Emotions continue to run high on a daily basis for some who feel frustration with police violence on black citizens.
Protesters are lining the streets of Chicago, following a lack of visible police footage in the fatal shooting of black teen Paul O’Neal.
In Galesburg, a number of community leaders like Knox County Board member John Hunigan, Carl Sandburg College Outreach coordinator Anthony Law and Knox County Sheriff Dave Clague came together on Galesburg Live yesterday to try to continue bridging gaps that certainly remain.
This past July, activists took to Henderson Street to march with the Black Lives Matter movement–a march that remained largely peaceful and leaders have deemed as positive for many races, creeds and colors.
Last month, a vigil to continue dialogue between police and those marginalized took place as well. Sheriff Clague tells WGIL that he feels progress is being made.
“When both sides–so to speak–divide and that communication line is no longer present, we’ve got a problem,” Clague says. “I think here locally, the communication line has been opened. Maybe not as extensively as we would like, but it’s been opened.”
Sandburg student Dakota Williams, who helped organize the Henderson Street march echoed sentiments of on-going success from the other leaders in-studio. Williams says the march was in response to the police involved shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile.
“That [sic] shootings happened not even 24-hours apart from each other,” Williams says. “I was angry, I was afraid and I was worried about the future of immediately what I thought of was my younger cousins. I didn’t want them to have to hear the same conversations that I got growing up, but when someone is killed for doing everything they are asked by a police officer, what is there to be taught at that point?”
Williams applauds work done by local law enforcement, but essentially says black people on a national scale are still in fear every day and there is more work to be done.
