Another World Is Possible!
Join students and young people across the country who are organizing for and winning #PoliceFreeSchools.
The Campaign
The fight for #PoliceFreeSchools sits in a continuum of radical youth and community organizing. Black youth, students of color, students with disabilities, immigrant and LGBTQIA+ youth organizing to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline are part of a long legacy of young people fighting to end the policing of their schools and communities.
History and Formation
We recognize that safety does not exist when Black and Brown young people are forced to interact with a system of policing that views them as a threat and not as students. And we are putting forth a liberatory vision for education that reflects a society where young people are loved, and communities can determine and control the thriving schools they deserve.
In 2015, after the violent #AssaultAtSpringValley, young people in the Alliance for Educational Justice vowed to build a national campaign to fight for the removal of police from schools, grounded in the years of organizing led by local grassroots organizations. In 2017, AEJ and the Advancement Project National Office convened 10 organizations to form the National Campaign for Police Free Schools, and the Campaign continues to grow today.
Definition of Police Free Schools
Dismantling school policing infrastructure, culture, and practice; ending school militarization and surveillance; and building a new liberatory education system.
Strategies
Grounded in the belief that removing police from our schools is the seed to removing police from our communities, the campaign centers the leadership of young people and organizers who are using a series of strategies, the “6 D’s,” to advance abolitionist fights from Oakland to New York:
Decriminalize
Deprioritize
Divest | Invest
Demilitarize | Disarm
Delegitimize
Dismantle
Timeline
This timeline helps us understand how the movement for education justice has developed over the last 80 years, explores the intricate relationship between police and schools, and connects our organizing to other movements.
#ASSAULTAT MAP
School policing places students of color at a significant risk of being attacked, harassed, and assaulted by the same police officers who have oppressed Black and Latinx communities for centuries. This #AssaultAt map chronicles acts of school police violence against students of color.
