Author: Carma Henry

Carma Lynn Henry Westside Gazette Newspaper 545 N.W. 7th Terrace, Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33311 Office: (954) 525-1489 Fax: (954) 525-1861

     Mrs. Bradford, a retired Dallas schoolteacher and long-time minister’s wife, said it was faith and common sense that sustained her through it all and, if her Maker wills it, she expects that approach to carry her on, even though coronavirus. “Prayer and meditation,” she said. “I also have a favorite scripture and hymn that speak to every aspect of my life …”

     Now, various cities have implemented curfews as an effort to curb violence conducted outside of protests against police brutality. Unfortunately, curfews have created further challenges, as unsheltered people, already subject to laws criminalizing acts such as sleeping in public, are at risk of arrest for yet another “crime”—violating an order to stay inside after curfew when they have nowhere inside to go.

Our forever President Barack Obama addressed the nation during a virtual town hall event on Wednesday afternoon to offer some words of reassurance as the nation protests race-based police violence. His calm, measured tone was the type of presidential response that’s been missing from a government that has vilified and threatened protesters with the type of police violence that got us all here in the first place.

Alexis Johnson, a Black reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, was “removed” from covering any of the city’s protests over George Floyd‘s police killing in Minneapolis, according to the union representing the newspaper’s journalists. The Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh claimed in a letter to its members that “the powers that be” told Johnson that “she showed bias and as such, could no longer cover anything related to the protests of the police murder of George Floyd and the systemic racism that for too long has been a dirty segment of our national fabric.”

     Between 2013 and 2019, police in the United States killed 7,666 people according to data provided by Mapping Police Violence, a research and advocacy group. The number of police killings in America disproportionately affects African Americans, who despite only making up 13 percent of the U.S. population, are two-and-a-half times more likely than whites to be killed by police.