News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
A group gathered Thursday at Tennessee Tech for a Black Lives Matter rally.
Their main focus was remembering Breonna Taylor’s death. Youth For Inclusion Initiative Member and event organizer Elijah Anderson said Stand Your Ground laws should stand for all people.
“Today we’re out here honoring Breonna Taylor who was injustly shot,” Anderson said. “She committed no crime, just sleeping in her home when police with a no dock warrant broke into her apartment. Stand Your Ground didn’t work…the police shot multiple rounds. They had no intentions to deescalate the situation. We see these issues repeated continuously, and we have to work as a society to fix them.”
The activists gathered at Tech’s Centennial Plaza. Anderson led the group in chants and offered space for members to speak their opinions.
The YII promoted goals including increased funding for education in impoverished communities, introduction of a curriculum to support anti-racism, and more black, indigenous, and people of color representation with teachers in the classroom. Anderson said another focus is systemic racism.
“I see a lot of systemic racism in our education system,” Anderson said. “I don’t think it’s intentional, but I think in minority communities we see that these schools aren’t as well funded just because they don’t have the wealth that upper class communities have. Whenever we see this gap in education services and resources for these students, we see that affected in going into middle school, going into high school, going into college, and going into adult life.”
Other goals on the YII’s agenda include more funding for the Cookeville/Putnam County Multicultural Advisory Committee, serious reform of police and incarceration system, removal of Confederate monuments in the city owned cemetery, for Putnam County to accept history of violent racial injustice, and for Cookeville to accept the Community Remembrance Program Memorial from the Equal Justice Initiative.
