01:43strangers to me, an hour away.
01:47🎵Piano music plays🎵
01:52I think the hardest thing about being in foster care,
01:55is that you do really lack the adult support,
01:58and you don't have that comfort of when you go off to college,
02:02that your mom or dad is going to go with you,
02:04and that they're always going to be there to support you.
02:06You're just kind of on your own,
02:09and it's hard at times, it's really lonely.
02:13I spent the last 10 years looking for the perfect family,
02:17for the perfect mom and the dad and the little sister, brother.
02:20I just kind of had to come to accept that my life was different.
02:25I don't think there's ever a moment that comes
02:30to people who've experienced such dysfunction,
02:33where everything is honestly 100% at ease and comforted and supported.
02:38Because even when you're doing really good,
02:40and people want to be a part of your life,
02:42there's still those moments when you're sitting down in your bed at night,
02:45and you're wondering, am I good enough for all this?
02:49I turned myself in after my 17th birthday,
02:52because my mom is addicted to heroin and cocaine and crack.
02:57Growing up, I used to cry myself to sleep,
03:00and I used to, before I'd come home from school,
03:02I would ask, you know, dear God, please don't let her be high today.
03:06Sometimes people ask me, how did I get to the place where I was?
03:10How did I survive?
03:12When I started reflecting on that question,
03:15it did make me realize and think, gosh, yeah, actually,
03:18a lot of the kids who I grew up with are dead.
03:20Some of them were dead by the time we were 15.
03:23What was it that made me come through?
03:28It's really hard to do anything,
03:33It's really hard to be outed, queer, and foster youth.
03:39I've had group home staff tell me
03:42that they're not going to put the new girl in my room
03:45because I might rape them in the middle of the night or something.
03:49I get a lot of weird comments like that,
03:52and not everybody is as educated,
03:54so they don't really know that much about it.
03:57And there's a lot of people that are hurt.
03:59Sometimes I think the best way for people to cope with their own hurt
04:03is to hurt others,
04:05and it's really easy when that's such a big society-hated thing.
04:10It's like saying, hey, come pick on me.
04:13It's like a stamp on my forehead, but I'm comfortable,
04:16and I can smile with who I am, so it's worth it.
04:23I have heard about people being kicked out for being gay in foster homes.
04:27There was a foster home I was at where I wasn't out yet,
04:30but she was just hesitant with the fact that I had a friend that was bi.
04:33I remember having to ask if I could see her or talk to her,
04:36and all the other kids were not okay with it,
04:39and so I'm sure if I would have come out,
04:41then I would have been kicked out sooner than I already was.
04:45When I was identified as a lesbian,
04:47they would not let me be in a room with a closed door
04:51with any of the other girls who I lived with.
04:54Everybody else, they could do anything they wanted,
04:56but as soon as I would go in a room, they'd make a big scene.
04:59They made me feel really uncomfortable by being a lesbian.
05:02I felt that it was really hard
05:05because they made it seem like I was just trying to turn everybody out.
05:09It wasn't even like that.
05:11They were all my friends, and half of them were already lesbians themselves,
05:14and they just never made it clear to any of the staff.
05:17That's what they were.
05:18It was hard enough that I had just left a family.
05:20Even though it wasn't stable, I felt like I was already unaccepted,
05:24and that I was being put into a category
05:27to where I couldn't even close my own room door.
05:30It's supposed to be transitional housing.
05:32This isn't a group home.
05:33This is a step in between foster care and becoming an adult.
05:54I'm here to introduce our last awardee, which is Savannah.
06:00The work that she has done for this community is not only inspiring,
06:05but I know there are so many people that learn from her every day.
06:09Please come on up here, Savannah.
06:12It was amazing the amount of people that wanted to be around me.
06:15When I was up on the stage emceeing shows and winning awards,
06:20it was amazing the amount of people that wanted to shake my hand
06:23and tell me how great of a person I am,
06:25and that was the most purest, most humbling thing that I've ever felt.
06:31It was amazing.
06:32It was amazing.
06:33It was amazing.
06:34It was amazing.
06:35It was amazing.
06:36It was amazing.
06:38And that was the most purest feelings I've felt in a while
06:42that had anything to do with positivity.
06:45But life throws you curveballs all the time.
06:51There's hurdles that you constantly have to jump,
06:54and when they came back into my life recently,
06:57nobody wants to be there, and nobody wants to shake my hand,
06:59and nobody wants to tell me how great I'm doing.
