Mediaboss Marketing

To reflect on the year, Chapelboro.com is re-publishing some of the top stories that impacted and defined our communitys experience in 2020. These stories and topics affected Chapel Hill, Carrboro and the rest of our region.

The death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers sent shockwaves throughout the world. Within Chapel Hill and Orange County, the Black Lives Matter movement was backed by thousands of residents willing to step up and speak out for their beliefs.

The first Black Lives Matter march in Chapel Hill on June 3 which featured thousands of people marching on Franklin Street began as an idea between two friends.

This was put together by two students who just wanted to see something, said UNC student Emile Charles. Chapel Hill had been silent, it had been quiet and nothing was happening. And now to see over one thousand people come out is incredible.

Like many other protests throughout the country in the wake of George Floyds death, the first march in Chapel Hill was advertised over social media. The event drew people from all over, including from Raleigh, Cary and even Atlanta.

MikaylaThompson, who said she drove from Clayton to attend the June 3 march, held a sign that said All Lives Cannot Matter Until Black Lives Do.

The more we talk about it, she said, the more [people] will have to think about it and talk about it, and things will have to change.

Another march ensued on June 5 in Hillsborough again spurred by an idea between two teenagers.

Ive seen a lot of people in this area wanting to post about it and be more active in it, but they didnt have an opportunity, said Colin Davis, one of the organizers of the June 5 protest. Some people cant drive to Raleigh to protest. So we figured wed set something up here and let people speak their minds.

A homemade Hillsborough Black Lives Matter sign is displayed in Hillsborough on Friday, June 5. (Dakota Moyer/Chapelboro.com)

Davis and fellow organizer Aidan Salmeron said they expected around a hundred people to show up, but the crowd in Hillsborough numbered several hundred.

A June 6 march sponsored by the Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP chapter provided a powerful moment when protesters knelt in Franklin Street for eight minutes and 46 seconds the length of time Minneapolis Police officers knelt on the neck of Floyd. Floyd died as a result of mechanical asphyxia, or being choked.

The death ofBreonna Taylor a black woman fatally shot by Louisville police officers in March also became a rallying point for protesters in Chapel Hill. A June 5 protest was organized on the day that would have been Taylors birthday, with many of the organizers and protesters dressing in purple in her honor.

Chants of say her name followed by Breonna Taylor were shouted as the demonstrators marched from the SASB Plaza on UNCs campus to South Building, the universitys administrative building.

During the protest, speakers criticized UNC for its ties to white supremacists and condemned leadership for failure of equitably supporting African American students.

The Black Lives Matter also spread to the corporate level in Chapel Hill. Hundreds of UNC Health workers gathered outsideUNC Medical Centers on June 23 for a march to raise awareness for health inequities in North Carolina and the United States amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

We join together to show our support and our commitment to fighting health inequities, said UNC Hospitals president Janet Hadar before the march.

UNC student-athletes, some of the most high-profile individuals in Chapel Hill, used their platform to protest for racial injustice as well. An August 29 march down Franklin Street organized by student-athletes was represented by every UNC sports program.

Daniel McArthur, who is white, said the players demonstration represents something more than the Carolina Family and instead represents the need for change by his race.

White people: stand up for your fellow Black people, said the captain for the mens track and field team. Because guess what? Theres no difference at all and its time for us to realize that as a society.

The protest by UNC student-athletes came shortly after a police shooting inKenosha, Wisconsin, where officers shot Jacob Blake, a Black man, in the back seven times.

The Black Lives Matter movement also sparked a conversation about systemic racism and social injustice among local elected officials. Orange County Sheriff Charles Blackwood told 97.9 The Hill in July that there is systemic racism within law enforcement.

We have got to accept the fact on the law enforcement side that there is systemic racism and were part of that problem, Blackwood said. If we dont do that, were never going to get anywhere. Weve also got to accept the fact that weve got to change some of the practices that we have. If we dont do that we wont get anywhere itll stay just as it is.

The movement also led local police departments to ban chokeholds as a tactic for restraining people or self-defense. The Chapel Hill Town Council also passed a resolution asking for clear accountability for officers who violate its policies regarding its required dash and body cameras, as well as ending traffic stops for low-level violations and publishing more departmental reviews.

Chapelboro.comdoes not charge subscription fees. You can support local journalism and our mission to serve the community.Contribute today every single dollar matters.

Related

Read this article:
Top Stories of 2020: The Black Lives Matter Movement - Chapelboro.com

It was in July 2016. In some ways it feels like just yesterday to Rebekkah Brunson and Cheryl Reeve. Other times, it seems like a completely different age.

Philando Castile had just been shot during a traffic stop in Falcon Heights. An African American man named Alton Sterling had been shot by police outside a shop in Baton Rouge, La., not far from where Seimone Augustus grew up.

Reeve, who was then and still is the head coach of the Lynx, asked her captains at the time: What do you want to do?

