Shannon Griffin, Policy Advocate and Community Organizer with the ACLU of Delaware and a leader with The Building People Power Campaign, discussed her grass-roots work to propel racial justice across Delaware to make lasting change whether it’s in education, criminal justice reform, housing, economics, or health.
She spoke of the need for Black and Brown leadership with the organizations working toward ending disparity, including the Coalition to Dismantle Jim Crow. We discussed the systemic discrimination that exists in schools, its historic past in the recognized Jim Crow era, and today in the US system of funding schools locally leading to inequalities and a ‘school to prison pipeline’ approach to discipline. She suggested that schools should not be funded ‘equally’ but by need to create an equal outcome. We spoke about punishments, usually harsher to youth of color and the idea of ‘refunding,’ removing School Resource Officers and replacing them with counselors, replacing the disciplinary systems with peer based, in-school penalties.