From yesterdays Democracy Now:
AMY GOODMAN: And joining me from Detroit is Jevon Cochran, a junior at Lewis Cass Technical High School in Detroit, an organizer with the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrant Rights, & Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary, known as BAMN.
Jevon, talk about what happened in Detroit yesterday.
JEVON COCHRAN: Well, yesterday in Detroit there were student walkouts from several schools against the school closings. You know, students also walked out against the ban on affirmative action, against like the restrictive dress codes in DPS that students get suspended over every day, and also in support of and in solidarity with the movement for immigrant rights.
And, you know, at the schools -- at one of the schools, Northern High School, you know, students marched down to the schools who had walked out from several high schools, and we were having like a really peaceful protest. You know, Northern High School in Detroit is one of the schools that's slated to close, and once we got there, you know, the students really wanted -- the students that had walked out from the other schools wanted the Northern students to come out and, you know, fight to keep their school open, to keep -- you know, because if Northern stays open, that's just -- you know, Northern is the key school that we need to keep open, a fight for the rest of the schools in Detroit. And the students went there, and they started chanting, you know, "Keep Northern open! Walk out now!" It was a really peaceful protest.
But what happened was the security guards and the administration at the school basically just terrorized the students and told them that they were powerless and that they couldn't fight to keep their school open, that they couldn't fight for their city. They blocked all the doors, and they tried to chain the students in, and they called the cops. And, you know, the cops like started just attacking the students, the students who had come from the other schools, like Cass, the high school that I go to. And there were -- like, we were just standing around, peacefully protesting, you know, trying to support the Northern students. And, you know, cops, just out of nowhere, totally unprovoked, started macing like elementary and middle school students. They grabbed one of the students who had led like walkouts at Northern High School almost two weeks ago, and they like beat him. They beat him. They maced him. They slammed him onto a police car. They arrested him. They arrested students from Osborn High School, which is a high school that over 200 students walked out from yesterday. They grabbed him by his hair. And it was just, you know, several incidents happening, you know, like this yesterday, where the police just attacked students and tried to terrorize the students who were fighting for their right to a decent education in our city.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/02/1427210
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