7:00 - 9:00 p.m. (students will meet with organizer at 6:00)

Mt. Moriah Baptist Church

7396 Rivers Avenue, North Charleston, SC

 

CAJM is a large network of congregations and organizations that are culturally, economically, geographically and religiously diverse working to make Charleston a more just place to live. Each year, CAJM selects issues that are critical in the community and begins a process to resolve those issues with officials. At the end of the year long process, an Action Assembly brings together all supporters with those leaders, and community support is needed. There are two issues this year needing resolution in our city where we could use your help.

 

1)    Racial Discrimination in Police Pretext/Investigatory Stops-those stops, for example, where police stop a vehicle on the pretext of erratic driving or a dim tag light and then proceed to search the car. These stops are concentrated in poor, black neighborhoods and thus produce disproportionate and at times, tragic results. North Charleston leads the state in Pretext/Investigatory Stops, with the city of Charleston second. In the time period between 2010 and 2014 in North Charleston, 146,000 people were stopped but not issued a citation, and the number was 126,000 in Charleston. To give some perspective, in Columbia, the largest city in the state, there were only 35,000 such stops during the same period. Research is continuing about solutions to this problem and the appropriate public officials who can implement that solution.

2)    An additional problem that arose out of work during a previous year on high rates of school suspensions is that of School-Based Arrests. During the past 18 months, almost 1000 students, some of them as young as nine and 85 % of them minority students, were arrested at school, some for relatively minor infractions. CAJM has researched this problem and solutions, and these will also be presented to the appropriate public officials at the Nehemiah Action Assembly.

 

To obtain three (3) community service hours, students will attend the CAJM Action Assembly simply as observers of the two Actions requested from various local leaders to resolve social justice problems in Charleston. The students will be required to submit a written summary of their impressions along with the form for signature. For additional hours, students can arrive early to assist with ticket collections at the door.

 

Please contact Reta S. Hampton, Esq. at reta@reinay.com for additional information and to arrange for your attendance at the CAMJ Nehemiah Action Assembly.