On November sixth, my group had the pleasure of being able to interview Mr. Jaron Evelyn. At approximately 2:15 pm, he visited the middle school for an interview. We were able to get an open room in the Admissions office in order to conduct our interview. We had chosen him specifically because he is, unfortunately, a victim of racial profiling and the stop and frisk, and my group and I learned, more specifically, about his experience throughout this interview. One thing that he said that stood out to me was his response to one of questions about being stopped. As he tells it:“I feel like I’m a statistic, I’m a criminal, misunderstood, and not american.” While this quote is very saddening and deep, I believe this was good in order to supply a better outlook on the situation, and see it from the perspective of a victim. This interview helped my group by giving us more insight on our topic and it’s effects on the populace. From this, we plan to hopefully meet with a few more organizations. We current have a visit set up with the National Police Reform Organization, and we hope to be more educated about their mission and what they do to bring about change. We plan to connect some of the words that Jaron said to the work of the Organization, and hopefully meet more people who are deeply involved in this issue. Before this interview, I didn’t know how close I was to being in Jaron’s place. No one close to me had actually been stopped, so the entire idea was fairly distant. But I realized, that I, as a young adult of color, have a responsibility to the people who have suffered before and to the next generations after me to bring awareness to this issue, and equalize our justice system. One thing to remember for the teach-in is to try and incorporate part of this interview into the class. There could possibly be an interpretation portion of the class. I think I did well in pacing the questions. We thought our interview would by around five minutes, and as it turns out, it went on to around fourteen! Using the small tactics that we learned from the student teachers really helped.

Sitting down to interview Jaron Evelyn, a Lrei high schooler.