By DeJuan Marcell MitchellIt was not until I got to college that I discovered a little bit more about DeJuan Marcell Mitchell.
kentucky
Davis, CA community supports victim of anti-LGBT hate crime
CREDIT: Davis Enterprise
Three hundred people in Davis, CA attended a candlelit vigil on March 16 for Mikey Partida, a Davis resident who was badly beaten earlier this month in what police are investigating as a hate crime.
When Susan Guess of Paducah, KY learned that her 8-year-old daughter was being bullied by a classmate, she was devastated.
“I’m a 37-year-old mom, with a very close and open relationship with my child, yet she kept that information private from me,” she said.
Guess asked her daughter Morgan what was going on and was finally told the truth about being bullied at school.
“This was an eye opening experience about how little I and the school knew about bullying,” Guess said. “There was so much ignorance.”
Guess became increasingly concerned about her child and other children who suffer in silence, so she and Morgan decided to open the conversation about bullying and share their story.
Guess met with school leaders to raise awareness about the growing problem of bullying at their school. She also launched an anti-bullying campaign that would raise money to bring the film Bully and Director Lee Hirsch to their town.
Adapted from Valarie Honeycutt Spears / Lexington Herald-Leader
Damon Dunson and Melanie Stamper of Berea, Ky. woke up one morning last week to spray-painted racial slurs on their vehicles.
Damon Dunson and Melanie Stamper. Photo from Lexington Herald-Leader. Click through for story.
"I was angry, but at the same time I knew whoever did it was ignorant," said Dunson, who is black. "They spelled the n-word three different ways," said Stamper, his girlfriend, who is white.
The message left on Stamper's Jeep, she said, told her to get out of the neighborhood.
But the couple said that in the aftermath of the incident, people in Berea have rallied around them, inviting them to a potluck to discuss discrimination and creating a fund to help pay to repair the vehicles.
"It was a pretty bad shock to many of us in the community," said Mae Suramek, who set up the fund at U.S. Bank. "Many people wanted to make it known as a community that this would not be tolerated."