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Special Report: 100,000 Children in U. S. Prisons

Special Report: 100,000 Children in U. S. Prisons

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Youths in juvenile detention. Photo: Southern Poverty Law Center

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Southern Poverty Law Center

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Across the country, thousands of children are languishing in abusive prisons and jails. These youths are disproportionately African American and Latino. Most live in poverty. 

Many of these children were needlessly pushed out of school and into the juvenile justice system. But schools are just one entry point to the juvenile justice system – a system that too frequently cuts short the life chances of the young people it’s supposed to serve. Many youths are criminalized because of their experiences with failing foster care and mental health systems. Children and teens of color are imprisoned at almost three times the rate of their white counterparts – suggesting that they are often unfairly targeted for arrest and confinement.

Once arrested, children can stay in detention facilities for weeks or months before a judge hears their case. They often encounter abuse and neglect in overcrowded, squalid facilities – some operated for profit by private corporations. Few local juvenile detention centers have the resources to meet their educational, medical and mental health needs.

When a judge hears their case, court-involved youths may be sentenced to a juvenile prison where they frequently endure brutal conditions. The SPLC has helped to expose instances of physical and sexual abuse, shackling of children and inadequate mental health care.

Today, an estimated 100,000 children and teens are locked up in juvenile facilities across the country, and thousands more are incarcerated in adult prisons. Children in adult prisons and jails face even worse conditions than those in the juvenile justice system.

U.S. Department of Justice research shows that youths incarcerated with adults are eight times more likely to commit suicide than in juvenile facilities, five times more likely to be sexually assaulted, three times more likely to be assaulted by prison staff and 50 percent more likely to be assaulted with a weapon than youths in a juvenile facility. And incarcerating children in the adult system doesn’t only put them at risk of unspeakable abuses – it fails to protect communities. The Department of Justice also has found “higher recidivism rates among juveniles convicted for violent offense in criminal court when compared with similar offenders retained in juvenile court.”

By reforming the juvenile justice system and providing support in our schools and communities, this cycle can be broken and we can dramatically reduce our country’s prison population – the world’s largest.

The SPLC uses legal action, community education and mobilization, and media and legislative advocacy to ensure that students get the educational services that can mean the difference between incarceration and graduation and to prevent school discipline practices from pushing students out of school. We work to replace unnecessary juvenile detention with proven, community-based alternatives. And we seek to protect imprisoned children and teens from abuse and safely reduce the number of imprisoned children.

We currently operate juvenile justice and education reform projects in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi – four of the states where children are most at risk of ending up in the juvenile justice system or dropping out of school. We’re also working with advocates for children in other Southern states and across the country.

Reforming School Discipline
For far too many children, the path to prison begins in our under-funded schools. Rather than invest in the basic educational and social services that will help troubled children succeed, many schools rely on harsh, “zero-tolerance” discipline policies that result in suspensions, dropouts and arrests for even minor, nonviolent misbehavior. These policies push students into a juvenile justice system that criminalizes many of them.

Too often, the juvenile justice system writes off misbehavior in affluent school districts as “typical adolescent rebellion” while the same behavior by a student in a poor, minority school district is likely to be viewed as “criminal behavior” that warrants harsh consequences. This misguided approach to school discipline is driving up the dropout rates for both students and teachers. It does little to improve school climates or make our communities safer. Reversing this trend will require a sea change in the way schools approach discipline.

A cultural shift from zero-tolerance policies is needed in our schools. One research-based alternative, known as Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS), is gaining momentum among educators as a way to improve overall school climates, as well as academic performance, while keeping children in the classroom. PBIS has been successfully used in both urban and rural school districts and in districts with high and low concentrations of poverty.

Implementation of PBIS is a key provision in several class action settlements reached between the SPLC and school districts in Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida. The results have been promising. For example, two years after PBIS was implemented throughout the Jefferson Parish, La., school district, the out-of-school suspension rate for special education students was cut in half. Out-of-school suspensions for general education students dropped 24 percent after the first year.

