Fighting for the equity of Detroit students.
That was the goal behind Thursday’s protest organized by the Detroit Public Schools Community District. People gathered at Martin Luther King Jr. Senior High School to march downtown to the Spirit of Detroit statue.
“If we’re going to talk about Black Lives Matter in education, it’s gotta be about not equality, it’s about equity,” said Detroit Superintendent Nikolai Vitti at the protest. “Our kids don’t need the same — our kids need more.”
Many protesters could be seen wearing blue shirts that read "Detroit Public Schools." While they made their way downtown, chants of “students rise,” “education, equality” “say their names, which ones,” could be heard throughout the streets.
The Detroit school board, which is composed of seven Black women, was present at the protest. They encouraged the crowd to keep fighting for better education and resources for their students.
“I know that you will say you are preaching to the choir, but it’s choir rehearsal time. We need you to solicit people to the choir because the song that we sing now is equity,” board member Angelique Peterson-Mayberry said. “The song that we sing now is young people have resources in public education and it’s not defined by what they look like or where they live.”
The superintendent talked about how the school district has progressed in the last few years, however, he advised the crowd that there is still progress for which to fight.
“In three years, 60 more guidance counselors hired, 50 more social workers hired, 100 art and music teachers hired,” Vitti said. “But we’re not done, we have much more to do. Every one of our children deserves to go to a school that’s clean, that has technology, that has air conditioning.”
Arcidevi Kohair, 41, is a third-grade teacher at Chrysler Elementary in the Detroit Public Schools Community District. She attended the march Thursday to support the message that students within the district deserve better resources and conditions.
“It’s really important that they get fairly treated, that they get the same resources as other school districts get,” Kohair said. “We’re constantly fighting even for air conditioning or proper heating or other things in our classroom – supplies, all of those things.”
With her whole class consisting of African-American children, she said she worries that one day these children will feel the wrath of racism that has been happening for years.
“Looking toward their future – my boys in the class, are they going to deal with being persecuted by the color of their skin?” she said. “Are they going to have to deal with police officers the way that people are dying today?”
The final speaker at the protest was 17-year-old Lamont Satchel Jr., a senior at Cass Technical High School. He said his generation is not only the generation of change, but of demand.
“I shouldn’t have to be here. I should be able to walk out on the street and know that my life is protected,” Satchel said. “I’m tired of police officers and law enforcement teaching me how to act around them. We need to teach them how to act around us.
"We are the generation of change, and we're the generation of expectation."
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Detroit Public Schools come together to protest, fight for equity - Detroit Free Press
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