Monday June 13, 5:30-6:30 p.m.
Ypsilanti Community Schools Administration Building
1885 Packard Rd.

Good Afternoon all,

My name is Chevaun Johnson. I am an 11th grade student at Ypsilanti Community High School (YCHS). I am a part of Student Advocacy Center’s (SAC) Youth Action of Michigan (YAM). I have been participating with YAM for three years. We are working to find alternatives to suspensions in our school.

This message is being sent out to recruit your involvement in the support of my fellow students of YCHS. This past year, we have seen many great things done within Ypsilanti Community Schools (YCS) to improve the climate of the district. This past year, we have also seen many eyebrow raising instances that have contributed to the school-to-prison pipeline. Suspension policies without restoration have been overused at YCHS. The use of restorative practices by a trained restorative practitioner has not been used.

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Check out this new brochure by the Ann Arbor Alliance for Black Lives.

These young readers and breakfast eaters are Ypsilanti’s future leaders. We are blessed to have had the opportunity to meet them and eat with them this morning at Holmes Elementary. Thanks, kids. And thanks as well to Principal Petty, Ms. Robinson, and Ms. Brown! Our gratitude to Beezy’s for food; and to Cultivate, Red Rock, the Eyrie, and Betty Green Salon for gift cards for the teachers. Shout-out to everyone in the county who donated 6o books! May we never forget that we’re on this planet to love, protect, and serve others. Last but surely not least: thank you to Hands Up United for the inspiration.

Local law enforcement agencies are once again mobilizing what they call “Interrupters”: civilians who go door to door in low-income neighborhoods in an attempt to intervene and “stop the violence.”

This tactic of “community policing,” however, boils down to developing snitches—along with media propaganda that attempts to make it seem credible.

The narrative we’re currently being sold is that cops want to get out in front of “gang violence,” and nip it in the bud before it flares back up this summer. What cops and their managers aren’t going to elucidate for us, though, is that this type of media spectacle perpetuates at least two illusions:

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Local prosecutors have historically paid no price for taking up residence in the pocket of the police department. That changed on Tuesday, when Democratic primary voters in the counties that include Cleveland and Chicago turned veteran prosecutors out of office for mishandling cases against police officers who shot and killed black citizens.

The defeats of Anita Alvarez, the state’s attorney of Cook County, Ill., and Tim McGinty, county prosecutor of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, show that many voters are no longer willing to tolerate cover-ups and foot-dragging in cases of killings by the police and other abuses. Still, it will take more than changing the name on the prosecutor’s stationery to reform the way such cases are handled.

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