High school club sponsors Racial Justice Week

Feb 25, 2022

Wareham High School’s Global Education Club sponsored a Racial Justice Week for the school earlier in February to recognize Black History Month.

Several students spent the week starting on Feb. 14 making announcements to the school to promote the work of famous Black Americans, including Amanda Gorman, bell hooks and Alicia Garza, teacher Col. Matt Stanton said in an email. Students Kissamy Georges, Gisella Priestley, Isabella Russo and Juan Martinez posted the announcements across the school and on social media.

The contemporary figures’ contributions include reciting poetry as the national Poet Laureate, writing extensively to further develop feminist theory and leading the international Black Lives Matter movement.

Priestley also wrote an essay published in the high school newspaper, “The Viking Times,” discussing how the U.S. justice system is linked to modern-day slavery and dehumanization of people of color.

“Bringing awareness to the problems of the prison industrial complex can help us heal from this one example of black trauma,” Priestley wrote in her essay. “The need for education and social justice to be used as a tool of awakening and a strengthening of humanity has never been stronger.”

Racial Justice Week ended with club members handing out bracelets to students during lunch on Feb. 18. The bracelets read: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” a quote by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The bracelets were bought with a grant from Youth Service America, Stanton said.