PBIS implementation is just one of the ways we’re working to ensure that all children have access to a quality education. We’ve also launched campaigns to address the use of alternative schools to warehouse students and deny them the educational services to which they are entitled. In addition, we work to ensure that youths most likely to be pushed out of school receive individualized support to increase their chances of graduating, to address racial disparities in school discipline practices and to increase parental engagement in the formation of school discipline policies and practices.

Anti-Gun Momentum Builds in Massacre’s Wake by Zenitha Prince

December 23, 2012

Anti-Gun Momentum Builds in Massacre’s Wake

By Zenitha Prince

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Courtesy Photo

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Afro American Newspaper

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - On Dec. 17, Newtown, Conn., began to bury its dead.

There was Noah Pozner, an avid reader and taco enthusiast, who loved the dish so much that he had talked about becoming a manager in a taco factory to forever satisfy his craving and Jack Pinto, a devoted New York Giants fan and a whirling dervish of a boy, who bounced from one activity to another.

A somber sky mantled the anguished town as it buried the children in the first of many planned funerals following the Dec. 14 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

“There is a sense of shock and vulnerability...and outrage,” said Dr. Gerald Sheiner, a psychiatrist with the Detroit Medical Center and a professor at Wayne State University, of the town’s reaction to the killings.

And it’s a reaction that rippled through the nation—and across continents—as the rest of the globe joined Newtown in mourning.

“I come to offer the love and prayers of a nation,” President Obama said at an interfaith prayer vigil in Newtown on Dec. 16. “I am very mindful that mere words cannot match the depths of your sorrow, nor can they heal your wounded hearts. I can only hope it helps for you to know that you’re not alone in your grief; that our world, too, has been torn apart; that all across this land of ours, we have wept with you, we’ve pulled our children tight.”

In Washington, D.C., the Sandy Hook slaughter has reignited the gun control debate, with a growing clamor of mostly-Democratic voices calling for policies that limit the easy access to certain weapons.

According to Connecticut law enforcement, the gunman, Adam Lanza, a 20-year-old mentally disabled man, shot and killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, at their home, and armed with an arsenal of guns, including a Bushmaster .223 semiautomatic carbine, a shotgun, and two semi-automatic pistols, visited a bloodbath on the school, killing 20 children and several employees. The coroner told reporters that all the victims’ bodies were riddled with bullets.

Some lawmakers question why an average American would need such firepower.

“Weapons of war don’t belong on our streets or in our theaters, shopping malls and, most of all, our schools,” stated Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) who said she plans to introduce a bill on the first day of 113th Congress to ban the sale, the transfer, the importation, and the possession of automatic weapons, as well as big clips, drums, or strips of more than 10 bullets.

“I hope and trust that in the next session of Congress there will be sustained and thoughtful debate about America’s gun culture and our responsibility to prevent more loss of life.”

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) also said he wants to introduce a ban on high-capacity magazines.

“Americans are sick and tired of these attacks on our children and neighbors and they are sick and tired of nothing being done in Washington to stop the bloodshed,” he said in a statement. “If we do not take action to address gun violence, shooting tragedies like this will continue.”

Pro-gun Democrats such as Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), a lifelong member of the National Rifle Association, and some conservatives signaled shifting opinions about gun regulation in the wake of the slayings.

However, Capitol Hill Republicans and other gun rights activists have mostly remained silent. The single GOP voice in the resurrected gun control debate has been right-wing Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-Texas) who suggested that more—not less—access to guns could have prevented the Sandy Hook carnage.

Speaking on Fox News Sunday on Dec. 16, he said, “I wish to God the (principal) had had an M-4 in her office, locked up so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out and she didn’t have to lunge heroically with nothing in her hands, but she takes him out, takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids.”

Gohmert argued that states with stringent gun laws have the most violence—a fact disputed by the California-based Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence in a study that concluded that seven of the 10 states with the strongest gun laws are among the jurisdictions with the lowest crime rates.

Gun control advocates seem positive that substantive changes will be made. Though an ABC News/Washington Post poll taken after the Newtown murders showed that 54 percent of Americans favor stricter gun control in general, 52 percent favor banning semi-automatic handguns and 59 percent support banning clips that carry more than 10 bullets, which is consistent with public opinion in recent years, a pro-gun control petition submitted Dec. 14 on the White House’s “We the People” online platform amassed almost 175,000 signatures in four days.

And, the NRA, the nation’s powerful gun lobby, didn’t speak until Dec. 18 when it issued a statement expressing dismay at the carnage. In the wake of the killings, its Facebook page disappeared and its Twitter chatter halted.

Meanwhile, the funerals continue.

Amidst Violent Deaths, Pastors Struggle to Comfort the Grieving By Hazel Trice Edney

Amidst Violent Deaths, Pastors Struggle to Comfort the Grieving
By Hazel Trice Edney

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Bishop T. Cedric Brown leads prayer for the Newtown, Conn. massacre victims. PHOTO: Vincent L. Hunter/Trice Edney News Wire

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Members of the congregation at the Greater Mount Calvary Holy Church in Washington, D.C. pray fervently for the people of Newtown. PHOTO: Vincent L. Hunter/Trice Edney News Wire

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – Some stood with hands raised; others sat with heads bowed; all crying out to God in their own way on behalf of the loved ones of America’s most recent massacre victims. No, this prayer scene was not in Newtown, Conn. It was at the Greater Mount Calvary Holy Church - 300 miles away - in the heart of Washington, D.C.

“We pray, God, that even during this horrific time, you will deliver and show your grace. Even during this time of calamity, God, show yourself mighty! Show yourself strong! We lift up Newtown, Connecticut. We lift up that school. We lift up those students. Have mercy, in Jesus name!” prayed Bishop T. Cedric Brown, Calvary’s associate pastor.

The Greater Mount Calvary congregation is only one church out of thousands around the nation that have no doubt prayed for the loved ones of the 20 first-grade children and seven adults killed by a 20-year-old man described as “troubled” by some who knew him. The Christmas season adds to the heart-wrenching nature of the tragedy.

But whether death by mass shooting, single homicide or an accidental stray bullet while on the way to school, pastors and clergy say ministering to the grieving after a violent death of a loved one is among the most painful of their assignments from God.

It’s extraordinarily difficult, particularly when you’re dealing with children and children at those ages,” says Bishop Noel Jones, pastor of the City of Refuge Church, located in the Watts section of Los Angeles. “For them to have been so helplessly killed and being in a circumstance that is so normal - going to school and going to class and something this diabolical happens, the tendency is for us to say that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s how we dismiss these kinds of things. But the truth is they were supposed to be in school and it’s the proper place for them to be...Maybe that’s where the comfort is: ‘I did what I was supposed to do. My children are supposed to be in school. They’re supposed to learn.’ It leaves a lot of bitterness and unanswered questions. It’s very hard to comfort somebody in that type of situation. It’s nearly impossible.”

Yet, there are ways to at least begin to strengthen and comfort them, says Bishop Brown.

“One of the things that you have to convey to individuals is compassion. When you look throughout scripture, whenever someone was dealing with a tragedy or a horrific situation in their lives, Jesus, the Bible says, showed them compassion. So, we are an extension of him - of Christ - and it is our responsibility to show forth the person of Christ.”

Often people will ask difficult questions, like why it happened. No one has all the answers, Brown said.

“We ought to be authentic in saying, ‘I don’t know why this happened. I don’t know why would someone in this particular situation, why would they walk into a school and just randomly kill people. There is no explanation for that.’ But it is the pastor’s job to be there, to be fully engaged and to show full compassion on them and what they’re dealing with and to provide solace and to let them know that ‘I’m here. God is still a loving God. He is still concerned about you…And I am here with you to walk with you through this…And so, sometimes the best thing to do is just to be there and say nothing.”

The Rev. Jamal-Harrison Bryant, pastor of the Empowerment Temple in Baltimore, agrees.

“Sometimes the greatest compassion and comfort is just being there to not try to come up with answers and be super religious and throw scriptures out there,” said Bryant. “One of the things that I try to instill, especially over the holidays – whether someone is lost to homicide or to cancer – is to relive the positive memories; not the incident that led to death. That will help to bring a greater level of closure.”

