SCHOOLS NOT JAILS
A grassroots organization working to end the school-to-prison pipeline
WHO WE ARE
SCHOOLS NOT JAILS is a grassroots, community-based organization fighting for a dismantling of the school-to-prison pipeline and broader carceral state. It spun out of McKayla Wilkes' campaign for Maryland's 5th Congressional District in 2020 — where Wilkes, a working mother and former victim of SRO abuse, incarceration, and eviction challenged Steny Hoyer, a 40-year incumbent and House Majority Leader, for the Democratic Nomination in MD-5. While she lost, she came the closest any primary challenger had in Hoyer's career — bringing significant attention to the issues of over-policing and over-incarceration in richly diverse Southern Maryland. In the aftermath of the campaign, Wilkes, along with her campaign manager and well-known local Maryland organizer, Dash Yeatts-Lonske, and prominent political organizer with Our Revolution Maryland, Carlos Childs, came together to form SNJ with the goals of carrying on the fight against the industrial prison complex to college campuses and kitchen tables across Maryland.
EXTENDING OUR REACH
In the months following its founding, SNJ quickly engaged itself in the students' rights and education fights across Maryland, joining the broad coalition of student and civil groups across the state fighting for police accountability, an end to policing in schools, and radical criminal reform in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. This came to a head with the abolition of School Resource Officers in Maryland's largest public school district, Montgomery County. SNJ additionally endorsed a slate of six candidates in the 2020 elections — 3 county judges and 3 candidates for School Board Commissioner, and all 6 won — including several who challenged incumbent officials. These victories were pivotal in the unprecedented upset victory of the elected progressive slate in Maryland's second largest district School Board in Prince George's County.
ORGANIZED TO WIN
Since their election in 2020, the progressive slate has been marginalized and caught in legal battles aimed at ousting them from public office, backed by local business interests and Democrats. They have been led in large part by Ed Burroughs (right) who sought election to the Prince George's County Board of Education and won, before winning, again with SNJ support, a special election to Prince George's County Council in 2021. The slate also included Raaheela Ahmed (left), who is, after a tenure of many years on the School Board, seeking election to the State Senate in 2022. SNJ endorsed candidates have also included Gladys Weatherspoon, an Independent candidate and defense attorney who won a Circuit Judgeship in PG County, and Makeba Gibbs, a prominent local civil rights attorney who ousted a Hogan-appointed Judge in Charles County.
CONTINUING THE FIGHT
In early 2021, Schools Not Jails decided that it wanted to expand its fight to secondary school campuses across the country — and recruit student volunteers to engage in civil campaigns with organizations in different states. Since then, the Youth Organizing program established by SNJ has garnered members in at least five states, with student organizers having brought the fight against Mayor Adams in New York City in a Day of Action to Close Rikers Island alongside other NYC-based organizations like Freedom Agenda, against the blatant justification and subsidization of SRO violence at Hunters Lane High School in Nashville alongside Tennessee-based groups like Safer Schools Nashville, and against the reinstatement of school police in Western Maryland alongside local organizers like Sunrise Movement Silver Spring.
Youth Organizers continue to prepare to advance new civil campaigns, launch campaigns for positions on local School Boards, and organize alongside existing local community and grassroots organizations against over-carceration, over-policing, and the abuse of their student peers in states from coast to coast in the months to come. If YOU are interested in organizing alongside your fellow students for your fellow students, learning about the ways youth can impact and speak truth to institutions of power, or educating yourself on the issues of police abuse and industrial prisons, we want you to sign up today to become a Youth Organizer. Join us.
WHERE WE'RE ORGANIZING