Brunson, Augustus, Maya Moore and Lindsay Whalen talked, and agreed. Before their home game that July 9, in a pregame news conference, they wore T-shirts that said, "Change starts with us" and "Justice & accountability" on the front, with Castile and Sterling's names on the back along with "Black Lives Matter."

That night four off-duty police officers there to work security walked off the job.

Four years ago, this sort of display by athletes was considered by some to be controversial or inflammatory.

Move ahead four years to a difficult 2020, when the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor among many others at the hands of police has brought social justice to the forefront and made athletes more willing to speak out about them.

"There was outrage when we did it in 2016," Brunson said. "But I feel now the climate has changed."

Brunson is now a Lynx assistant coach who spent the summer with the team in the WNBA bubble in Florida, a location change necessitated by COVID-19 concerns. It was a season dedicated, by the league, to Taylor with their "Say Her Name" campaign.

Some players like former Lynx guard Renee Montgomery took the season off entirely to work for social change. When Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler of Georgia a part-owner of the Atlanta Dream came out against Black Lives Matter, players wore the name of her opponent on their warmup shirts. When Jacob Blake was shot in Kenosha, Wis., in August, the WNBA postponed three games in protest.

"It wasn't like the reason people were protesting had changed," Brunson said. "It was that you just couldn't ignore it any longer. Being in the bubble wasn't ideal in terms of what we were going through to get a season in. But it gave us an opportunity to use our voices, as a group, collectively to create some change about issues we were very passionate about. It ended up being a beautiful thing."

This is happening across American sports.

Just a few years ago quarterback Colin Kaepernick was essentially blackballed from the NFL for kneeling during the national anthem. Before this season, in a podcast, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell acknowledged the league's mistake. "I wish we had listened earlier, Kaep, to what you were kneeling about and what you were trying to bring attention to," Goodell said. This year, several NFL players including prominent members of the Vikings took a knee.

Bruce Maxwell, the former A's catcher who took a knee before the anthem during a game in September 2017, received a lot of pushback. Three years later, players and coaches from around MLB took a knee on opening day. The Twins played their games at Target Field with signs honoring Floyd and with Black Lives Matter displayed in the outfield.

The NBA season, also in a Florida bubble, was played out on courts painted with Black Lives Matter. Star players like Carmelo Anthony and Damian Lillard marched in George Floyd protests.

Wild defenseman Matt Dumba, who helped found the Hockey Diversity Alliance, was asked by the league to give a speech on racism before the NHL playoffs began, then he became the first NHL player to kneel during the national anthem.

Wolves players like Josh Okogie and Karl-Anthony Towns attended a downtown rally calling for justice for Floyd. The team has launched a web series called "Voices" that deals with issues of racism. D'Angelo Russell, a Louisville native, participated in rallies for justice for Taylor.

A lot has changed since 2016. Reeve remembers certain members of the Lynx and Wolves organization who were concerned about that pregame protest.

"The No. 1 thing we were trying to convey was that we couldn't sit idly by and watch murders at the hands of the police against Black and brown communities," Reeve said. "Change was the No. 1 thing we were after. So it was, 'Change starts with us.' It was also being bold saying Black Lives Matter. Fast-forward to George Floyd and how comfortable the vast majority of people are using the phrase Black Lives Matter, how fast it had become acceptable. Not everyone, of course. But it's significantly different than it was in 2016, certainly in our organization."

For Brunson, there is a little pride knowing she was a part of that protest four years ago. She still has that warmup shirt, something she'll cherish forever. Since then Brunson has retired and become a Lynx assistant. Whalen retired and is coaching the Gophers women's basketball team, with those players wearing Black Lives Matter shirts during warmups. Moore put her career on hold to fight for change.

"From a team standpoint, I do feel we set the tone for teams coming together," Brunson said.

Others are following.

"Now is the time for action," Reeve said. "What you're seeing is action, the collective will of not only the women of the WNBA, but the men of the NBA, the different sports."

Read the original post:
Minnesota Lynx were among the early promoters of the Black Lives Matter movement - Minneapolis Star Tribune

Issued on: 24/12/2020 - 17:32

An invisible foe indifferent to man-made borders, the world's greatest pandemic in a century triggered fear, anxiety, and sometimes the worst but also the best in humanity. In Italy and elsewhere, we clapped for care workers who appropriately bore the name of front-line workers, heading into battle desperately short of protective equipment and all too oftensacrificing their own lives.

In March,Prime Minister Narendra Modi suddenly announced a lockdown, forcing migrant workers, many of them day labourers, to travel across the country to their home states in what some described as the country's greatest migration since the Partition in 1947.

When the virus struck, local authorities played down the danger in China. Angry citizens demanded answersparticularly when a 33-year-old front-line doctor was detained for doubting the statistics. When Li Wenliang himself succumbed to Covid-19 in early February, they were even more outraged.

The unprecedented pandemic led up toan unprecedented US election. Record turnout, thanks in no small part to mail-in and earlyvoting campaigns that went into overdrive for health reasons, sawDemocrats Joe Biden and Kamala Harris beat President Donald Trump by 7 million ballots. But the Republican candidate also outperformed his own showing of justfour years ago.

With minorities disproportionately affected by Covid-19, built-up rage exploded in late May over the death of 46-year-old George Floyd. His death at the hands ofa white Minneapolis police officer caught on camera was the result of police being called over a counterfeit $20 bill.

As for France, the country found itself revisiting some of thedark themes of 2015. As the trial of suspected accomplicesin theCharlie Hebdo attacks began, the satirical weekly republished controversial cartoons of the prophet, prompting a backlash in the Muslim world and fresh attacks on French soil, including a stabbing spree in a Nice cathedral. The most gruesome attack was the beheading of middle-school teacher Samuel Paty, who was murdered by an 18-year-old Chechen who was angered that Patyhad shownstudents the Mohammed caricatures as part of a class on free speech.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and French President Emmanuel Macron had a war of words in 2020, with Erdogan flexingmuscle on the world stageby deploying troops to Libya and gunboats to the oil- and gas-rich waters of the eastern Mediterranean. In the conflict over the disputedenclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, Erdogan backed Azerbaijan and Russia stepped in to broker a truce that requiredArmenia acceptingAzerbaijanigains in the region but retreating Armenians razed theirown homes as they ceded territory.

Produced by Alessandro Xenos, Juliette Laurain and Imen Mellaz.

More:
The world this week - A year of Covid-19, a US election, Black Lives Matter, Samuel Paty and Nagorno-Karabakh - FRANCE 24

The back drop to all this was the May 25th killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, who asphyxiated under the knee of a white police officer who was arresting Floyd for allegedly using counterfeit money. Floyds graphic death, captured on cellphone video by bystanders, shocked the U.S. and the world.

From Washington to Los Angeles, protesters by the tens of thousands marched nightly, symbolically going down on one knee in a compelling reminder of George Floyds fate. The rallies spread to cities in Europe and Canada, including Ottawa where on June 9 thousands marched in a protest six blocks long that snaked though the streets from Parliament Hill to Confederation Park.

There is no middle ground here, Rev. Anthony Bailey, the pastor of Parkdale United Church, told the crowd. You are either a racist or an anti-racist.

Among the estimated 9,000 demonstrators was Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who joined the crowd in taking a knee. Trudeau did not speak at the rally, but told reporters the next day that he felt he needed to be there.

To look out the windows of my office and see thousand upon thousands of young people, of Canadians of all ages stand in solidarity, wanting to see change happen, I felt it was important for me to be part of that, Trudeau said.

The BLM march coincided with Mayor Jim Watson appointing Rawlson King, Ottawas first Black councillor, to head the citys Anti-Racism Secretariat, a body that King had first proposed to council in 2019.

Excerpt from:
Newsmakers 2020: Abdirahman Abdi and the year of Black Lives Matter - Ottawa Citizen

Bucks County Courier Times

Dictionary companies choose word of the year: Pandemic

In the land of lexicography, out of the whole of the English language, 2020's word of the year is a vocabulary of one - "pandemic." (Nov. 30)

AP

About Anthony: I'm currently a producer for Gannett's Digital Optimization Team, but for most of the year I worked as a reporter for the Bucks County Courier Times and The Intelligencer. Before that, I was news director for the Burlington County Times and a copy desk editor for all three news organizations. I started with the company in 2012 through an internship with Bucks County Community College, and they couldn't get me to leave the building. I'm a Bucks County native and Pennsbury graduate who resides in Lower Bucks with Dawn, mywifeof 13 years;two daughters, Isabella, 12, and Sophie Ann, 9; and my two dogs, Daphne and Oliver. I'm an avid comic book reader, Philly sports fan and hard rock enthusiast.

Hidden talent: Have a knack for useless knowledge, trivia and name that tune.

Favorite of 2020: St. Mary nurses hold vigil for coronavirus victims

"While I wrote several stories about the coronavirus pandemic and its effects, the vigil at St. Mary was able to highlight the true physical and emotional toll the virus had on health care workers and others in the community. Their words described how hard COVID-19 hit those of all walks of life in our country."

Other top storiesin 2020:

A magical spot:$35M initiative seeks to preserve New Hope Art Colony

Black Lives Matter:Amid Black Lives Matter protests, more school districts are pushing to address racism. Is it enough?

Child custody bill:Kayden's Law heads to full Pa. Senate

COVID impact:Coronavirus shutdown puts brakes on Bucks tourism industry

Editor's note: Editors and reporters for the Bucks County Courier Times and The Intelligencer are using this final week of the year to share with our subscribers a little about ourselves, our favorite stories of the year and a sampling of our best work. Three reporters/editors will share daily this week.

We thank our subscribers for allowing us to serve you with our local journalism. We hope you enjoy the look back at the year and learn a little bit about us, too. We appreciate your support.

Shane Fitzgerald, Executive Editor

See the original post here:
Best of 2020: From COVID to Kayden's Law, Anthony DiMattia told Bucks County stories of impact - Bucks County Courier Times