Peace Expression PeaceDay 2017 - Cherie Dawson-Edwards

Peace Expressions – Peace Day 2017

Cherie Dawson-Edwards

As I think of ways to express what peace means to me I find myself all over the place. I guess I’ve never thought about how the issues I care about and fight for are “peace” issues. I frame them in terms of justice and equity. So I think peace – for me – is reliant on the idea that we need to do what we can to create a just and better society.

I’ll borrow from my textbook that describes social justice as existing when:

“all people share a common humanity and therefore have a right to equitable treatment, support for their human rights, and a fair allocation of community resources”. 

So I guess I am in the school of thought that equates peace with “…social justice, economic well-being, and basic freedoms.”

I am a criminal justice professor who uses a social change policy lens in whatever class I am teaching.

I am currently the Acting Director of the Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research.

I am also the Director of the Social Change minor.

Shameless plug: if you would like to know more about the social change minor – see me after this or send me an email J

I can’t think of a time in my adult life that I didn’t participate in changing this world. These activities amplified after graduate school and especially once I had my son, Cameron. He doesn’t know this – at least I don’t think he does – but I do what I do because of him. In this country – the odds are stacked against a black male child. This is probably the first time he’s heard that type of deficit thinking from me – he’s used to me building him up – that’s what he’s always known.

However, he just started middle school – the world is becoming more real. This statistic illustrates my concerns:

While minority students only comprise 39% of the U.S. public school population, they make up 75% of law enforcement referrals and 79% of arrests for offenses occurring at school (U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, 2014).

Cameron has seen me get dressed for 8am meetings to work on the JCPS Code of Conduct. He’s seen me – two weeks after having his sister – get up early and head to meeting at the alternative school. He’s heard me talk about the alternative school kids I met with every week for two years. He’s seen my sacrifices. But he doesn’t know that it is for him and every child he represents.

He doesn’t know that I have visions of 12 year old Tamir Rice gunned down at the playground. Cameron IS Tamir Rice. He doesn’t know that I worry that one day soon – the police will adultify and stereotype him. He doesn’t know that I’ve done workshops with police officers and debated Black Lives Matter to a room full of white cops because Cameron IS Trayvon Martin. He doesn’t know that my research agenda is powered by making this a safer and just world for him. He doesn’t know about that one semester that my student evals sucked because I did a class discussion about Ferguson and my students were frustrated because they could only see through the lens of the white police officer - Darren Wilson. I had a student say: “at the end of the day I would want to get home for my daughter and if I had to kill Mike Brown to do that then I would do it”. I heard: “at the end of the day I would want to get home for my daughter and if I had to kill Mike Brown Cameron Edwards to do that then I would do it”. For me - Cameron IS Mike Brown.

Peace is justice and equity for Cameron.

Peace is justice for Tamir.

Peace is justice for Trayvon.

Peace is justice for the countless young black children enmeshed in our systems of injustice.

Peace for me is disrupting the school to prison pipeline.

Peace for me is dismantling mass incarceration.

I want Peace to mean this:

• That people see the humanity in my son instead of seeing a criminal.
• That people treat him with fairness.
• That people support his rights and not weigh whether or not he is entitled to them because of his race.
• That people remove barriers that provide him access to the opportunities this country provides.

Peace is HUMANITY, FAIRNESS, RIGHTS and ACCESS.