The Kiwanis Club of Hickory is celebrating its 100-year anniversary this year, and was honored during a recent Hickory City Council meeting when Mayor Hank Guess presented the organization a
(RNS) Los Angeles pastor Stephen “Cue” Jn-Marie is quick to point out the movement for Black lives and Black Lives Matter has been going on for eight years, but he believes it was “an act of God” that transformed it last year into the largest social movement in U.S. and world history.
“Who can articulate that, but a faith leader?” he added.
For Jn-Marie, who founded the Church Without Walls in Skid Row, the Black Lives Matter movement is valid without faith leaders but, he said, clergy help “people see God’s heart for the movement.”
One year ago, the death of George Floyd under the knee of a police officer galvanized the nation and eventually much of the world into months of historic protests against police brutality and systemic racism and in support of Black lives. Clergy were often front and center in these protests and their clarion call not only to politicians but also to religious leaders sparked a racial reckoning within churches, synagogues and m
When unrest in Minneapolis spread to the city’s Longfellow neighborhood last year, Ruhel Islam opened his restaurant, Gandhi Mahal, for medics to treat injured protesters. The next night, rioters set fire to the police building and dozens of businesses in Longfellow, and by dawn, his restaurant lay in ashes.
In a Facebook post that went viral the same morning, his teenage daughter, Hafsa, quoted him as saying, “Let my building burn, justice needs to be served, put those officers in jail.”
His words resonate a year later as more than an expression of forgiveness. Mr. Islam has helped form a neighborhood collective called Longfellow Rising that intends to rebuild the triangular, three-block zone that included Gandhi Mahal to further elevate – and celebrate – the neighborhood’s racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity.