shado-lite - S1 Ep6: Why are the police in our schools?

S1 Ep6: Why are the police in our schools?

08/07/23 • 66 min

FOIs conducted by the Runnymede Trust reveal that there are almost 1000 police officer operating in UK schools, and there are plans to hire more. Children and young people are being robbed of their childhoods through criminalisation and surveillance in schools.

Why do the police appoint “Safer Schools Officers” when we know that police make marginalised children unsafe? Why are surveillance technologies being rolled out in schools? Why is community concern about all of this ignored? Co-hosts, Zoe and Larissa, ask all these questions and more on this week’s episode. Have a listen to learn more about the issues we’re facing and the orgs on the ground that give us hope!

References:

The Runnymede Trust (2023) Over-policed and Under-protected Report
No More Exclusions (2021) School Exclusions During the Pandemic: Why we need a Moratorium
The 4 Front Project
Safeguarding, Surveillance and Control: School Policy and Practice Responses to the Prevent Duty and the ‘war on terror’ in the U.K. Necla Acik, Jo Deakin and Bob Hindle 2018
Curating Risk, Selling Safety? Fear of Crime, Responsibilisation and the Surveillance School Economy Emmeline Taylor
Surveillance Won’t Protect Students with Chris Gilliard, Tech Won't save us Podcast

Articles to read:

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

References:

The Runnymede Trust (2023) Over-policed and Under-protected Report
No More Exclusions (2021) School Exclusions During the Pandemic: Why we need a Moratorium
The 4 Front Project
Safeguarding, Surveillance and Control: School Policy and Practice Responses to the Prevent Duty and the ‘war on terror’ in the U.K. Necla Acik, Jo Deakin and Bob Hindle 2018
Curating Risk, Selling Safety? Fear of Crime, Responsibilisation and the Surveillance School Economy Emmeline Taylor
Surveillance Won’t Protect Students with Chris Gilliard, Tech Won't save us Podcast

Articles to read:

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Previous Episode

S1 Ep5: Can an art movement help us solve the world's problems?

Have you ever felt hopeless? Like everything is too complicated? Society is too hard to change?

Then maybe you need a bit of Solarpunk in your life, an art aesthetic / literary genre / political movement, proposing a radical different way of living and being.

In this episode, co-host Zoe fangirls over Andrew Sage, an artist, YouTuber and organiser on solarpunk and leftist politics. Andrew deftly diagnoses our inability to radically change society is rooted in that we don’t know what alternative we are proposing. Solarpunk provides a vision for us to work towards, and values to build sustainable and successful movements for change.

In the words of Toni Cade Bambara, “the role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible.”

Check out Andrews YouTube here YouTube.com/Andrewism & Patreon here patreon.com/saintdrew

References:

Solaprpunk reading list:

Walk Away (2017) Cory Doctorow
The Dispossessed (1974) Ursula K. Le Guin
A Psalm for the Wild-Build (2021) Becky Chambers
Ecotopia (1975) Ernest Callenbach

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Next Episode

S1 Ep7: How do we make ourselves and our community ungovernable?

We know that many feminisms do not truly resist oppression in all its forms [insert TERFs and boss babes here] Another group of feminists flopping on the ‘radical reimagination’ front are carceral feminists.

Our guest this time, abolitionist revolutionary, author and lecturer Dr Aviah Sarah Day, describes the term carceral feminism as “a critique about a particular branch of the feminist movement”. With Aviah’s knowledge and experience in the movement, we get into why investing in policing and punitive responses to gendered violence will not save us!

Somehow the tech failed us on the recording of this episode (boo, hiss!) so we lost the second half of our chat with Aviah. Co-hosts Zoe and Larissa have wrapped up the chat by reflecting on some of the parts of the conversation that we lost.

In the episode, we discuss some examples of gendered and sexual violence, including r*pe, so if you’d like to skip that part of the conversation, hit pause at 32:14 and resume at 32:44. Masses of love and solidarity to any survivors listening.

Resources: