This is a major departure from what I noticed during Pittsburgh's rally earlier this week, at which too many people were representatives of non-profits (or general anti-police activists), and barely anyone (if anyone) was a student, teacher, or caregiver. https://twitter.com/democracynow/status/1275854462016540679

Organizing around removing police from schools requires students to share stories about how the presence of school police impacts them. It requires the voices of our students' caregivers to share their feelings about the fact that their child interacts daily with police.

When self-appointed community stakeholders, with no democratic accountability to our student body, attempt to pressure the school board, no amount of data will be as convincing as the pathos-laden story of the student whose relationship with a school officer saved his life.

Plus, I imagine that many of our school board members have no love lost for the education advocacy groups who attempted to usurp the superintendent search in 2016. Without a student-led movement, the alternative is organizing to elect a slate of anti-police candidates.

It also takes time to develop the political imagination of teachers, to grow an understanding of how the redistribution of finances paid to school police could potentially help negate their need, especially when the police belong to the same union.

To be honest, many teachers live in a state of constant fear. Whether due to threats, assaults, or mass shootings, they have developed an empirical sensation that can't be reasoned away through statistical abstractions. That must be directly addressed through this process.

That's why teachers also need student voice. It could serve as an important counter-narrative to these impulses and build the level of radical solidarity necessary for something like this to occur. https://twitter.com/StuStrikeBack/status/1275820235233296385