Last month, I spent the day at a high school on the West side of Chicago. I was there with my friend the talented Debbie Southorn. Our goal was to document how this particular urban school manages student safety. Debbie is a filmmaker and an organizer. We are both keenly interested in how to interrupt the school-to-prison pipeline. After the Newtown massacre, both of us were concerned that the response might be to add more cops to our schools.

Immediately after President Obama unveiled his gun reform proposals in January, I got to work organizing against more police in schools. With several other people, I launched the Yes To Counselors, No To Cops Campaign. In just a few short weeks, our loose coalition of individuals and groups hosted two community meetings, created a website, launched a petition, letter and postcard campaign, organized a call-in day to our Senators, and more. As part of this work, we also wanted to demonstrate that there are urban schools serving black and brown youth that do not rely on harsh disciplinary policies or law enforcement to achieve their goal of ensuring a safe educational environment. I enlisted Debbie to help and the result is the short film that you can watch below. I have also written a few words about the school as well.

Please share the video with others who might be interested in learning about how we can keep students safe without relying on law enforcement and harsh disciplinary policies. In Debbie’s words, NLCP “cultivate[s] school safety and peace culture in really transformative ways! (Spoiler alert – without cops or metal detectors, with counselors, nonviolence training and political education).”

I am indebted to Debbie for all of her hard work on this film. She filmed and edited it in record time. I think that the film is wonderful and I am grateful beyond all words. Thank you Debbie. Thanks also to our friends at Free Spirit Media for sharing some of their archival footage with us. Finally, a huge debt of gratitude to the administration, staff, teachers, and most importantly students at NLCP for welcoming us (on short notice) and letting us share your story.

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This is a print by Sarah Atlas that is included in the Black and Blue exhibit. If you are in Chicago, you are invited to stop by for the exhibit opening on March 19. Details are here.

School Crossing by Sarah Atlas (2013)

From the Dignity in Schools Campaign:

On Monday, March 4th, youth of color from across the country held a rally on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol followed by a march to the White House to call on Congress and the Obama administration to reject school safety policies that criminalize students of color, immigrant youth, LGBTQ students and students with disabilities, and push them out of school.

Dignity in Schools Campaign (3/4/13)

Youth and parent leaders from states including California, Georgia, Mississippi, New York, and Washington, DC gathered to give testimony about the impact of increased police presence, armed guards, metal detectors and zero tolerance discipline policies in their schools and communities and to demand that the voices of youth of color be included in the conversation on gun violence prevention and school safety.

Speakers urged legislators and the White House to focus on investing in proven positive approaches to discipline like Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports (PBIS), social and emotional learning, Restorative Justice, and the hiring and training of counselors, social workers, and community intervention workers.

The rally began at 4pm with an opening speech by Jasmine Jauregui, a youth organizer with the Youth Justice Coalition from Los Angeles, “We all traveled many miles to share the solutions that communities and students of color are proposing because we strongly believe that the solutions coming from Congress are not what will keep us safe. We have seen how attempts to increase school safety with armed guards, police and prison-like conditions have failed. We want to be certain that no student gets left behind in the legal system. We demand college prep, not prison prep”.

Please read Jasmine Jauregui’s opening speech. It is excellent. Here is video of her speech as well.

You can also listen to this radio report about the rally.

Colorlines also produced a terrific video of youth speaking about these issues.

D.U.M.M.I.E. (Daring Use of My Mental Intelligence Enlightens)
by Anthony

I find it funny how one person can be judged by another
without them ever speaking
I’m pretty sure most people see me, the clothes, the hair, and
the first thought in their mind is thug, hoodlum
How do I know this?
I know this because every time I open my mouth and say
something intelligent, I’m looked at like I just grew a
new head
Does it matter if I represent blue or red or how my life
was led?
So what if my waist and the size of my pants ain’t the same?
What’s that gotta do wit the use of my brain?
I know a lot of young people who feel my pain
So what if I was bad and acted up in school?
Did it ever occur to you that at the time I had nothing else
to do?
Growin’ up, boredom was my worst enemy
So I took mischief and made it a friend to me
Take a look at my transcripts
Through all my suspensions, my grades never suffered
And everything I learned sits in the back of my mind
and hovers
Waitin’ to be put to a use
I laugh when people call the use of my intellect an abuse
The legal system bugs
Like they’re outraged at the misuse
Yet they never take the time to come into our world
And see that we are more than thugs with some serious issues
How can you watch everyone you grew up with get put away
for life?
Or members of your family go through heartache and strife?
Knowin’ a majority of your sisters will never be a wife
Growin’ up surrounded by danger and pain
Is it any wonder that some of us are considered criminally insane?
Half the people I know were never offered any assistance
If they was, pride spoke before common sense and said forget this
Of all the social workers I spoke to at a young age
I can count on a hand the ones that came close to
understanding my rage
I was young, smart and the work was no trouble
Every time there was extra credit I quickly scored double
The majority of my school life I sat and did nothin’
I’m thinkin’, if this is education they must be frontin’
When I found ways to occupy myself, I ended up in the principal’s office
With them telling me I need help
I don’t know about you, but the principal wasn’t my pal
And the only help he offered me was suspension with a smile
I laugh now cuz’ I find it funny
All that time they thought I was a dummy.

