Yesterday SOUL and SLAP hosted a die-in together at Amy Gutmann's annual holiday party.
We let her know that business as usual cannot continue when Black lives are being lost, both in the streets, and here in our school system, where children don't have adequate nurses and two students have died in the last year. We mourned for the lives of Mike Brown, Eric Garner, and Laporshia Massey, a sixth grader who passed away at school when her asthma attack went undiagnosed. There was no nurse in the school at the time.
Although Amy Gutmann participated in the die-in and told us that Black lives matter, she was unwilling to speak about PILOTs or take concrete action towards addressing Penn's role in de-funding schools and displacing the Black community in West Philadelphia. She told us "we are doing everything we can" but this simply isn't true. $6.6 million of PILOTs would be just .1% of Penn's annual budget.
Amy Gutmann still has not responded to our letter. We await her response, and are ready to meet with her and discuss Penn moving forward with the PILOTs program.
The event was covered by Philly.com and the Daily Pennsylvanian!
Check out the video below of our sit-in after the die-in.
We let her know that business as usual cannot continue when Black lives are being lost, both in the streets, and here in our school system, where children don't have adequate nurses and two students have died in the last year. We mourned for the lives of Mike Brown, Eric Garner, and Laporshia Massey, a sixth grader who passed away at school when her asthma attack went undiagnosed. There was no nurse in the school at the time.
Although Amy Gutmann participated in the die-in and told us that Black lives matter, she was unwilling to speak about PILOTs or take concrete action towards addressing Penn's role in de-funding schools and displacing the Black community in West Philadelphia. She told us "we are doing everything we can" but this simply isn't true. $6.6 million of PILOTs would be just .1% of Penn's annual budget.
Amy Gutmann still has not responded to our letter. We await her response, and are ready to meet with her and discuss Penn moving forward with the PILOTs program.
The event was covered by Philly.com and the Daily Pennsylvanian!
Check out the video below of our sit-in after the die-in.
