Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

“…But tonight, we turn the page. Tonight, after a breakthrough year for America, our economy is growing and creating jobs at the fastest pace since 1999.  Our employment rate is now lower than it was before the financial crisis. More of our kids are graduating than ever before.  More of our people are insured than ever before.  And we are as free from the grip of foreign oil as we’ve been in almost 30 years.

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Once I heard the grand jury came to a decision on whether or not they would indict Officer Wilson for the shooting death of Mike Brown, I had no desire to watch the announcement because I have seen this scenario play out before and had no expectation that it would be anything different this time around. But after a conscious conversation with one of my co-laborers in the community, though despaired, I decided to watch the announcement with a tablespoon of hope.

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Prior to Sunday’s (Nov. 30) St. Louis Rams game against the Oakland Raiders, I had a Facebook status in my head all ready to go basically saying that if the Rams move to L.A., which is widely speculated, that I would disown them the same way I did the Arizona Cardinals. My saying was going to be “I’m loyal to St. Louis, not the Rams.”

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“It’s sad but it’s not new. My personal expectation was for the outcome to be what it turned out to be. As long as the people making policy don’t look like us, they have no incentive to create a system that represents all the citizens of Ferguson, especially those from Michael Brown’s community.” 

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While the world has watched the events in Ferguson unfold, one of the questions many parents are struggling with is, “How do I talk with my children about what happened in Ferguson?” During a conversation with Chad Dion Lassiter, MSW, a professor of race relations and president of Black Men at Penn School of Social Work Inc., he offers the following tips for how to address the events of Ferguson and Mike Brown’s death.

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Since the death of Michael Brown by Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson on August 19, another African American man, Kajieme Powell, was killed by Ferguson police only days later. This time the alleged crime was stealing juice and pastries from a convenience store. Powell, described by police officers and witnesses as brandishing a knife and behaving erratically, was shot by police and died at the scene. Powell was not holding a firearm and yet his behavior was enough to make two police officers, with loaded guns, believe their lives were threatened.

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The unfortunate death of Mike Brown has resurfaced a growing frustration with the mistreatment of people of color, especially African Americans, by law enforcement. Mike Brown’s lifeless body lying on the street in Ferguson, Missouri seems as the crucible moment in the contemporary, yet enduring, appeal for dignity of African Americans. The fatal result of a meeting between Mike Brown and officer Darren Wilson encapsulates the recurring reality that African Americans are overwhelmingly affected by state violence. Growing criticisms of police department’s lack of diversity, transparency and accountability casually produces a disparity of African American victims of injustices. Among the roster of victims we uplift Aiyana Jones, Tarika Wilson, Kathryn Johnson, and Rekia Boyd as black women affected by police mistreatment.

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As a junior in college, I changed my major from business to journalism because of my love of writing.  That love of writing became a professional passion because of the transcendent words of a powerful black woman who many scholars credit with creating the field of investigative journalism.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett was described as a petite woman who towered over her peers in light of her courage, her reporting and her comfort in speaking truth to power.

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Johnny Robinson, Oscar Grant, Sean Bell, and now Michael Brown.  Fifty years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the monumental legislation intended to outlaw discrimination and segregation based on race, America has yet to live up to its promises. Fifty years later, race can and will be used against a black man walking the streets of his own country.  Fifty years later, the black experience of two seemingly different generations are beyond paralleled and are indeed associated by more than genealogy.

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 “I don’t feel like, as a resident in an apartment complex, you should be paying basically for your grave site,” he said. “You shouldn’t be paying to be killed or murdered in your own house.”

Brave words from 19-year-old Ravon Jordan who, last July, found the courage, to address the Fayetteville, North Carolina City Council on behalf of his best friend, Shaniqua Simmons.  Simmons and her boyfriend were gunned down in a local apartment complex, the Cambridge Arms.  Their deaths marked the second double homicide at the 694-unit complex since January, 2014.   Jordan’s view was that the complex should be shut down.

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