The power is in the people and the politics that we address!

San Francisco – “It was a mini-riot. First of all, a Black kid got jumped by the Asians. The Black kid came back to school with some of his folks, and while both of them was in the hallway, the police officers from the campus came,” said Gaylon, 16, an 11th grader at Thurgood Marshall High School, about an incident that happened on Friday at his school in Bayview Hunters Point.

“They called hella officers and they started hemming everybody up that was around. They started hitting people with billy clubs when we were going to homeroom in the morning. We were refusing because we didn’t do nothing,” said Gaylon at a rally Tuesday morning in front San Francisco School District headquarters at 555 Franklin St. “After that, it was about 60 officers, and the whole school started fighting back. Then the principal rang the fire alarm. She lied and said that she was locked in her office, when she locked herself in, as an excuse as to why she didn’t do nothing about the situation.”

Last year, the San Francisco schools superintendent fired a principal from Thurgood Marshall High who had a good rapport with the students and a lot of community respect, according to students at the rally. They said that this current principal is quick to call the police, instead of trying to mediate and work through situations. After an incident like this in just the first few months of school, I anticipate that Marshall High is going to have a long year ahead of them.

“A teacher of ours named Mr. Peebles got took to jail, ‘cause one of the officers was wrongly abusing the kids while he was trying to restrain him,” said Jeff, 17, a 12th grader at Thurgood Marshall High. “He was telling the cops to “let ‘em go, you’re hurting them.’ They told Mr. Peebles to leave or they’ll take him to jail. He said that he didn’t care, left, went upstairs, got a camera, and started videotaping all the police beating up the kids,” said Jeff, who was also participating in Tuesday’s rally.

“After that, the cops took the videotape, handcuffed (Mr. Peebles) and took him to jail. He was the only teacher arrested.” Besides Mr. Peebles, two female students and 10 males were also arrested, all of them Black, according to the students. “None of the Asians got arrested and they started the whole thing,” continued Jeff.

When I got to Tuesday’s rally, about 75-100 people of all nationalities were protesting with political signs pointed towards the streets. They were chanting, “Where’s Willie Brown?” “Books Not Jails” and “College Not Jails.” A big yellow bus was also on the scene, giving students, administrators, teachers, parents and other concerned people a ride to the rally from Thurgood Marshall High.

It felt good to me to see regular neighborhood people standing up for themselves, absent any media hound nonprofit pimp scavengers trying to get their organization involved so that they can have a beefy resume for their next cycle of grant funding.

“Some of our students got arrested by extremely aggressive police officers, and now they have a record,” said Derek Toliver, the track and field coach and father of three daughters who are students, in a quick speech at the rally. “If you are in agreement that the District Attorney should expunge their records, then say ‘Aye.’” The whole crowd unanimously said “Aye.” Toliver continued, “They were at the wrong place and the wrong time,” then, seeming to correct himself, he said, “They were at the right place at the wrong time”.

“He had it right the first time,” said Ra’Shida, the homie who rolled to the rally with me. “They was at the wrong place at the wrong time. If the police can run up in our schools and beat us like we are in apartheid (South Africa), and we ain’t learning nothing about ourselves or survival, then we don’t need to be there.”

For those reasons, we should be pushing harder than ever to educate ourselves and enroll in Black independent schools. As you can see, at public schools, a police presence puts our lives and the health of students in danger.

In 2001, the city of Oakland put armed police officers at every high school. Now Oakland’s Mayor Jerry Brown wants to hire 100 more cops through Proposition FF, although he has serious problems with his own police force across the water, i.e., the Riders case, where one veteran officer fled the country rather than face up to the human rights abuses that he and his colleagues were/are inflicting on the residents of Oakland.

I included that info to show that this push for police around Black people is hazardous to our health and that this trend to post police at innercity high schools and in Amerikkka’s impoverished Black communities would be called colonialism if we compared our community oppression to what people in other nations call this type of oppression when it happens to them.

“Basically, I’m out here (at the rally) representing for my whole school. It was innocent people that the police hit,” said Tiarra, 14, a ninth grader at Thurgood Marshall. “I just want to get an education”.

“Our number one concern that we have is the safety of our students. Under Title IX of federal legislation, there’s a section that mandates that there be a plan in place addressing school safety and violence prevention. What has happened is that (the San Francisco Unified School District) has not produced this for the parents,” said Derek Toliver. “We had a meeting Monday with Arlene Ackerman, the San Francisco superintendent, and we discussed our concerns of school safety and violence prevention. In part of the discussion we asked her about a written plan. (The people representing the district at the meeting) said that they had one, but they couldn’t produce it,” said a disgusted Oliver.

“The reason why I’m here is to insure that my children receive a quality education in a safe environment,” said Loretta Wilcher, the mother of a senior who attends Thurgood Marshall High. “As far as I’m concerned, there has been no response from the district because they have their own agenda. They haven’t responded to any of our concerns as of yet. We are trying to get a meeting with the mayor, the president of the school board, the district attorney, the chief of police, and any other decisionmakers to discuss the safety issues and the lack of quality education that (the students) are receiving, in particular this incident on 10-11 and the ramifications from all of it.”

This is just one more example of how the police occupation of the Black community is intensifying. International support is being given to the Palestinians who are facing this from the Israelis, and it should be. We also need people in this country to help raise international support against Amerikkka’s agents of death. The legendary rapper Tupac Shakur rapped in his song “Me Against the World,” “The power is in the people and politics that we address.”

The saga continues …

Email JR at fire [at] sfbayview.com.