Resources for Dialogue After the Ferguson Decision
With yesterday’s announcement of a grand jury’s decision to not indict Officer Darren Wilson for the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the need for dialogue in our communities about race, police, deadly use of force, and our criminal justice system is high. In moments like these, it is hard to know where to even begin with these kinds of conversations, so we want to offer some resources to help those of our NCDD community who may be working to facilitate conversations about the issues swirling around Ferguson.
NCDD’s Director, Sandy Heierbacher, put together a great list of NCDD resources as well as a few more from our network earlier this summer, so we encourage you to look back at her post for that list, which you can find at www.ncdd.org/15953. We especially recommend that you check out the Race Issues tag in NCDD’s Resource Center of nearly 3,000 resources for D&D.
We also recommend a couple of great blog posts on the subject from our partners at Everyday Democracy:
- Ferguson, Missouri: A Moment of Opportunity
- Strategies to Build Trust and Take Action in the Wake of Ferguson
And for those looking for reflections on how to navigate difficult conversations about the surrounding racial issues with white folks, Janee Woods Weber wrote a powerful piece with some advice called “Becoming a White Ally to Black People in the Aftermath of the Michael Brown Murder” that can be a good place to start.
We wish all of you having these challenging conversations the best of luck, and hope you will remember to take some of the reflections and lessons from them with you to the upcoming meetings between NCDD members and the Department of Justice’s Community Relations Service next year. They will certainly help us find ways to try to keep moving forward together.