07:01Instead, it's way easier to jump to the negative sides,
07:06and that's how the system cheated me the most.
07:08Because these people that it took so many years
07:10for me to finally trust,
07:13I finally started doing it in these last couple years
07:15and trusting adults again after years
07:17of shutting everybody out
07:19and building this enormous wall around myself.
07:21And because I'm not on stage anymore
07:24and because I'm not up there doing all these things
07:26that they want me to do or that they wanna be a part of
07:29to share the success in,
07:30to be part of the inspirational adults
07:32that helped me climb out of it.
07:34Your typical lifetime story.
07:3685,000 youth in our foster care here in California.
07:42We take these children from their homes
07:45out of concern for neglect and abuse.
07:49But once we take them from their home into our care,
07:53we're failing them.
07:55Fewer than 50% of our children in foster care
07:58are graduating from high school.
08:01Within years of emancipation,
08:03we see that about a third are on welfare
08:07and 25% are incarcerated
08:12and another third find themselves homeless and unemployed.
08:16A fact that I share with people
08:18that makes their mouths drop
08:20is that 70% of our prison inmates
08:26have spent time in our foster care system.
08:30I did live on the streets and I ended up,
08:32so I went to the main women's prison at the age of 15
08:36for shoplifting, you know, that kind of stuff.
08:39When I came out, somebody who had looked after me
08:43in one of the children's homes I was in
08:46offered to foster me
08:47and she had a lot of opposition about that
08:49because, you know, I was this kid living on the streets
08:52or whatever, and I was just, you know,
08:54I was just a kid and I didn't know what to do.
08:56And this woman, she was somebody who really believed in me
08:59and saw me and saw the whole of me,
09:02didn't just see the person who lived on the streets.
09:06She saw also that that behaviour
09:09was a symptom of my distress and struggle.
09:14As I take a deep breath and spit my first line,
09:18my fears are presented.
09:21As I reminisce on how I was raised in this country,
09:24my fears are presented.
09:25As I reminisce on how, when I was a child,
09:27I hated math and I even skipped class to avoid numbers.
09:32Now, as an adult, I hide behind these car windows
09:34that are tinted to avoid numbers,
09:36more like AK-47s and Tech-9s and 38mm,
09:40yet you still have the courage to ask me,
09:43why is it that none of your poetry is positive?
09:46And I say,
09:46because you don't know what the fuck I've been through.
09:48See, walking down memory lane, I gasp for air,
09:52watching my mother drown in a man named heroin
09:55and her bringing me down with her.
09:56I see her getting beaten by dope men
09:58while I hide behind walls that confine me,
10:00which are the same walls that my mother face hits
10:02and the same walls that my mother screams confide to.
10:06I feel like I represent a lot of things
10:09and sometimes it's hard
10:12because physically looking just fully African-American.
10:15So when I go to class, people see me as the leader
10:18or the spokesperson for African-American race.
10:20And I know when I talk about,
10:22oh, well, in foster care, I experienced this, this, and this.
10:24I'm the spokesperson for foster care youth too.
10:27A lot of times people question me,
10:29even about being a foster youth,
10:31about living in Hunter's Point.
10:32They're like, well, how was it for you?
10:34I heard a lot of things about that.
10:35Did you get raped in foster care?
10:37They ask questions that they hear on TV
10:39or they stereotypically believe.
10:42Out of 30,000 kids who go to Cal, there's 20 of us.
10:47So we are really little.
10:49We do amount to a really small percent.
11:05When I was at Reed, during the holidays,
11:07it was kind of hard.
11:08Holidays just in general aren't good for fosters.
11:11It'd be hard on Thanksgiving or parent weekend.
11:14Then you'd hear kids complaining
11:16about how their parents were there
11:17and they didn't want them there.
11:18I wish my dad, who I don't even know his name,
11:21would show up or someone.
11:23They're just not grateful at all.
11:26That was really hard.
11:27I'd like avoid the dining hall
11:28because I didn't want to go in there
11:29and see all the other parents sitting around their kids
11:32and hearing kids complaining
11:33about the care packages they would get.
11:35Like, I didn't really want this.
11:36I didn't get a care package.
11:38I would have loved a care package.
11:41The people that really are the closest to me
11:43are other fosters.
