Students Deserve

Joseph Williams (he/him)

“With Students Deserve, I now get to work with and support young people to advocate for investment in the resources and supports they need—resources and supports that would have helped me as a teen—and divestment from policies and practices that treat them like criminals deserving of cages rather than kids deserving of care.”

Joseph Williams is the Executive Director of Students Deserve, a youth-centered organization working to smash the School-to-Prison-Pipeline, end youth incarceration, and make Black Lives Matter in schools. In his childhood, he experienced and overcame poverty, family instability, homelessness, group homes, school push out, incarceration, and more. Joseph has organized at the intersections of racial, social, economic, and educational justice for well over a decade, helping to lead campaigns that have unionized hundreds of working class folks, divested over $100 million from police, and invested hundreds of millions into resources and supports for Black youth and other racialized and marginalized communities.