Open thread for night owls: At schools where cops already patrol, not all students feel safer
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Rebecca Klein at HuffPost writes—Cops Already Patrol These Students’ Schools. It Doesn’t Make Them Feel Safer: Victoria Byfield knows exactly what it’s like to show up to school and get treated as a suspect instead of a student. Now a student at MiOpen thread for night owls: At schools where cops already patrol, not all students feel safer
Rebecca Klein at HuffPost writes—Cops Already Patrol These Students’ Schools. It Doesn’t Make Them Feel Safer: Victoria Byfield knows exactly what it’s like to show up to school and get treated as a suspect instead of a student. Now a student at Miami Dade College, she recalls walking to high school in the morning and seeing students getting questioned outside about their recent whereabouts. It felt like she was witnessing an interrogation. In school, the situation felt similarly precarious. “Even the slightest attitude coming from girls of color. The slightest attitude ... if they see it they’ll threaten to arrest you,” said Byfield, who has been working on these issues for years as a member of the nonprofit activist group S.O.U.L Sisters Leadership Collective. Byfield will be unable to attend The March For Our Lives this Saturday, but members of her group will be one of many around the country expected to march on Saturday for school safety and gun control. A group based in Florida, they will also be marching against some of the very school safety measures the state’s legislature recently passed. The Florida bill increases funding for school police, and “school hardening” measures, like metal detectors. But students like Byfield ― namely, students of color ― have been living with these measures for years, and say that they help push students out of school and into the criminal justice system. Public discussion around increasing police presence in schools has been recently centered on cops’ ability to deter school shootings. For Byfield though, having cops in schools has only made her feel less safe. It made school feel like a prison, instead of a safe haven. And while she’s optimistic and excited about the public activism that has been spurred by the shooting in Parkland, she’s worried that the unintended consequences of these policies will fall hardest on students of color. “I feel like they will do all these different laws, arming teachers with guns and putting more police officers in schools. It won’t fully impact the upper class schools that are in the predominantly white neighborhoods like it would impact those schools in lower-income neighborhoods. We will have to deal with it,” said Byfield. TOP COMMENTS • HIGH IMPACT STORIES QUOTATION “Strong, responsible unions are essential to industrial fair play. Without them the labor bargain is wholly one-sided. The parties to the labor contract must be nearly equal in strength if justice is to be worked out, and this means that the workers must be organized and that their organizations must be recognized by employers as a condition precedent to industrial peace.” ~Louis Brandeis, The curse of bigness: Miscellaneous papers of Louis D. Brandeis (1934) TWEET OF THE DAY xMy op-ed in @thehill: âÂÂAs many of these students prepare to vote for the first time in upcoming elections, an A rating from the @NRA wonâÂÂt be a badge of honor. It will be a scarlet letter.â https://t.co/PfgSDc6Ep2— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) March 23, 2018 BLAST FROM THE PAST On this date at Daily Kos in 2011—Trumping Pawlenty: The Donald gets more media coverage than T-Paw: Byron Tau points out yet another example revealing the weakness of the GOP's 2012 field: even though Tim Pawlenty has methodically planned his presidential campaign for more than a year and just formally announced his exploratory committee, Donald Trump has still managed to get more coverage from television networks over the past month. According to Nexis search of CNN, ABC, NBC, Fox, and CBS transcripts, Pawlenty has gotten mentioned on 72 broadcasts while Trump has made into 79. So when Republicans fret about their prospects for defeating President Obama, they've got something to worry about. Their two biggest names are reality TV shows stars who probably won't end up joining the race. Meanwhile, real candidates like Pawlenty manage to inspire little more than yawns. On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: An evening of egregious insanity (Bolton’s appointment, Risch’s hissy fit) prompted calls from both Armando and Joan McCarter! Things only get worse with Trump's veto threat, the Saudis hint they're after the bomb and Iran getting busted for cyberattacks. RadioPublic|LibSyn|YouTube|Patreon|Square Cash (Share code: Send $5, get $5!) LINK TO DAILY KOS STORE Read more