Conversation Starters

 Written April 15, 2021 Community Safety Belongs to All of Us As I write, the trial of Derek Chauvin unfolds.  This Minnesota police officer murdered George Floyd, a Black man whose only crime was paying for some items at a convenience store with a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill.  For this nonviolent offense, Mr. Floyd was pinned to the ground with Officer Chauvin’s knee on his neck.  Video footage of the nine minutes and thirty seconds that proved to be Mr. Floyd’s final moments captured him struggling for air and gasping the words, “I can’t breathe.”  Even so, this officer of the law remained unmoved and Mr. Floyd died (Chappell, 2021).  The video itself became a tragic viral phenomenon capturing the cruel final moments of Mr. Floyd’s life.   The harsh and heartbreaking reality is that stories like this are only too common in the United States.  As “Policing in America,” a recent episode of the NPR podcast Throughline , thoroughly expl...

A Brief Re-Thinking of Public Safety Policy Problem Definition, Assessment, and Description The debate over how best to approach and carry out equitable public safety has endured since before the founding of the United States of America.  While safety is a fundamental human need, a simple scan of the social horizon reveals that safety is not an automatic guarantee for all people, especially for those whose racial identity isn’t white (Kahn, 2020).  The history of inequities related to non-white residents stretches back for centuries but became especially illuminated over the course of 2020 as Black Lives Matter protests against the murder-by-police of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others drew continuous media and social attention that has yet to abate.  More than ever, dialogue and debate has overwhelmed the airwaves as options ranging from a complete abolishment of the police to doubling down on the amount of money municipalities should invest in so-called “Blue Live...

There's this thing that happens when white people hear terms like   systemic racism  or   social inequity .  They bristle.  They reject the premise of the question.  They double down explaining how hard they've worked for everything they've ever gotten in their lives:   I earned this house, this car, this vacation, this life .    No one handed me anything.  I poured my blood, sweat, and tears into everything I've ever done and will always be this way until my dying day.  I had to work hard -- no one can tell me I don't deserve every single thing I have . No one is telling you that you don't.  So chill.  I, too, am a white person who has worked very hard my entire life, who has gone through very difficult situations and, when the dust settled, was still standing.  I completely agree that there is a pride and an honor and a sense of accomplishment with every achievement I make.  I'm not automatically rich or worry-...

by E. Wallens & S. Wolf Section I: Demographics Lily Wong is a Chinese-American woman has lived in the Greater Boston Area of Massachusetts all thirty-four-and-a-half years of her life -- largely wheelchair-bound for the last two.  As a toddler, she was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, but she told us, “I benefited greatly from physical therapy to stay ambulatory all throughout my youth.”  In more recent months and years, though, she has been less steady on her feet, so she opts for the wheelchair in most public spaces.   Lily, an only child, told us she had a “happy childhood” and  considers herself a “product of the Boston Public Schools” for all of her pre-college education.  After graduating high school, she attended Harvard University where she completed a BA in Biochemical Sciences.  At that time, she shifted gears to do a teaching program and then taught in a high school for ten years -- mostly science subjects like biology and chemistry but a...