Tomorrow is Juneteenth, a day of celebration and action that celebrates Black freedom and the continued pursuit of it.

This year, it falls in the final weeks of New York City’s budget negotiations and in the final days of an election that will determine the future of our city. There’s a lot on the line.

In this vital moment, members of our Youth Power Project and our Parents Committee have joined together in a single call: Remove police from schools. Reinvest those resources into school counselors and culturally responsive education.

The majority of New York City’s public school students are Black and Latinx and the city has not allocated a single dollar to culturally responsive education in the city budget to ensure that curricula reflect the cultures and identities of NYC students.

NYC elementary school students read more books whose cover characters are animals than books whose cover characters are Latinx, Black, or Asian people.

–Chronically Absent, A Report from the NYC Coalition for Education Justice

Meanwhile the city spends $450 million a year to police and criminalize students inside their schools putting young people on a direct path from school to the criminal legal system, instead of a path to the higher education that they deserve.

Our young people want and need learning environments where they can thrive, learn and see themselves in the curriculum.

Join our parents committee and young people, along with partners from the Coalition for Education Justice, TOMORROW at 12 PM on the corner of Chambers Street and Centre Street to celebrate Juneteenth with music, dance, and action!

And help us to keep up this fight throughout the year by supporting this work today.

In solidarity