11:45Me and Savannah have lived together
11:47for a lot of years, off and on,
11:49because we were both in this county
11:51and both moved around a lot,
11:53both in foster care a long time,
11:55and never really got that perfect foster home.
11:59She was one of the first kids I'd met there
12:01that had actually had a decent amount of experience
12:04in foster care under her belt.
12:05We were the only ones that could actually
12:06hold intellectual conversation,
12:09stay up all night playing gin rummy
12:11and pissing the staff off.
12:13And we had some ups and downs.
12:14It is hard being a foster.
12:15There's a lot of issues that go with that.
12:17Like, all of us have our problems.
12:21The thing is, is like, we all know each other
12:23and we know that and can accept it
12:25because we've seen it.
12:26Like, we understand where it comes from,
12:28where someone else might not get
12:30why they have that attitude
12:31or why they're acting that way.
12:33To us, it makes sense.
12:34Like, oh, you're being a foster.
12:35It was like our own little family type of thing.
12:37Even if all the kids didn't get along
12:39all the way all the time,
12:40they still cared about each other at the end of the day.
12:42And that's what made that group home feel like a home.
12:45So that doesn't happen in facilities.
12:48After I left, they wouldn't let me come back.
12:52And those kids don't think I care about them anymore.
12:56And it sucks because I'm another adult in their life
12:58that just left them.
12:59And that was never my intention.
13:02Recently, I have been homeless in Santa Cruz,
13:06sleeping outside a lot,
13:07sleeping in the caves, off the cliffs.
13:09You know, for the first time in my life,
13:13I wasn't able to take care of myself.
13:16Summer was really hard
13:17because I didn't have a place to stay.
13:19So I stayed in my car
13:21or I went to my grandma's house,
13:23which was really hectic.
13:24I stayed there for a couple of days
13:25until I couldn't deal with it anymore.
13:27And I'd go to my best friend's house for a while.
13:30The summer, I was just so happy when it was over.
13:42I do not think a 19-year-old can find a place
13:45pretty easily in Santa Cruz.
13:46The rent's really expensive.
13:48And a lot of times they want credit checks and stuff.
13:52I don't have any credit.
13:53They want previous rental history.
13:54I don't have that.
13:55They want a cosigner.
13:56And a lot of the forms, it's not even called cosigner.
13:59Like, CST form is called parental guarantee.
14:03What am I supposed to do with that?
14:04So the rent is really expensive.
14:07And I don't have any credit.
14:08I don't have any money.
14:09What am I supposed to do with that?
14:11So there's a lot of places I just ignored because of that.
14:15I'm like, well, I can't do that.
14:19And a lot of people who are my supports are the fosterers.
14:22So guess what?
14:22They don't really have credit or any of that either.
14:24So it's not really gonna do me any good.
14:27That was really hard.
14:28And it was hard just finding a place.
14:30I didn't even know how to email them or anything.
14:32I didn't know how it worked.
14:33I didn't know any of that.
14:35My ILP worker, she helped me send out the first few emails
14:39just so I could get an idea of what to say
14:41and what's gonna happen.
14:42And then I called, went to a couple places,
14:45look at them, and then sometimes people weren't even there.
14:48They'd leave a note on the door
14:49saying the room was already rented.
14:51After I traveled all the way over there,
14:53I don't have a car.
14:54Like, I have to take extra time
14:56to be able to get to these places.
14:58But eventually, this one just happened to come around.
15:01They liked me, and it's the first one I snagged it.
15:06Sometimes I just lay down and cry.
15:08I tell my girlfriend, you gotta keep talking to me,
15:10because I think about everything I've been through.
15:12Every couple of weeks, I have this emotional breakdown,
15:15but I feel like it cleanses me out.
15:17When I hold it in too long, it's gonna break.
15:19And once it breaks inside of me, it breaks you.
15:21It doesn't just break that.
15:23It breaks everything, your soul, all of that.
15:26And I don't want that to happen.
15:28And it's happened before.
15:29I've been broke down, and I tried to commit suicide
15:32instead of saying, oh, well, my life is perfect.
15:34Now I go to UC, and instead of doing that,
15:36I acknowledge that where I came from
15:39still affects me today.
15:41But it's like you have to know your own strength.
15:45By me writing poetry and by me crying a lot,
15:49that's what keeps me strong.
15:50That's what keeps my poker face going.
15:52I'm at school.
