Brianni reached out to you last week about the intersectionality of gun violence -- and specifically why our armed supremacist, over-policed state is a remnant of the violent injustice on which our country was founded. Now, I’m reaching out to you to talk about where we go from here. 

March For Our Lives is launching Peace Without Police, a coordinated, multi-state grassroots advocacy campaign to get cops out of schools. 

With increasing frequency and visibility, we’ve seen our broken policing system creating the violence that it’s “meant to prevent” -- especially when it comes to Black lives and Black youth. The school-to-prison pipeline is fueled by the treatment of Black youth as adults in our carceral system, and that all starts with police in schools, because when 6-year-olds are getting arrested in their classrooms, there’s no denying that there’s an issue. 

If you haven’t heard of SROs (School Resource Officers), they’re basically armed officers meant to maintain safety and security in educational spaces. But here’s a stunning fact published just this year by public health PhD researchers: deaths are more likely in school shootings where an armed officer is present than when an officer isn’t present. According to the ACLU, schools with police have about 3.5 times as many arrests as schools without police. SROs create an environment of criminality rather than learning, overly target BIPOC children, and push students into the prison-industrial complex. And if you think having an armed officer prevents mass shootings, that’s just not what happened at Marjory Stoneman Douglas and so many other schools. 

Instead of investing more into a flawed system, we must work toward addressing the conditions in society that make police presence in our schools (and communities) necessary. Peace Without Police demands that funding for SROs is reinvested into counselors, mental health professionals, well-paid teachers, and state-of-the-art educational resources. Every student deserves an education, not handcuffs. 

A donation to this campaign will support local chapters taking on-the-ground actions in their communities, grassroots supporter trainings, and local educational events. We’re going directly up against well-funded giants, like police unions and the NRA (💀💀💀), who see an opportunity with every school shooting to expand police presence in schools. So your support today is invaluable. 

I appreciate you. Stay tuned as we roll out our new campaign and start building capacity on the ground. 

Onward,
Thandiwe Abdullah
Mobilizations Organizer
March For Our Lives