This Day in History
On December 10, 2009, three police officers of the Shenandoah, Pennsylvania police department were indicted on federal charges for covering up the murder of Luis Ramirez, a Mexican immigrant, by white teens spewing racial slurs.

Thanks to the Equal Justice Initiative’s 2021 calendar titled A History of Racial Injustice for the information on Mr. Ramirez’s murder and subsequent police cover-up. EJI was founded by Bryan Stephenson, author of the book Just Mercy about the wrongful murder conviction of Walter McMillian. They do God's work in the areas of Criminal Justice Reform, Racial Justice, and Public Education.

Antiracism Term of the Week:
Tone policing: When used in the context of conversations about oppression, the practice of prioritizing the style of communication over the content of that communication. Tone policing is usually practiced, whether intentionally or not, by the person in the conversation that has not experienced the type of oppression under discussion. Making a commitment not to tone police when discussing oppression with people that are targets of that oppression involves recognizing that they are vastly more emotionally invested in the topic and vulnerable when discussing it than you are. So to expect them to maintain the same level of dispassionate, civil, debate that you do is not fair or realistic. Ijeoma Oluo expounds on the theme of tone policing in her book, So You Want to Talk About Race.

Things you can do:
If you are interested in reading the books mentioned above and have the financial means, please support the authors and the wider community by purchasing them from a Black-owned book store such as Estelita’s Library (http://estelitaslibrary.com/) in Seattle.

Make a donation to the Equal Justice Initiative, who published the calendar I referenced above, at https://eji.org/

Lenore

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels