Students Break The Silence
MEET OUR SPONSORS AND COLLABORATORS
#StudentsBreakTheSilence
WHAT WE WANT
What do we mean by
POLICE FREE SCHOOLS?
When we say we want police-free schools, we are demanding not only that police infrastructure, culture, and practice be removed from schools, but also that this system is replaced by youth, parent, and educator led solutions that center liberation and restorative justice.
Police-Free Schools Means: Funding for Schools to Build Restorative, Supportive, and Safe Schools.
How we'll get there
Cut the $40 million in the capital budget that is proposed for policing and surveillance infrastructure and NYPD collaboration, and reinvest that money instead in infrastructure that will make schools more accessible, safe, and welcoming such as air conditioning, new elevators, and repairs for crumbling buildings.
Abolish the NYPD’s School Policing Division and reinvest that $450 million into creating restorative schools, which have social and emotional supports that build community and keep young people safe.
Police-Free Schools DOES NOT Mean: Shifting the NYPD’s School Policing Division to the Department of Education.
We oppose the suggestions put forth by some city council members and the Panel for Educational Policy (PEP) to merely transfer the School Policing Division (aka the “School Safety Division”) from the NYPD to the DOE. The Department of Education should not be in the business of policing students and simply taking over from the NYPD. We demand the removal of police from schools and an end to policing culture. We demand that the city give schools resources to create jobs for people to serve their school communities in supportive and restorative ways. School policing does not make schools safe; well-resourced, supported school communities make schools safe.
Come Join Us
We meet once a month, between 5 and 6:30 on zoom
Synonyms for "Tuesdays"
Meeting ID: 938 7476 1773
Passcode: 687272
BE IN THE KNOW
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@StudentBreakTheSilence
Yet every time our skin goes under,
it’s as if the reeds remember they were once chains,
and the water, restless, wishes it could spew all of the slaves and ships
onto shore,
whole as they had boarded, sailed and sunk.
Their tears are what have turned the ocean salty,
this is why our irises burn every time we go under.
Every
December 16th,
December 24th and
December 31st
and January 1st,
our skin re-traumatises the sea.
They mock us
for not being able to throw ourselves into something that was instrumental
in trying to execute our extinction.
For you, the ocean is for surfboards, boats and tans
and all the cool stuff you do under there in your bathing suits and goggles.
But we,
we have come to be baptised here.
We have come to stir the other world here.
We have come to cleanse ourselves here.
We have come to connect our living to the dead here.
Our respect for water is what you have termed fear.
The audacity to trade and murder us over water
then mock us for being scared of it.
The audacity to arrive by water and invade us.
If this land was really yours,
Then resurrect the bones of the colonisers and use them as a compass.
—– from “Water” by Koleka Putuma