March 11, 2022

Statement written by DMPS Racial Equity & Justice students and DSM BLM organizers and shared at East High School Press Conference.

You cannot put out fire with fire. You cannot solve gun violence with more guns. You cannot save lives by taking lives. Charging six teenagers as adults is taking lives and rights and freedoms. Calling for SRO's back into Des Moines Public Schools after a shooting is trying to stop bullets with more bullets. Neither of these two things will work. Both of these two things will further reinforce white supremacy, and violence and loss of life.

We demand this school district, this city and this state to start thinking about meeting harm with healing, rather than more harm.

We ask lowa to look at the work of organizations like Good Kids, Mad City and Anti Gun Violence, out of Chicago, and their efforts to offer young people medical training to learn first-aid trauma skills that include: CPR, immediate gunshot/stab wound care and mental health analysis. Our young people deserve to know how to serve themselves and their counterparts in states of emergency.

Gun violence does not start nor end at school. Gun violence will not end with SRO's back in school. Gun violence will not end by making an example of teenagers. But with young people being equipped with the proper training, this death by gun violence may be the last in Des Moines Public Schools.

Creating the narrative that having SROs in schools mitigates and prevents gun violence is misguided and not factual. This tragedy is not one that would have been anticipated nor prevented by SROs. Reverting back to a systematically racist institution, that was already failing our students, is no way to respond to an act of violence. As of now, we must show up for one another and work collectively to heal as a community.

DMPS Racial Equity & Justice and Des Moines Black Liberation Movement