In communities across the country, people are joining together for vigils to remember the twenty-six people lost to mass violence on Dec. 14 at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT. Twenty of those killed were six- to seven-year-old children; the adults were their teachers and school leaders.
President Obama joins a vigil Sunday evening in Newtown, CT. People are gathering from Bangor, Maine to Tucson, Arizona; Lubbock, Texas to Berkeley, California.
Why did this happen? Why Aurora, Tucson, Portland, Oak Creek, and cities like Oakland where young people are lost to violence almost every week? The answers may be different and hard, but the asking of the question is imperative if we want it to stop.
Blog
December 12, 2012 - 3:25pm
By Rachel EzrolLeaving home for Emory University, I expected to satisfy my pre-med requirements, study for the MCAT, apply to med school, and begin this cookie-cutter process once again as an admitted medical student four years later.
December 10, 2012 - 5:21pm
Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Photo by Jennell Jenney.
We could have never guessed a single story would launch a movement. Nearly 20 years ago, The Working Group sent a film crew to Billings, MT, to document a story about ordinary people who stood up for their neighbors when they were under attack by white supremacists.
December 8, 2012 - 12:15pm
Every Hanukkah, we are reminded of the incredible courage of those who stand up for their neighbors.
On one bitterly cold night, a brick was thrown through a 6-year-old Jewish boy's bedroom window, where he had placed the family's Hanukkah menorah. The anti-Semitic incident was one of several hateful acts in Billings, MT that year, including skinheads at an African-American church, racist hate messages on a Native-American woman's home, and the desecration of the Jewish cemetery. The community responded by saying, "Not In Our Town." In an act of solidarity, nearly 10,000 Billings residents hung paper menorahs in their windows.
This Hanukkah story is part of our origin story here at the Not In Our Town project. Today, please remember the Billings story with us.
Happy Holidays.
December 6, 2012 - 8:18pm
Two men pled guilty on Tuesday to federal hate crime charges stemming from a series of attacks on African-Americans in Jackson, MS last year, including the murder of James Craig Anderson, according to CNN.
William Kirk Montgomery, 23, and Jonathan Gaskamp, 20, were part of the group of young men responsible for Anderson’s violent death in June 2011. Montgomery was there the night that Darryl Dedmon, Jr. ran over Anderson with his truck after the group savagely beat the 49-year-old auto plant worker.
Though uninvolved in Anderson’s murder, Gaskamp had participated in other, similar attacks around Jackson with the group. Both Montgomery and Gaskamp pled guilty to federal hate crimes charges this week.