Challenging the School-to-Prison Pipeline

Last Tuesday, April 2, the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) partnered with the Haas Center to welcome Mark Warren, author of Willful Defiance: The Movement to Dismantle the School-to-Prison Pipeline and Professor of Public Policy and Public Affairs at the University of Massachusetts Boston, together with several of his California community partners. 

The event was one of a series of panels at Stanford University put together by the Haas Center for Public Service and designed to highlight the work that Mark has been doing with Black and Brown parents, students, and other members of low-income communities of color as part of the People's Think Tank for Educational Justice. The group has been organizing for years in partnership with other community organizations around the country such as #PoliceFreeSchools to build an abolitionist movement that can challenge racism and disrupt the exclusionary discipline policies that suspend and expel students of color at disproportionate rates. 

Mark spoke knowledgeably about the shocking rise in policing in public schools across the country and talked with conviction about the important theoretical and practical work being done by community members and educators in various regions of the United States. Joining Mark at the table were the spoken word poets and educators Patrice Hill and Denisha "Coco" Bland from Sacramento Area Youth Speaks (SAYS). After screening a short video that highlighted their artistry, Patrice and Coco both spoke with passion about the work they are doing through SAYS in Sacramento high schools with the support of UC Davis. Also at the table were Geoffrey Winder and J. Gia Loving from the Genders & Sexualities Alliance (GSA) Network. They each spoke eloquently about the support provided by GSA to trans, queer and two-spirit youth who are uniting for racial and gender justice. Gia spoke movingly about their own experiences of being unfairly targeted by school policies designed to criminalize them and how they sought to counter those policies.

The event was inspiring and hopeful as the organizers spoke about how they have successfully launched and won various campaigns to achieve their own and others empowerment in the service of decarceration.