Please share with all those who are seeking to build Forums to deepen and extend the discussion sweeping this country...Also we are asking for feedback, suggestions, or edits to the statement itself (though response so far has been very positive!) ****** Non-Tenure Track Faculty Caucus Committee Draft Statement on Ferguson Enough is Enough! As UMB faculty who are committed to our universitys public mission, our students, and the communities from which they come, we stand simultaneously horrified and inspired by recent events. We are disheartened at the series of killings of unarmed black men and youth by police, by the excessive force that has characterized state responses to communities in mourning, and by the failure of the judicial system to bring indictments against the police who have killed--even in the face of eye-witness and video evidence. Above all, we are disheartened by the message that is being sent to our young people, especially young black men, that their lives do not matter, as well as the message being sent to police, that they can target and even kill members of our communities with impunity. At the same time, we have been inspired by what we have been seeing in recent days across our city, across the country, and across the world: people--led by young people, especially young people of color-- speaking up boldly, organizing creatively, and mobilizing bravely in ways not seen for decades, to challenge injustice and stand in solidarity with those who have fallen and their families, from Michael Brown and Eric Garner, to Trayvon Martin and Tamir Rice. Here in Boston, thousands have taken to the streets as well as the subways and the highways, forcing into public view crucial issues too-long ignored: issues of equity, accountability, and access to power. We therefore call on the UMass-Boston campus community to host a teach-in, and a spring semester devoted to issues that empower our broader community. In the face of national police abuse and violence, structural racism, political disenfranchisement, educational disparities and economic inequalities that especially affect Black, Brown, and poor communities, we need to help bring about accountability, equity, and justice. As educators at Bostons only major public university, a university with an important public mission, we have a special obligation--and a rare opportunity--to mobilize resources and expertise via a public forum so as to play a positive role in the present moment. Together, we can help broaden and deepen informed discussion about the issues now erupting into public view, while engendering community that is grounded in ideals of truth, justice, and respect for the dignity of all human beings. Opening our campus in this way, we can enable not only UMB but the Greater Boston community more broadly to share views and experience on many pressing questions, while ourselves listening to and learning from students, youth, and others who are at the forefront of this emerging movement. Together we can render to our city a useful service, helping a social movement find its voice and forge its action plans. Furthermore, we believe that as UMB faculty, we can and must play an active part in helping our students and the city of Boston to face fully the deep truths that have emerged in the wake of Ferguson, not only the details of the recent events themselves, but, crucially, the historical and structural roots of the current eruption. These roots include not only issues of police violence and prejudicial prosecution, but persistent economic injustices, long-standing educational inequities, unprecedented mass incarceration (often now referred to as “the New Jim Crow”), the widespread militarization of police, new and old forms of anti-black racism, and the unresolved legacies of slavery. We therefore call for faculty, students, staff, and administrators, as well as local community members and organizations to join with us in launching a campus-community teach-in, and a semester of critical and sustained engagement with the problems and the movement for change, which these events following Ferguson, New York, and, Cleveland have made so pressingly clear. We support the upsurge of young people in our community and across the nation engaged in peaceful civil disobedience who are calling for structural changes in the policing policies in this nation. **** Please share and forward widely to all that may want to participate or build for this event. Contact me if you would like to be involved jgramsey AT gmail
Posted on: Thu, 11 Dec 2014 13:56:47 +0000
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