Freedom, Inc. is launching our Black Sanctuary Pledge to ensure the safety and support for young people in our schools and community. We were inspired by the powerful work of the Black Organizing Project in Oakland, California.

Since 2017, the Freedom Youth Squad (FYS) and Youth Justice Team (YJT) of Freedom, Inc. have waged the Police Free Schools campaign. The premise of the #PoliceFreeSchools campaign is not only that Black children are disproportionately targeted by police in society and in schools, but that improving the lives of the most vulnerable members of society cannot happen through punitive measures. In June of 2020, we won our campaign’s first demand to remove school resource officers from our four Madison high schools. We understood that Black lives at school could not even begin to matter until we got rid of school resource officers who are often students’ direct link to the school-to-prison pipeline and contribute to the uncontrollable police violence against Black communities. The cops are only part of the problem. That is why we have also been demanding that Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD):

1)Keep cops out of schools and create an accountability process for school staff who use police to harm children
2) Invest in the leadership, wellness, and creativity of Black youth and youth of color
3) Use transformative justice instead of punishment
4) Give most impacted youth, parents, and trusted adults real decision-making power over schools.

We are asking educators to sign our Black Sanctuary Pledge and to protect the lives of Black children in the classroom and beyond. We want to abolish the school-to-prison pipeline, end the antiblack criminalization of students, and make schools a liberatory place of learning and creativity for all students to be academically fulfilled. Educators play an important role in implementing healthy and transformative solutions and alternatives to harming and criminalizing youth. Failing to divest from harmful and punitive practices means that this city will continue to abuse and oppress the people that need the most love and support - our young people.