April 1 marked the third annual Youth Justice Sunday rally and march to address the basic needs of young people and to protest the Maryland state government’s criminal treatment of Baltimore’s youth and its compliant role in the school-to-prison pipeline.
That afternoon, students, teachers, civil rights leaders and activists were some of the many who gathered on Paul Laurence Dunbar Football Field carrying signs and chanting, “No education—no what? No education—no life!” and “Books, not bars!” At the rally, chaired by Nicole Cheatom, an organizer with the Baltimore Algebra Project, many youth activists spoke out against the construction of a new youth jail downtown, estimated to cost over $104 million in taxpayer money to house 180 juveniles.
Leamon Harris of Morgan State University’s Students Against Mass Incarceration chapter drew protesters’ attention to an incident then occurring down the street between a young man and the Baltimore police. He explained the role of police in poor communities of color and the burning need to organize and fight the racist criminalization of minority youth.
Other speakers included two young men who had been incarcerated and charged as adults, both of whom spent a significant portion of their teenage years in jail. They described the inhumane conditions of prison life and the irreversible damage it caused to them.
After the rally, protesters marched to the proposed location of the youth jail, and gathered for a speak-out with members of Liberate Baltimore, Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, Pastor Heber Brown, and others. Then, fired up, protesters militantly took the streets back to the football field for closure.
For years, Youth Justice Sunday demonstration organizers have been committed to fight the racist prison-industrial complex, highlighting the outrage of state and local governments spending vast amounts of money on policing and jails while funding for schools, jobs programs and recreation centers continue to be slashed. And because of this energetic movement, the state has continuously delayed the jail construction—a partial victory. In Baltimore alone, the government spends only $14,000 annually on each student, while approximately $70,000 is spent each year on each prisoner.
Core to the issue is capitalism’s fundamental characteristic: placing profit above the basic needs of people. So long as we live under a capitalist society and a government run by bourgeois politicians, people’s basic needs will not be met. The capitalist system must be uprooted by mass struggle. Until then, we must continue to organize and unite all working-class people to fight against the capitalist system and for socialism—a system that puts people first.
