Educate not Incarcerate!

Baltimore Youth and Local Activists Lead Action Against Planned Youth Detention Center

This past Sunday, more than 150 people gathered on the football field of Dunbar High, next to the Latrobe Projects and just blocks from the central booking detention facility, to rally and protest the state government planned $104 million youth detention center. The main organizers of the action were youth-led groups such as:Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle and The Baltimore Algebra Project, as well as the faith-based groups: Kinetics Faith and Justice Network and the Union Baptist Church. However, the action was far from confined to these particular organizations. In attendance were everyone from local black leaders, such as: organizers, teachers, pastors and independent politicians to individuals and allies to parents of incarcerated youth to youth-led NAACP chapters to longtime Baltimore peace-activists to The United Workers Organization, and lastly but not limited to, to the Red Emma’s Collective (who served up mugs of hot chocolate to those gathered on the chilly October day).

Just two days prior to Maryland’s midterm state elections, this rally and protest was clearly an attempt to raise voter’s awareness. However, the fundamental reason was to build and network new community relationships, as well as strengthen the existing ones. Seemingly done towards galvanizing grassroots participation in the struggle to not just reject and halt the planned $104 million youth detention facility, but, more profoundly, to begin to think of alternatives to the failed criminal justice system or as it’s popularly called the School-to-Prisons-Pipeline. Educate not incarcerate! The attendees shouted as they turned the rally into a march toward the gated planned site of the $104 million youth detention facility (next to the current central booking detention center).

As the sun was setting, the march reached its destination. Members of the Baltimore Algebra Project and Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle began to destroy the locks with bolt cutters while the more than 150 participants chanted,“Break that lock! Break that lock!” As an act of civil disobedience they entered the site, placing books on the ground as a symbolic gesture toward the underfunded and underprivileged Baltimore public education system. While city and state officials find there is enough money to construct a prison, they have failed to find enough money for new textbooks, funding for afterschool programs, and staffing the schools with the necessary number of educators.

This action appears to underscore the need for more positive alternatives for Baltimore City youth, such as the Peer 2 Peer (P2P) tutoring, New Lens, and Wide Angle Youth Media. Placing literature within the newly dismantled gates, they aimed to symbolize the more systematic issues at root. They weren’t simply gathered in an action against the new prison, but rather were there to demonstrate that city and state government officials have prioritized prisons over education. These historically notorious government actions maintain a structure and status quo that has long kept inner-city youth disadvantaged and marginalized. The Sunday rally and march was clearly not a beginning or an end. Rather one part in a much broader movement, to not only save our cities but to reimagine and redefine them.