Source: Hidden TREWTH, no.1 (May 2001)

Early last year, I was on WBEZ talking about a report that I co-authored titled “Policing Chicago Public Schools.” I discussed the fact that black students in Chicago Public Schools (CPS) are disproportionately arrested and recommended that we rely on restorative practices for addressing disciplinary issues instead.

In CPS about 25 students a day are arrested on school property. The Chicago Tribune reports that in Illinois, minority students are disproportionately targeted for arrests. This is of course unsurprising. Below is a chart from their report:

We spend over $70 million on school security in CPS (with $25 million going to the Chicago Police Department to provide two police officers for each high school). In addition, last year, the Chicago Public Schools launched a Compstat “school-safety” partnership in order to further cement the ties between schools and law enforcement:

“The program brings police, principals and religious leaders together on a weekly basis to discuss crime and safety plans, analyze data and continually evaluate the implementation of those plans.”

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A few weeks ago, the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics released its annual “America’s Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being” report. I always look forward to reading the report because it usually challenges the popular conceptions (especially those advanced by the media) that our children and youth are all in deep trouble. Nothing could actually be further from the truth. In fact, these reports usually paint a portrait of a resilient group of people who are thriving IN SPITE of adult malpractice. Despite the fact that more children and youth are living in poverty, less teens are having babies and less of them are committing violent crimes. One might not know this if you simply relied on the mass media to learn about how youth are faring in our society.

Below is a chart that I think can’t be published enough. It highlights the fact that since around 1993, the percentage of serious violent crimes that involved youth has been steadily declining from a high of 26 percent in 1993 to 18 percent in 2010. In other words, the vast majority of the people in this country who commit serious violent crimes in the U.S. are adults.

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After struggling for days to figure out how to post this terrific youth-created documentary, it’s finally up at Vimeo. I wrote about Nina and Keely’s film here.

Source: U Raise Em, We Cage Em

I am currently working on a project with my friend Cait about policing in Chicago Public Schools. I look forward to sharing the product of our work in the next few weeks.

My views about having police in our schools are well-documented. I think that the increased militarization of our schools leads to profoundly negative outcomes for youth.

I came across an article today that should make it clear that the police are not confused about their role in our schools:

A Northern California school police officers union has angered a town after it sold T-shirts with a picture of a child behind bars and the slogan: “U raise ‘em, we cage ‘em.”

I appreciate the police officers’ honesty about their mission. The question is what will we (as citizens) do in response…

I could not stop laughing at this dramatization of the way that the U.S. is criminalizing children in our schools even though this is a very serious topic…  This needs to be required viewing by educators and parents across the U.S.

A recent article in the Dallas Morning News illustrates how schools in Texas are increasingly criminalizing students as young as 6 years old:

Students in Dallas and other urban school districts in Texas are increasingly being charged with Class C misdemeanors for less-serious infractions that used to be handled with a trip to the principal’s office, according to a new study.

The report from the nonprofit advocacy group Texas Appleseed examined student disciplinary data on 22 of the largest school districts in the state. It found that most have sharply increased the number of campus police officers – resulting in far more misdemeanor tickets being handed out to students.

“Disrupting class, using profanity, misbehaving on a school bus, student fights and truancy once meant a trip to the principal’s office. Today, such misbehavior results in a Class C misdemeanor ticket and a trip to court for thousands of Texas students and their families each year,” the group said in the report, Texas’ School-to-Prison Pipeline.

“Criminalization of student misbehavior extends to even the youngest students,” the report said. “In Texas, students as young as 6 have been ticketed at school in the past five years, and it is not uncommon for elementary school students to be ticketed by school-based law enforcement.”

Black students have been disproportionately ticketed. During a recent school year in the Dallas school district, 62 percent of misdemeanor tickets were issued to black students, even though they make up 30 percent of enrollment.

We really need to stop the madness…