The Department of Justice has directed the FBI to meet with local governments and law enforcement to discuss strategies for dealing with increasing threats to teachers and school board members spurred by a conservative backlash against discussions of race in public schools.
Black Lives Matter
A year after George Floyd’s killing by a Minneapolis police officer, his family returned Tuesday to Washington, D.C., where lawmakers have been attempting to craft a bipartisan bill to overhaul the nation’s policing laws. Congress failed to act by the anniversary of Floyd’s death — the deadline that President Joe Biden had urged lawmakers to meet. Instead of signing legislation named for Floyd into law on Tuesday, the president met with Floyd’s family members in a private gathering at the White House.
WSV’s Aundrea Sayrie writes, “One gets weary. Not including last week, Newsweek reports that an additional 181 Black people have been murdered at the hands of police since George Floyd, and it hasn’t been a year. When Derek Chauvin’s verdict was read last week, I did not rejoice. I did not feel excitement of any sort. I was in total shock witnessing the anomaly of accountability of a police officer. This never happens.”
WSV’s Malachi Carter and guest Laurie Butler continue their discussion concerning the verdict in the Derek Chauvin murder trial. Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer, was convicted of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in the killing of George Floyd.
“Black people are missing in Three Rivers. They are missing from downtown storefronts, positions at schools, boardrooms, and the Armstrong factory. Strategically, they are missing from the heart of the city. Living in downtrodden homes, next to a downtrodden park on the outskirts of town. Like the now vandalized street mural on Broadway.”
An unknown person or persons spray painted “White Lives Matter” and “Keep America Great” at the intersection of 8th Street and W Avenue sometime before 10 a.m. on Wednesday, July 22nd in Prairie Ronde Township, Schoolcraft. By 8 p.m. however, a group of nearly 40 people had chalked over the graffiti, writing “Hate has no home here,” “Let Black people live,” “SHS supports BLM,” and other phrases.
“All Lives Matter” is a poem written by Three Rivers native Torrey Brown about the hypocrisy of detractors of the Black Lives Matter movement.
“In so many ways, we have refused to pay the price of liberty over the years: eternal vigilance. If we ever speak of the cost of freedom, it is almost always in the sense of our servicemen and -women serving abroad. They indeed pay the price overseas, but there is also a cost to be paid by the rest of us here at home, and so often we don’t exercise our rights.”
College friends Dylan Bowen and Blake Alford join Malachi A+scribe to discuss the do’s and don’t’s of being a white ally in pursuit of social justice for black people.
Equipped with paint supplies, chalk, and people power, local volunteers came out as early as 6:30 a.m. Sunday, June 21 to begin painting a Black Lives Matter mural in front of Elbert Lee Foster Park on Broadway near Fourth Street in Three Rivers.
Doug and Alek return for Episode 6 of Keep Your Voice Down where they discuss the upcoming Juneteenth Celebration in Three Rivers, much needed haircuts, Glen Oaks Community College and St. Joseph County’s respective plans for reopening, as well as the current momentum of the Black Lives Matter movement across the United States.
Malachi Carter brings the mic to Black Lives Matters in this episode of The Unapologetics Podcast originally published on September 2, 2019. Members of the Indianapolis chapter, Leah DeRae and Kyra Jay, join us to dispel the some of the myths surrounding BLM, protesting for social justice, and the work being done to bring value to disenfranchised communities.
“I think it is important to support black owned business, especially at a time like this where people are being divided more and more. Supporting black-owned businesses is not reparations, and it is not enough, but it is a small way that an individual can empower less privileged communities and help lift them up from the many systemic ways that they are oppressed.”
Check out this photo gallery from Monday’s ‘Stand for the Right to Breathe’ protest by Watershed Voice’s Deborah Haak-Frost.