Renisha McBride

"I guess no one hears the howling of a black girl ghost in the nighttime."
The rapid explosion of cell phones, YouTube and Twitter has increased public awareness of police misconduct toward black citizens. As a result, white attitudes are changing and protests led by black activists are accelerating. This may be a moment in our history when real reform is possible.
Renisha McBride was black, a woman and human. She deserved to be alive today. Her life and black women's lives matter.
I hope our leaders can, as iO's mission states, "think broadly" enough to let go of rigid, behaviorist notions of what education means. I hope they will heed the many stories like this one that prove the dramatic, turn-around impact of the arts on "under-performing" schools.
The efforts to deny the innocence of Brown and other black victims, in the name of preserving the innocence of the likes of Darren Wilson, of white America, and the nation as a whole is commonplace.
Justice for Michael Brown, for Renisha, for Trayvon, for Eric requires that we confront and acknowledge the legacy of racial hatred and violence that infects our communities and has launched the epidemics of criminalization, brutal, abusive policing and mass incarceration.