Vocalists, emcees, spoken-word poets and musicians — many of them longtime IMAN artists — took part, including Louisville community activist and musician Jecorey Arthur, who was recently elected to the city council in that city, where the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor by police has sparked protests and calls for reform.
Read MoreNPR's Ailsa Chang speaks with musicians and activists Rami Nashashibi and Drea D'Nur about their new album, This Love Thing.
Read More"Domestic violence and intimate partner violence does not go away in a pandemic," said Kenneth Cox, the center’s vice president of communication. “We noticed that the calls that come into our crisis line have increased (and) the times were longer for the calls.”
Read MoreThis page is dedicated to those actions. A place where advocates and allies alike can: listen to the stories, learn about the problems and engage in the solutions to racism and inequality in America.
Read MoreDuring the Wednesday panel, participants offered up other ways the public can work to promote racial equity in Louisville. Councilman-elect Jecorey Arthur told viewers: “We need you protesting at your Thanksgiving dinner. We need you protesting every holiday, telling your aunts and uncles and your mother, your grandmother and your family about injustice that’s been happening, not only these past few months but these past few hundred years.”
Read MoreComparing Louisville’s recent reckoning with racial inequality to his favorite Malcolm X quote, Arthur said that the city residents have realized that a knife has been thrust into the back of Black citizens. But, they haven’t begun to pull it out or heal the wound for the Black community.
Read MoreIn Louisville, protests are demanding greater accountability from both the city police and the attorney general’s office. “I’m thinking about how we organize as a Black community,” says one city council member.
Read MoreThe statue of King Louis XVI that once towered over passers by outside Metro Hall is now in storage, awaiting conservators to look it over.
Read MoreBeyond the protests, Arthur said it is important for the city's Black caucus to be proactive rather than solely reactive in tackling issues that plague Black Louisvillians — such as an impending higher rate of job displacement over the next decade due to automation in the workplace.
Read More"There's potential (for unity), but we can't get to that point until you acknowledge the injustice," said Jecorey Arthur, a local musician and Louisville Metro councilman-elect. "To say the Kentucky Derby is a time of unity when it is the symbol of segregation in our city shows your lack of knowledge about reality."
Read MoreLOUISVILLE — The days before America’s most famous horse race typically engulf this city in a whirl of activity and opulent anticipation. The Kentucky Derby is as much about $1,000 mint juleps and flamboyant millinery as a hoof-pounding competition that lasts barely two minutes.
Read MoreI am Black. Beyond being Black by look, I'm Black by lineage. Meaning, I have inherited debt, I have inherited trauma from generation after generation of neglected people, of enslaved people, of Jim Crow people. That was the lens I announced my campaign from. I have been very clear from the start that my goal is to fix Black Louisville.
Read MoreDid you miss out on civics in school? Are you unfamiliar with how government works? Would you be interested in learning with me? Then sign up for my Political Patreon! It's political education 101 through multi-media content.
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Dear students — here is your assignment this semester! Let's all win.
Shoutout to our District 4 JCPS Brown, Roosevelt-Perry, Lincoln, Breckinridge-Franklin, Coleridge Taylor, Byck, Shelby, Meyzeek, Western, Central, Breckinridge Metro, Ahrens, and Heuser!
"As her family, we can do much, but there's no timeframe on when she's going to be OK and able to fend for herself," Trinity's grandfather said. "… Something needs to be done, and the law needs to prevail, at least in this case, because this child is innocent."
Read More“This moment is probably the smartest in all of the history of the human race, with the most access we’ve ever had to information and technology. In the 1820s, when the Louisville police department was created, we didn’t have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Google. You didn’t have news at the tip of your fingers. And we also have advanced past a moment where, in the ’80s, we had the Michael Jacksons and the Bill Cosbys of the world, the Whitney Houstons of the world. They were the forefront of what America thought life was like for Black people. But they really created a veil that we almost hid behind, and our struggles hid behind, our failures hid behind. We see Beyoncé and LeBron James and Michael Jordan and we think that’s what it means to be Black in America.”
Read MoreArthur, who has been a visible presence at the ongoing protests downtown, said it's unbelievable this conversation even has to take place in 2020.
"This panel in itself is based on the assumption that downtown was never meant to be racially just," he said.
Read More"Everything happening between the pandemic and the protests that's really just 200 years imploding on itself but in Louisville, in the last two centuries," Metro councilmember Jecorey Arthur said.
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