I find that the Letter to the editor written by Sandra Gill and published in the Sept. 26 issue of the Kent Reporter (“What did Thomas say that was incorrect”) was condescending and dismissive of the concerns of the black community in Kent.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Furthermore, Gill’s letter is full of unsubstantiated conclusions that appear to be slanted toward the justification of the shooting of Michael Brown, even though he was unarmed and whether or not he had his hands raised when he was fatally shot.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I, for one, cannot reconcile, that in a justice system that says “you are innocent until proven guilty” that an elected city official in an official capacity declares someone a thief without the benefit of due process.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Councilman Les Thomas has every right to declare his dissent to the observance of a moment of silence. However, to call Michael Brown as an 18-year-old thief based on unsubstantiated hearsay that may or may not be admissible in a court of law (we’ll never know now), in my opinion, does not demonstrate the kind of leadership that Kent needs to move forward as a role model of diversity and inclusion.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Talking facts: The police chief of Ferguson admitted that officer Wilson had no knowledge of the alleged robbery of cigars, and the chief apologized to the family for leaving Brown’s body in the street over four hours.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Let’s have the conversation and not lob insults.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u2013 Richard Johnson<\/strong><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I find that the Letter to the editor written by Sandra Gill and published in the Sept. 26 issue of the Kent Reporter (“What did Thomas say that was incorrect”) was condescending and dismissive of the concerns of the black community in Kent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-20937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20937"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20937\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20937"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=20937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}