Pontac teacher Brooke Harris (l) and Mertilla Jones (r) listen as Rev. Charles Williams II speaks at rally for Harris and Trayvon Martin April 10, 2012
Students flock to Pontiac rally April 16
Aiyana Stanley-Jones’ grandmother Mertilla Jones speaks at church rally
By Diane Bukowski
April 17, 2012
Pontiac journalism teacher Brooke Harris
DETROIT – Brooke Harris, the Pontiac Academy journalism teacher who was fired in late March for proposing to have her students wear hoodies in solidarity with Trayvon Martin, appeared in Detroit at the Historic King Solomon Baptist Church April 10. A packed rally demanded her reinstatement and justice for Trayvon.
Trayvon Martin, 17, was executed by self-appointed cop wannabe George Zimmerman on Feb. 26, 2012 as he walked to his father’s house in a gated Fcommunity in Florida. (Click on http://voiceofdetroit.net/2012/03/23/killing-of-black-teen-trayvon-martin-sparks-outcry-national-mobilizations/) After two months, his killer has finally been charged with second-degree murder.
Harris was acknowledged at a press conference held by Martin’s parents and his supporters after the charges were brought.
Trayvon Martin, executed
The Rev. Jamal Bryant, a Baltimore pastor who has joined Rev. Al Sharpton of the National Action Network in the campaign for Trayvon, said, “We stand with Brooke Harris, the middle school teacher in Michigan who was fired.”
As promised during the Detroit rally, when Harris was not re-hired immediately, protesters from the group traveled to Pontiac to picket at her school April 16.
“Over 30 students, their parents and their grandparents came out to join in the rally,” said Mike Shane of the Michigan Emergency Committee Against War and Injustice (MECAWI). “It was obvious how much they loved their teacher and looked up to her.”
Since then, a petition to re-hire Harris with more than 200,000 signatures was presented to the board of the Pontiac School for Excellence on April 17. To sign the petition, click on http://www.change.org/petitions/fired-for-teaching-about-trayvon-re-hire-brooke-harris-at-pontiac-academy-for-excellence.
Harris was soft-spoken, with only a few words to say April 10. She appeared overwhelmed by her support at the April 10 rally, sponsored by Rev. Charles Williams II of the National Action Network and his father Rev. Charles Williams Sr., among others.
Mertilla Jones shows Aiyana's new-born baby photo
“I love the school,” Harris told an MLive reporter after the rally. “I love the staff. The children are amazing. It’s where I’ve spent the last three years of my life. I want to be there. I want to see these kids graduate from high school.”
She had traveled all the way down south to the Southern Poverty Law Center to seek legal help in getting her job back, but those leading the rally promised that they would see to it that she got a lawyer.
“Student action is the most important action in any movement,” Rev. Williams Sr. said. “When members of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the south decided not to go to school in the 1960’s, they ended up among the leaders of the massive civil rights movement.”
Mertilla Jones, wearing hoodie in solidarity with Trayvon Martin, hugs Pontiac teacher Brooke Harris April 10, 2012
Mertilla Jones, grandmother of Aiyana Stanley-Jones, killed by Detroit police at the age of 7 on May 16, 2010, hugged Harris warmly, after Jones pulled up her own hoodie. Jones was sleeping with Aiyana in the family’s living room when Detroit cop Joseph Weekley and his storm-trooper team fire-bombed their house and shot the child in the head.
Tears in her eyes, Jones displayed a photo of Aiyana as a new-born.
“Aiyana’s mother came and put her in my arms the day she was born, and I was with her when she took her last breath,” Jones said. “But because we haven’t been speaking up til now, people think we’re guilty because of the media. My son Charles, Aiyana’s father, is locked up now, although he didn’t kill anybody and didn’t assist in killing anybody, but Joseph Weekley and George Zimmerman are still free. But I have faith because people all over the country and the world are praying for our family and Trayvon’s family.”
Abayomi Azikiwe of MECAWI
Jones and Chauncey Owens face first-degree murder charges in the death of Je’Rean Blake, 17, two days before police killed Aiyana on the pretext that they were seeking to arrest Owens, who lived upstairs.
“There are too many Trayvon Martins and too many Aiyana Stanley-Jones,” Abiyomi Azikiwe of MECAWI said. “Everywhere the police and armed forces of our country go, from Detroit to Florida to Iraq to Iran to Libya and Colombia, they leave a swath of death and destruction. We must avenge the blood of Trayvon, Aiyana and the many other martyrs whose lives this system has taken. Over 20 African-Americans have been slaughtered by police and racists across the U.S. over the last three months. It is open season on Black people. What happened here in Detroit with the so-called “consent agreement” takeover was another symbolic assassination as well.”
