Families and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children (FFLIC)

Lunch Panel Speaker: Voices from the Hallway – Perspectives of Students and Parents

Ashana Bigard represents Families and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children (FFLIC), a statewide membership-based organization that fights for a better life for all of Louisiana’s youth, especially those involved in or targeted by the juvenile justice system. As mothers and fathers, grandparents, siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles and allies FFLIC believes in and implement a model of organizing that is people and community centered, and is explicitly anti-racist. FFLIC engages in education, community building, and leadership development.

The goal of FFLIC’s Stopping the School to Prison Pipeline (STPP) Campaign is to create safe schools for all of New Orleans’ and Louisiana’s children by keeping kids off the streets, out of the juvenile justice system and in school where they belong. FFLIC’s STPP campaign has identified and is now challenging the policies that are pushing our children out of school and hastening their entry into the juvenile--and eventually the criminal--justice system. FFLIC’s STPP campaign is dedicated to fighting the historical inequalities, concentrated poverty, racial disparities in discipline, and segregated education that are leading to pushout. FFLIC wants to ensure that every child who enrolls in school graduates with a high school diploma and lives up to their fullest potential. Our Campaigns are designed to personally and politically transform individuals, families, and communities into even more powerful and loving forces so that together we can transform currently oppressive systems and institutions into ones that uphold justice for our families.