Youth Abolition 101

• In Event: On Abolition: Education Policy, Activism, and Police-Free Learning Environments

Abstract

What does abolition look like for Black and Brown youth? This is the guiding question grounding the youth organizing work of Chicago Freedom School (CFS). From the consciousness raising work of the Summer Leadership Institute to the strategic advocacy of our Youth Organizing team, CFS centers the conversation of abolition and the practice of it as we work towards liberation through our anti-oppression, transformative justice, and healing justice frameworks.
In line with our values, the youth of CFS do not work alone. We work in coalition with youth across the city and state. Our primary efforts toward abolition focus on pushing the number of youth prisons in the state of Illinois and the number of police in Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to zero. We proudly and diligently work on the Final 5 Campaign and #CopsOutCPS, respectively, to make those goals realities.
#CopsOutCPS is a youth-led campaign that demands the removal of Chicago Police Officers (rebranded Student Resource Officers) from CPS. We demand a complete divestment from police and systems of policing in schools, an end to the $33M contract between CPS and the Chicago Police Department, and a, at minimum, $33M reinvestment into Chicago’s Black and Brown schools for sustainable resources. Integrating police in our schools further perpetuates harm as opposed to addressing it and data reflects this as well. A report conducted by #CopsOutCPS shows that more than 95% of police incidents involve students of color (#CopsOutCPS, 2020). Black students are subjected to police notifications at ​four times the rate of white students. Though Black students currently make up 35.9% of all CPS students, 65.77% were the subject of police notifications from the 2011/12 to 2017/18 school years. This data affirms that Black and Brown youth are not safe with police. As we work to imagine what safety and security feels like for us, we are certain that it is not inclusive of policing in any capacity.
Police-free schools are not enough. We must end the school-to-prison pipeline. Our city must divest from policing and invest in community. Our state must shut down the five remaining youth prisons and divest from systems of policing and incarcerating youth. Chicago’s Black and Brown neighborhoods weather extreme divestment–they’ve become food deserts, been policed excessively, and have been increasingly denied access to healthcare. When the city has decided there is nothing more to take from us, they allow the state to take us away from our families, our homes, and our communities. Black and Brown youth are treated as disposable and the “problem”. We face punitive measures that neglect the root causes of our problems. We do not believe in our disposability but rather strive towards practices that ensure that everyone feels loved, cared for, and seen. We demand care not cops and embrace abolition as a practice of care.
In our presentation, we’ll fuse the spirit of protest and organizing with data and experiential learning. Join us in building the world we deserve.

Authors

• Essence-Jade Gatheright
  Presenting Author

• Jacqulyn Hamilton, Chicago Freedom School
  Presenting Author