Also speaking at the rally were Dawud Walid, head of the Michigan chapter of the Council on Arab-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Maureen Taylor of the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, Tamika Ganes of the American Federation of Teachers, and Ron Scott, among others.
Students at Miami Central High School walk out March 23, 2012 to demand justice for Trayvon
Just as Pontiac Academy students walked out to in support of their teacher Brooke Harris and to demand justice for Trayvon, students in the Miami area conducted mass walk-outs last month as well.
Students from Miami area schools walk out in protest of Trayvon Martin shooting
By Laura Isensee and Alexandra Leon, The Miami Herald
11:00 a.m. EDT, March 23, 2012
Walkouts continued Friday morning at several South Florida high schools Friday in protest of the recent killing of Miami Gardens teen Trayvon Martin.
Students joined national appeals for the arrest of George Zimmerman, the neighborhood crime captain who is accused of shooting Martin in Sanford.
Schools participating in the walkouts included Miami Northwestern, Central, Dr. Michael Krop, Norland, Carol City, William H. Turner Technical Arts and Edison high schools.
At Norland Senior High, hundreds of students left the school about 9 a.m. They coordinated the walkout through text messages and received support from their principal, Luis Solano.
“He said that if the students want to walk out, they could walk out and teachers don’t stop the kids,” said Desrick Hudson, a junior at Norland.
The students walked down 12th Avenue and onto 183rd Street to the Carol Mart Flea Market near 27th Avenue.
They stopped at convenience stores along the way to buy Arizona ice tea and Skittles.
They carried signs with messages that read: “Justice for Trayvon” and “Lock up Zimmerman.”
“We’re doing this to support Trayvon and show our respects,” said Hudson, who went to elementary school with the slain teen. “We’re proud to support.”
Chantale Glover contributed to this report
Young and old came out for justice for Trayvon at Hart Plaza March 26, 2012
DETROIT YOUTH WEAR HOODIES TO SUPPORT TRAYVON AT HART PLAZA; BUT SPEAKERS BETRAY THEM
Analysis
It was an awe-inspiring and soul-lifting sight, hundreds of young Detroiters walking to downtown Detoit’s Hart Plaza in hoodies, carrying Skittles and cans of iced tea to call for justice for Trayvon Martin.
Young man carries Skittles to honor Trayvon Martin
It appeared that finally a political movement among the youth had awakened to counter the despair and poverty they face everyday in the schools, on the streets, in their homes, and if they are lucky enough to have one, at their minimum-wage jobs.
But who appeared on stage to provide guidance in this brave new movement?
Detroit Police Chief Ralph Godbee, who has never apologized for or charged police under his command in numerous deaths of innocent youths on the streets of Detroit including seven-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones.
Stop the new Jim Crow!
His police continue to harass young people this summer as they go to Belle Isle, one of the only havens left for them in the city. Whirling red and blue police car lights can be seen every other block down East Jefferson on warm spring and summer week-ends as police pull people over and search their cars under Godbee’s directives to stop crime by stopping people with busted tail-lights.
Raphael B. Johnson, leader of the Detroit 300, whose members dressed in their paramilitary outfits stood in front of him as if guarding him against the youth. Were they worried that their members had broken down the doors of the homes of some of those in the audience without warrants, and held them and interrogated them illegally as wannabe cops? Did they think righteous retaliation might be coming forward from the audience?
Paramilitary police wannabes were all over the rally
Rev. Wendell Anthony, whose NAACP has done little to fight the consent agreement which has put Detroit under state control, and promises to further impoverish the city and its youth.
Sign reminds crowd who the enemy is
And, heaven forbid, Rev. Horace Sheffield III, who was allegedly thrown out of his own church by his wife, and now conducts services out of a building that used to be a Detroit Public School, as well as getting money for running a charter school there.
VOD could not stand to stay any longer after his presence was announced, but the memory of all those hopeful, bright-eyed youth still lingers. Hopefully, they will soon be educated by leaders such as those who supported teacher Brooke Harris, instead of those who kill them, frame them up, expel them from school, and put them in the school-to-prison pipeline.
The fight for justice for Trayvon Martin is a battle FOR the youth, to stem the war on THEM, It must not be confused with violence in the community AMONG them, which results from despair, poverty and drug trafficking using cocaine and heroin brought in across U.S. borders with the blessings of the CIA and the banks who profit from money-laundering.
Mertilla Jones (center) and crowd give standing ovation to Brooke Harris at April 10 rally
