Shs Aware

Dear Springfield Community - We ask you to support us in raising the BLM flag at Springfield schools! Please sign our petition by messaging us here on our page. We appreciate that people may disagree with us, but this is no place for hate. Thanks for your support!

Here is the text of our petition, please comment if you'd like to sign "I support the raising of the BLM flag @ Springfield schools" with your name and connection to Springfield (resident, parent, student, etc.).
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Dear Springfield School District and Community,

We would like to invite our community to a conversation about education and issues in the Springfield community. One of those issues is racism, though many might not see it or experience it. Racism is something students of Springfield schools deal with on a daily basis. We also know that people deal with other serious and important issues and we are in no way discrediting that experience. We feel though, this is something that we can improve in our school and our community. We are writing to ask that our community support students of color as we now have an opportunity to start this conversation with everything going on in the world and our country.

Students in the AWARE group at Springfield High School, for some time now, have wanted to raise the Black Lives Matter flag on the flagpole outside of each Springfield school. We have been discussing it for some time and it was even mentioned to us while we were in middle school.

We feel as if it is important to raise this flag at our schools because students of color would like to feel a sense of belonging in schools. There have been many incidents of racism that we have experienced throughout our school experience in Springfield. In school we are told racist jokes and have racism pointed at us, we now, unfortunately, see it as normalized. We also see cultural appropriation take place in our schools. Cultural appropriation is when a person from a group of power inappropriately uses a costume, practice, or ideas from an oppressed group without proper knowledge or credit towards those oppressed people.

In the face of these experiences, we would like a symbol that our community supports us even though it sometimes does not feel that way. Our school board recently struck down a policy drafted to address concerns from parents about ‘controversial issues’ being taught in Springfield classrooms. We are proud of this decision and know that our community worked to make that happen so that the experiences that we have are included in what is taught about and discussed in school.

To clarify when we say Black Lives Matter we are not saying other lives do not matter. That is not what the Black Lives Matter movement is about, we are simply saying our lives matter, too. Because we, unfortunately, do need that reminder. Whether it being a hot spot created by a student named “Hang All The N*****s” or being told we shouldn’t get upset about a situation where black culture was appropriated, for example, white students were wearing durags or clothing and other items with the Confederate flag on them and nothing was said to them, but a black student was wearing a durag and was told by two teachers that it was “gang affiliation”. We also see Confederate flags flown and shown on student cars daily. These incidents have happened and we students of color experience these events regularly. We are told that BLM is violent and creates divisions, but we also watch Ahmaud Arbery gunned down in the street, Jacob Blake shot in front of his children, George Floyd call out for his mother as he utters his last breath, Breona Taylor murdered in her own home, and countless other violent events pointed at Black Americans. Black people in our country are being lynched and are more likely to be the victims of police brutality.This is the reason we would like a reminder that our lives matter at our school and in our community and hope that people show support for us.

We know people in our community do not want to be divided more. We are asking that instead of being divided about a statement saying that Black Lives Matter, we hope to explain that our lives matter and have people agree with us about that. This is a conversation that affects everyone and we want the community and school to join us in this conversation, we are not looking to continue having the same problems. We think this is an important step in continuing that conversation because we do agree that all lives matter, but all lives can't matter until Black Lives Matter, too.

Many other high schools in Vermont have raised the Black Lives Matter flag such as Mill River, Essex Westford, Champlain Valley, Burlington, Brattleboro, Montpelier, and many more schools across the state. Seeing as other schools have raised the Black Lives Matter flag we think it's important to join them by raising that flag here in Springfield. We would like to be represented in our school, especially with the obstacles we face every day and the trauma that students of color have faced in our school and community. No, we have not had any issue in our community of police killing people of color, but many of us have had issues with being targeted, not believed about bullying and harassment, or handcuffed to the point of bleeding. These things do happen to us and we hope our community will stand up with us to say that this should stop and that our lives are equally important as others' lives.

If members of our community are uncomfortable with this conversation, we understand. It is uncomfortable for us too, to have to ask people to say that our lives matter. We also know that we have to deal with this and being uncomfortable is necessary at this moment for our community to move beyond the same old conversation and division.

MLK once said, "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." We hope the Springfield community will stand with us and sign our petition to raise the Black Lives Matter flag at Springfield schools.