Statement on the Huguenot High School Graduation Shooting
The Richmond Chapter of the Virginia Caucus of Rank-and-file Educators (VCORE)’s response to the recent tragedies in our city.
The 2022-2023 school year for Richmond Public Schools will be remembered as a year of horrific violence and tragedy. On Tuesday, June 6, 2023, RPS graduate Shawn Jackson was brutally murdered alongside his father, Renzo Smith, at the Huguenot High School graduation ceremony. Shawn’s nine-year-old sister was struck by a vehicle as she attempted to flee the scene; five others were wounded as well. Later that evening, three more RPS students from Armstrong High School were injured in shootings. Over the weekend of March 10-12, 2023, four RPS students were shot, resulting in loss of life for 13-year-old Marquan Mitchell-Nash. On Thursday, April 27, 2023, two RPS students were shot in a shootout in the parking lot of George Wythe High School; one remains in critical condition. As education workers, we refuse to accept the diagnosis of these outcomes as inevitable. While mourning the loss of students and family, we know there is another path forward - one guided by the light of peace and justice - if we’re willing to walk it.
Amidst the present spiral of violence and social decay, we hear many kind words from politicians and other public figures. Yet few will analyze the root causes, nor advance a progressive program for collective healing, care, and radical social transformation. Gun violence within and between communities is the product of the prevailing socioeconomic conditions and class divisions in our society. Poverty, unemployment, lack of access to quality education and healthcare, systemic racism, over-policing, and mass incarceration create the material conditions that give rise to gun violence: only by addressing these root causes can we hope to reduce and eliminate gun violence in RPS school communities and all of Richmond.
Communities must be allowed to solve these challenges themselves and given access to resources to do so, for too often have the voices of those most affected been sidelined by careerist politicians, fake “community leaders,” and special interest groups. What we need are grassroots social movements to demand community-led initiatives that aim to address the root causes of gun violence. We must organize, mobilize, and struggle to make Richmond a city that prioritizes community-centric development, secure employment with living wages, affordable housing, and access to essential social services. Such social movements should demand immediate economic funding for these programs, as well as any institutional support deemed necessary by those most affected. With a $35 million budgetary surplus at the end of FY22, we know that the resources are there, but the Mayor, City Council, and the local economic elite are more concerned with building casinos and spending ARPA funding on police ballistic shields than with addressing the social injustices and inequalities that cast their shadow over our city. This is an emergency situation, and requires an emergency-level response. The city’s funds belong to the people of Richmond, and it is we the people who must demand from local government the responsible allocation of these funds to meet the needs and protect the collective interests of the people who make this city run.
POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS
In order to solve the issue of gun violence, first, we must believe that there is a solution to gun violence, that gun violence is not normal, nor should it be normalized, nor should we get used to it. One must believe that we can do better, we must do better, and that the actions of humans can change the trajectory of this violence.
We must also acknowledge and grapple with the concept that gun violence is a symptom of a society and a community that has allowed its connectedness and mutual care to erode.
We also need to name the many forms of violence at play in our society, and observe that gun violence is only the most dramatic or easily captured by news media. Economic violence easily impacts more people and destroys more lives than gun homicides. Medical racism and violence have impacted Richmond community members as recently as this year.
In order to address the causes of violence at the root and to stop and heal violence with members of our community most affected by it, we must take a multi-pronged approach that includes:
Funding and staffing a behavior specialist in every RPS school that is trained in best practices for restorative justice and coordinates the training of staff and implementation of a school-wide, holistic restorative justice program. Additionally, RPS should staff school social workers, school psychologists, and school counselors at the ratio prescribed by their respective professional associations. That means a school social worker for every 50-250 students depending on student need, a psychologist for every 500 students, and a counselor for every 250 students.
Implementing Gun Violence Intervention (GVI) programming throughout Richmond, which is a research-based program, grounded in community, that finds the small percentage of people in our community that are responsible for the majority of gun violence and provides them with the support they need to leave a life of violence. Richmonders Involved to Strengthen our Communities, or RISC, has been championing this approach for years, only to have the Mayor continue to ignore this evidenced-based approach. GVI programming can also ally closely with local hospitals and healthcare systems, such as through Bridging the Gap and similar evidence-based programs which increase connections between survivors of community violence and community resources by identifying injured patients while they are in the hospital. Youth-specific programs must be fully funded and expanded to reach more RPS students and their families.
Addressing the root causes of poverty that lead to our community members feeling dehumanized and alienated. In particular, safe, quality, and affordable housing continues to be inaccessible to many families in Richmond. To address the housing crisis, Richmond and the Virginia General Assembly could do the following:
Fund legal representation for tenants in eviction hearings.
Ensure one-to-one replacement of public housing.
Create a citywide registration system of all rental units that landlords are required to register their properties with.
Implement a strong, tenant-centered Rental Inspection Program. Richmond City Council has passed the start of such a program, but it needs adequate funding and accountability mechanisms if it is to truly help tenants secure safe and decent homes.
Require all new economic development programs to intentionally include low-income and affordable housing that will adequately address the needs of our city.
Fully fund, build, staff, and include an itemized budget for a 24-hour permanent shelter for the unhoused.
4. Creating honest, twenty-first century curricula that is culturally-relevant and student-centered in all RPS schools. This includes education on climate change and courses in People’s History that center the struggles of Black, Latinx, Asian-Pacific Islander, Native American, LGBTQ+, women, poor, and all working-class people. This requires allowing students to chart their own course for their future with internships, paid jobs and job skills training, a divestment in standardized testing, and restoring autonomy to teachers in their classrooms.
5. Creating connectedness in our schools with the food justice and food sovereignty movements by partnering with local organizations such as community gardens and Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) farmers to provide representation and culturally-responsive teaching when teaching the student population about healthier food options and the history of food inequity.
6. Building a system of community-centered healthcare that actively works to challenge and correct decades of medical racism and unequal access to healthcare. Every person and family deserves proactive, easily-accessible healthcare delivered by providers that are competent, trustworthy, committed to anti-racist medical practice, and deeply-rooted members of the Richmond community. RPS can take the lead in part of this effort by building opportunities for RPS students to envision themselves as part of a system of care, including by promoting shadowing, bringing in guest speakers, and building pipelines for students to establish themselves as nurses, doctors, and allied health providers. RPS must also increase resources and referral pathways for students and their families to access healthcare, including mental healthcare, in a timely, affordable, and just manner.
7. Calling on the RPS School Board, Richmond City Council and the Mayor of Richmond to create a true needs-based budget. As it stands, RPS has never been fully funded to meet the needs of our students. We urge all community members to join with teachers and community leaders in demanding a needs-based budget from RPS, the City of Richmond, and Richmond City Council.
CONCLUSION
The above analyses and recommendations are not intended to be all-inclusive, but rather a starting point, the bare minimum response that any ethical member of the RPS community and all concerned citizens of Richmond should seriously consider, and join the struggle for immediate implementation. These solutions address immediate healing and justice for those connected and affected by gun violence, as well as proactive and preventative actions in our schools and communities.
We are open to more ideas and feedback, and readers can email richmondvcore@gmail.com to get involved and share feedback. Look to this space for a continuum of responses from Richmond VCORE, concerned teachers and community members, and the new leadership of REA.
The people united are an unstoppable force. We must recognize that unity in the pursuit of peace and justice is in our collective interest. The present cycle of violence produces only unfathomable loss and heartache, benefiting those in power who profit from a divided and disempowered people.