Tag: racism

We will continue to support Black and Brown LGBTQ+ people surviving relationship or sexual violence by providing counseling, support, advocacy, and healing.

And yet even with my family and professional history, I am learning daily about acts of racial policy and violence in our country’s history and in contemporary life that I hadn’t known, and that connect the dots to reveal a country bathed in the blood of racism.

The fact is that the core of his film is his evocation of how black soldiers were used as cannon fodder in Vietnam, which has remained a barely told story. And he evokes that story very movingly.

I tell you all this because what’s new is old to me. And I have a slightly different perspective on the events following George Floyd’s murder.

More than 2,000 people attended the Black Lives Matter demonstration in front of the historic Great Barrington Town Hall where the first resistance to British rule took place in 1775.

Longtime police Chief Bill Walsh told the board his department was an early adopter of the principles enunciated in President Obama's Task Force on 21st Century Policing.

Still, I felt that in the absence of any semblance of national leadership, there was a need for more than righteous anger from the protestors.

In a letter to the editor, Anne Thidemann French and Ward Johnson write, "Our students need us now more than ever as they try to understand and make meaning of the violence in our society."

Many people think that the police are the problem but, in fact, they are just the point guards for a racist society.

The people on TV keep saying, “We are better than this.” What does that mean? Were we better than this once?

It is vitally important for those of us who have not been affected by racial discrimination and oppression to be the allies of those who are.

In a letter to the editor, the Clinton Church Restoration board members write, "Du Bois’ writing in 'Souls' reminds us that the systemic racism that led to the murder of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and too many other Black people in this country is not new."

In a letter to the editor, Mae Whaley writes, "As much as it is necessary for us to stay aware of the overt ways in which police departments across the country are contributing to racism, we cannot allow the constant images and videos of tear gas, rubber bullets and concussion grenades to lower our standards for how we expect our police to behave."

This fragile and unprecedented period in the nation's history is made worse by an abject lack of leadership in the nation's capital.

"A justice system the public cannot trust to be fair and equitable is a broken system. A complete investigation and commitment to seek justice for George Floyd is only a start in eliminating the bigotry and racism deeply ingrained in our society. The Berkshire District Attorney’s Office reaffirms our commitment to making long-lasting and formidable changes to eliminate bias at every stage of the criminal justice system." —- Berkshire County District Attorney Andrea Harrington

it's our neck it's our knee it's our knee on our neck