“We Removed Cops From Schools But Policing Stayed”: Examining the Afterlives of (Blackened) Educational Justice

• In Event: Sunday Roundtable Session 11:25 am
  In Roundtable Session: Abolition, Agency, and Action: Dismantling Racism and Carceral Logics for Educational Justice (Table 1)

Abstract

There have been demands to remove uniformed police officers from schools across the United States. Youth organizers and activists, specifically Black and of color, have led social movement campaigns dedicated to police free schools. Years of youth-led activism/organizing coupled with structural adjustments stemming from the 2020 uprisings made police free schools a reality in certain school districts.

This paper details the complex afterlives of winning police free schools in a purported progressive town referred to as Lincolnville. The police free schools victory was hard fought, yet short lived. This caused many of the youth organizers, especially Blackened youth, to rethink, reimagine, and question the very notion of (educational) social justice in the context of ongoing ontological oppression.

Author

• Michael A. Davis, University of Wisconsin - Madison