15:53I don't need to tell everybody,
15:54well, this is all my problems.
15:56You have to blend in in this world,
15:58because if your flaws are a little bit different,
16:01then you know, you sort of fall short.
16:03And I don't want that to happen.
16:09I don't know how to co-parent a child.
16:12I don't know all the right things to do.
16:15I couldn't tell you all the steps I want to take
16:17or I'm supposed to take, but I know exactly what not to do.
16:23And I know what could be the worst
16:25and what is the most detrimental to a child.
16:28And I know what could really just tear someone down.
16:31So I might not know everything that you're supposed to do in life,
16:35but I know what you're not supposed to do.
16:40I think every kid who's been fostered somewhere
16:43doesn't love themselves.
16:44And it's nothing to do with us,
16:46the fact that we didn't grow up with our biological parents.
16:49The biggest thing for me was I realised
16:52that I had to take responsibility for me.
16:55I just felt that the world owed me something.
16:57I just felt that I had to take responsibility for myself.
17:00The world owed me something, and that just didn't get me anywhere.
17:04Suddenly woke up one day and had this realisation
17:07and thinking, well, people can say,
17:09poor Valerie this, poor Valerie that,
17:11but I have to do something, you know, to change my lot, really.
17:17For a long time, I pretended I never was in foster care.
17:24I was really lucky to not be homeless.
17:34If we knew more about foster youth,
17:37there would be less negativity around foster care.
17:43And a greater chance at success.
17:46Foster care saved my life.
18:17This is for the foster youth who grew up in hella homes.
18:20Location of birth, parents unknown.
18:22You can't choose who your mommy will be.
18:24What if she was hooked to the drugs at 16?
18:27You got the power to rise on up.
18:29Rise on up.
18:30Rise on up.
18:31You got the power to rise on up.
18:34Rise on up.
18:35Rise on up.
18:36Foster youth is turning to a buzzkill word.
18:39That's cause the people really aren't sure
18:41what it means to have strength and resiliency at the age of 15.
18:45Life experience is where it's at.
18:47Sometimes the more badass mean a Harvard grad.
18:50Patron to the choir when I say the system is fucked,
18:52but it gets you inspired.
18:54Let's give hella more love.
18:56You got the power to rise on up.
18:58Rise on up.
18:59Rise on up.
19:00You got the power to rise on up.
19:02Rise on up.
19:05You got the power to rise on up.
19:07Rise on up.
19:08Rise on up.
19:10You got the power to rise on up.
19:12Rise on up.
19:14Shout out to my homies making documentaries, getting PhDs,
19:17going to law school, changing policy
19:20to get the youth off the street and into the university.
19:23In America, hella unnoticed, all of it's whizzed,
19:26battling out with the hypocrites.
19:28Fake evangelists invested in marriage
19:30while foster youth get treated like an unwanted miscarriage.
19:34I have a hard time facing all the people I've been hating.
19:37To the fat kid on the bus eating Cheetos, sipping 7-Up,
19:40I'm sorry, I judge a lot.
19:43You got the power to rise on up.
19:45Rise on up.
19:46Rise on up.
19:48You got the power to rise on up.
19:50Rise on up.
19:53You got the power to rise on up.
19:55Rise on up.
19:56Rise on up.
19:58You got the power to rise on up.
20:00Rise on up.
20:02This is for the foster kid, kicked to the curb
20:04by your 55th placement.
20:05You slept in streets, church basements.
20:07Focus on the family, ain't bout you or me
20:09if you live on the street, hug trees.
20:11Be a masculine chick or something like bisexual,
20:14then all the people act like you're poisoned by the devil.
20:16Jesus said don't judge others until you walk into their shoes.
20:19Politicians, you don't shit about the foster youth.
20:22Most foster youth fight on the street
20:24cause they like the smarts or the creativity.
20:26You got the power to rise on up.
20:28Rise on up.
20:30Rise on up.
20:31You got the power to rise on up.
20:33Rise on up.
20:36You got the power to rise on up.
20:38Rise on up.
20:41You got the power to rise on up.
20:43You got the power to rise on up.
20:45Rise on up.
20:47Rise on up.
20:48You got the power to rise on up.
20:50Rise on up.
20:53You got the power to rise on up.
20:55Rise on up.
20:58You got the power to rise on up.
21:00Rise on up.
21:02Rise on up.
21:10you