Our plan will take us into trying to have the event of where the Oakland police and Oakland community can bond with one another at least once a year but if we can then we would want to have the event once a month every year. Step one will influence our completed plan because it will set the tone that we know what our objective is and what we want to accomplish. This could also be the first step to something that could prevent further police brutality.

Dear awesome 9th graders,

Thank you for writing about this important topic and working against it. Do you think that there can be a world without police? Police brutality affects my life — I’ve been pulled over and unfairly jailed, my brother is often harassed — and I just feel that it’s hard to imagine a world with police without brutality. Instead, I want a world where police do not exist.

In solidarity,
Ms. Lisa Kelly

I feel like most of the time it isn’t the police fault.
sometimes people are unjustfuly killed or jailed.
the judicial system isn’t fair.
life isn’t fair.

This is a very important topic that people should be aware of and I’m glad you guys choose this to write about. It shows you guys want to take action and make a difference which I believe is great. And have you sent any letter to the mayor yet ?

I really liked the connection with police brutality cases and schools. The reason some kids drop out is because the school doesn’t have enough resources to aid the students and provide them with what they need to become successful. this lack of resources is due to the lack of tax money that the government fails to provide since they keep getting sued for police brutality cases.

Dear Alberto, Alejandro and Aaron

This is a great topic to talk about, I liked how you guys connected all the cases and also ICE since most of our community is immigrant. I liked how you guys focused in Oakland and give statistics, also how you guys used pathos and ethos. But sometimes the Police doesn’t have a choice but I get that violence most of the time it’s not the solution, also the justice it’s not fair most of the time. But the question that I have it’s, Did the mayor have read this yet?

Sincerely,

Andrea Fonseca

Hello my name is Flavio Ayon and i’m a student at Unity High in Oakland. After reading your blog post I have to strongly agree with the part of the passage where you say “Our allies are people of color, politicians against police brutality, you, and Caucasians who want police brutality to never exist. Our opponents are people that think and act like Trump, racist corrupted cops, and society”. The reason I strongly agree with this part is most people believe a certain race is being targeted or is the one targeting other races but in fact all races have different people with different opinions. A question I have for you is do you think police officers should be punished equally like civilians or have a lesser consequence.

I really think talking about this topic is super super important especially in Oakland because you always see police brutality online and most of the time targeting people of color. P.s. Hey Beto 😉

Dear Beto,
While Reading your work I had an interested feeling. Your work keeps me on because of the good facts and opinions you’re giving us readers. You have cool writing. One sentence that stood out to me was, “Not only should the men and their families get compensated but also free health insurance because the men were used as guinea pigs, they were treated as just a test subject to know the long term effects of Syphilis.”. This sentence stood out to me because I completely get what your trying to say. The victims of the Tuskegee Study were put down as just a test subject and that was completely wrong. Another sentence I saw was, “In this quote is also shows that just being compensated is just not enough because of embarrassment that they faced for being educated and poor. It was an act of cruelty and dehumanization. “ This was a really powerful sentence and I enjoyed reading it. I agree that they were embarrassed and it was an act of cruelty, yet I do admit I don’t really see the dehumanization in this situation. But hey, that’s okay we have different opinions. This next sentence I don’t disagree or agree with it but I just wanted to comment on it. It states, “But others may say that no the men were also used to prove that all people no matter what skin color are human and if that were true why didn’t they use White people”. I wanted to tell you that they actually did the experiment to show that Black people were just the same as humans and weren’t any different in that matter. Ofcourse it is peculiar to me that they didn’t try to get any white people but I do understand what they were trying to do in those times of segregation and such. Thank you for writing. I look forward to seeing what you write next, because your work is really informingI really appreciate getting a chance to read your work. If you’d like please reply.

Dear Alberto,
I want to appreciate the strategies you used to compose this poem about power and privilege. I like how you use different writing techniques to talk to an audience as well as talk about one. It is interesting to see that as you stated, “So when you complain, Remember you got two things we don’t, Power and Privilege”, hold a very strong and emotional effect to your piece. I noticed that in your statement you add in a connection to Romeo and Juliet, but the book or a mention of it is not present in the poem. Was that intentional?