At East Side Community School in Manhattan's East Village, students received a personal letter from Principal Mark Federman on Thursday. It said he was "despondent over a severe lack of justice" for the second time in two weeks. Federman was referring to a Staten Island grand jury's decision not to indict a white police officer in the death of Eric Garner, coming on the heels of another grand jury's refusal to indict a white officer in Ferguson, Missouri who fatally shot an unarmed black teenager.
"This is not about being anti-police, it is about being pro justice and pro 100% respect," Federman told his students, as he urged them to learn as much as they can and discuss what's happening.
The teachers at the combined middle and high school appear to have taken that lesson to heart. They made stickers saying "Black Lives Matter" and "Justice for Eric Garner." Some showed the mayor's press conference, and the video of Garner in what appeared to be a police chokehold, to older students.
"It was really emotional," said English teacher Nicole Dixon, who teaches seventh grade. Although most students knew about the case, she said some had never heard of it. "We gave them some time to just sort of talk about their reactions to it."
Now, she said, some now want to plan their own peaceful protests.
Tenth grade global studies teacher Yolanda Betances said students with family members in the police department "feel like police officers get a bad rap," while others described their own negative interactions with officers.
The Garner case didn’t come up in every school. One disappointed teacher, who works at a school for children with special needs and declined to be identified, said she mentioned the topic, “and people just grimaced as if it were bad weather.”
[For more of this story, written by Beth Fertig, go to http://www.wnyc.org/story/cont...-tackle-garner-case/]
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