This Juneteenth Weekend, UPenn Must Act in Defense of Black Lives

#PoliceFreePenn: An Abolitionist Assembly

4 min readJun 19, 2020

This letter was published on Juneteenth 2020, and sent by #PoliceFreePenn to the mailboxes of the lead administrators of the University of Pennsylvania in response to the Juneteenth holiday announcement delcared earlier in the week, which is reprinted below this letter.

TO: President Amy Gutmann; Provost Wendell Pritchett; Executive Vice President Craig Carnaroli; Senior Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer Joann Mitchell

CC: [All the Deans]

Happy Juneteenth!

We received your message on Tuesday regarding the Juneteenth holiday, and thought while it’s important to reflect, and maybe significant to talk, it requires even more courage and commitment to act. Juneteenth wasn’t a moment to “pause” but an active celebration of Black folks getting free. And we’re writing to you because we know the University of Pennsylvania has much more urgent work to be done in this moment if we are indeed going to, as you have destined, “bring together our collective resources to moving our University, our neighborhood, and our country closer to the inclusive university, community and society in which we all can aspire to live, learn and work.” We, too, agree that we are well positioned.

We believe there are many things that hold our University back from “dismantling systemic and structural barriers to equality”, of which we identify as being inclusive of Penn’s unethical hoarding of critical financial resources, its complicit historical legacy in upholding violence against marginalized communities, and its deep investment in a racist, toxic, carceral system of community safety. As many activists and organizers affiliated with the Philly Black Radical Collective, The Movement for Black Lives, #PoliceFreeSchools, etc. have begun to channel their pain into rage into future-forward action, we believe that there’s immediate work that Penn must dedicate itself to in “reckoning with the racism and discrimination that permeated the history of our country and universities for centuries.”

We identify these critical demands and this vision under the emerging framework of #PoliceFreePenn. We endorse this statement in affiliation with, and on behalf of, undergraduate and graduate students, tenured and nontenured faculty, service and office staff, subcontracted workers, alumni, and Philadelphia residents. We know our power to shift this institution and we embrace our responsibility to do so in pursuit of creating just systems, relating to Penn, the occupied Lenape land referred to as Philadelphia, and beyond. The demands are immediate, non-negotiable and fall under these categories:

· DECRIMINALIZE Blackness, Protest, and Poverty

· DIVEST from the Prison Industrial Complex

· DEFUND the UPPD

· DISBAND the UPPD

· REINVEST in community-controlled funds, in West Philadelphia and beyond

· REDRESS the legacy of racism, colonialism, and slavery on campus

· REIMAGINE police-free strategies for community safety and well-being, especially for the Black, Indigenous, POC, and LGBTQIA communities

We invite you to read them in full here and be encouraged to share as you see fit. We would love an immediate receipt of this statement though I know it might be unlikely if you are paused for the day. Yet, get back to us as soon as you can.

Best,

#PoliceFreePenn // policefreepenn “at” gmail.com