Bryant, who has four children between the ages of 6 and 8, says they have been asking why the children were killed. He said he is honest in discussing the incident with them.

“I tell them that the man that did it was mentally challenged, needed help and didn’t get the help that he needed. And I tell them that we’ve got to pray for people like that,” he said.

The Rev. Steven Johnson, pastor of Abundant Faith Ministries of Towson, Md., also near Baltimore, says “Trust in God” is among the most important encouragement he gives to the grieving.

“Isaiah 26:3 says He will keep us in perfect peace if our minds are stayed on him because we trust him. When something tragic like this happens, the only thing that you can do is trust that God knows best. Trying to tell that to a mother who just lost a 5-year-old who will never go to high school, who will never get married, who will never bear children, who will never get a chance to see her life really mature is a hard place because people are then searching for answers. They want to know why an innocent child.”

Pastor Johnson predicts that the shooting will cause great dialog about gun control and about parenting.

“This is a watershed moment for all of us…I can’t even imagine the magnitude, but I know that the clergy has a huge responsibility now to try to help parents and family members and that community to try to come to grips with this,” Johnson said. “They’re all with the Lord and they will serve a purpose to begin some serious discussion, not only on parenting responsibility but also the gun control issue.”

Parents’ involvement in those issues – even while grieving – will help with the healing process, says Jones. “It’s continuing to live that helps to heal. It’s taking on the issue that surrounded the loss of the children. It’s taking on the issues of mental health, taking on the issues of abuse in general, taking on the issue of the availability of weapons.”

Jones agrees that parenting appears to be a major issue in the Sandy Hook case. Several people who knew the killer says he was known to be “troubled.” Even a former baby sitter said his mother – who he also killed - warned him not to leave him alone or turn his back on him – even to go to the bathroom.

Parents have a responsibility to bring a child like that to authorities, says Jones. “You can’t have a mad situation like that in your home and keep it under cover.”

Among the most difficult question that some ask in the time of tragedy is, “Why did God allow this to happen to children? Where was he when my child was in danger?”

The pastors pondered how they answer such questions.

Johnson says he reminds them that “Dying is a part of life – scheduled or unscheduled.”

Asking questions is healthy, resolves Brown. “Allow them to express that frustration. Allow them to ask that question” and let them know that God does not mind it.

Bryant concludes: “I remind them, one, that God didn’t do it. And then I remind them of how his own son died.”

Ultimately, Brown said, the answer to that question is that “God has still given man a choice. He has given us a will…Unfortunately we live in a world where people choose to do evil things.”

Teacher Says Her Son Could Have Been an Adam Lanza by Barbara Reynolds

December 23, 2012

Teacher Says Her Son Could Have Been an Adam Lanza

By Barbara Reynolds

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - “There were days I hated for the phone to ring, dreaded coming home from work because I knew full well that as my son grew older, one day the news could come at any time that he had killed himself or others. It was just a matter of time until he graduated from knives to guns.”

This is the agonizing story of Yvette Harper, a Washington, D.C. area public school teacher and parent who internalized the tragic demise of the 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary school but also the young man, who killed them and committed suicide. “My son Michael could have been another Adam Lanza because he was headed toward a violent heartbreaking end on a homicidal/suicidal path. “

In light of the Sandy Hook tragedy, some parents like Harper are arguing that discussions about gun control are meaningless unless the focus is also on mental illness. “And that is a condition nobody wants to own and policy makers are running from like people used to run from leprosy,” says Dr. Jan Hutchinson, a board certified child psychiatrist and pediatrician.

Harper adopted her five-year-old son Michael at age five years old and found he was acting out violently from the very beginning. “He would bang his head on the floor, grab his own neck and try to choke himself. He would go on for hours raging, screaming and cursing me. He would swing from saying ‘I am going to stab you, to hollering ‘I want to die.’”

In addition as a regular minister-visitor in the Harper home, I often prayed with Michael who confided in me that he was hearing voices telling him “to do bad things.”

Harper said: “Before I adopted him, he had been kicked out of three other foster homes. At one home, they had to hide all their knives.”

She soon found out that shortly before his adoption he had been admitted to a mental institution in Baltimore, where he had been prescribed a retinue of drugs, including Dexedrine, an amphetamine that is often used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children. Because of Michael’s acting out in school, officials demanded that he take the drug or be put out. In addition he was not .mainstreamed with other children, but sent to an alternative school where Harper said he was mixed with much older kids with behavior problems. “Being isolated from the mainstream, it became difficult for him to internalize normal student behavior.”

 After each violent outburst, Michael’s medication dosages were increased, but they did not help. As a educator who teaches special education children, a term often used for kids with behavior problems, Harper said she soon understood that her child had been homeless, physically and sexually abused and exposed to drugs in his mother’s womb.“How do you expect a child to act ‘normal’ when they have been exposed to such abuse? For seven years I found no good solutions for him and drugs were no help.”

Virtually by accident, Harper stumbled on a different path for her son. “Money was missing from our home. I called school officials to check Michael’s backpack and they found a knife. My son told me later that he has been carrying the knife around for a week and I also learned he had told others he planned to kill his father and me.”

“This was the last straw. I thought what if Michael had found a gun. Through the internet, I found an all boys boarding school in Missouri. It used different interventions, such as military organization skills, constant therapy with psychiatrists and staff and spiritual guidance. The school guarantees success without drugs. And amazingly Michael, now 14, has not taken drugs for six months, and he is no longer hearing voices, no longer acting belligerently. He is focused, goal-oriented and a happy kid.”

For the first time Harper has high expectations for her son, but she is angry over doctors prescribing Dexedrine for such a prolonged time at such an early age without looking at his biological or environmental conditions which could have led to different interventions. “We took Michael to church, banned his watching violent video games and movies, but we have been living on edge, waiting for the worse. Now we are waiting for the best.”

Dr. Hutchinson said while there is not enough hard evidence to correctly assess the Sandy Hook situation if you look at most of the previous mass shootings involving youth —from the movie theatre in Aurora,CO, to Columbine, to Virginia Tech, the evidence is clear that mental illness was a factor. “There are many mental problems that are not diagnosed properly or treated, which may be associated with dangerous violent behavior.

 Hutchinson cautions: “Too many people would rather deal with their children having cancer, heart disease or any kind of life threatening physical malady than having a psychiatric medical diagnosis. It is also difficult to find the proper resources for treatment. We are also stumbling because of the stigma associated with mental problems. We cannot ignore, however, that with proper diagnosis and treatment, most people with these illnesses are stable and productive citizens in our community.

 It should be noted that on Friday Dec 14, the same day of the dreadful Sandy Hook massacre, a knife-wielding man slashed and wounded 22 children and one adult outside a primary school in central China as students were arriving for classes Friday, police said. This is only the latest in a series of periodic rampage attacks at Chinese schools and kindergartens.

Chinese authorities know they have more than a “knife issue” and are focusing on their failed mental health system, since most of the attackers have had mental health problems. Maybe that is a lesson to be learned here.

Obama Promises to Use 'Whatever Power' Against Gun Violence By Hazel Trice Edney

Obama Promises to Use 'Whatever Power' Against Gun Violence
By Hazel Trice Edney

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President Obama waits to speak at Sandy Hook High School. PHOTO: The White House

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – On Friday morning, Dec. 14, most Americans were either contemplating last minute Christmas gifts or deeply involved in a devisive debate over how to avoid the fiscal cliff. Then suddenly, the nation found itself united in grief, joined by people around the world.

They were responding to the unthinkable act that has brought the nation to its knees at Christmas time and caused the President to cry. That is when 20 children and seven women at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., were brutally murdered – all shot multiple times - by a 20-year-old gunman who then killed himself.

“The majority of those who died today were children - beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old. They had their entire lives ahead of them  - birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own. Among the fallen were also teachers - men and women who devoted their lives to helping our children fulfill their dreams,” President Obama detailed the tragedy as tears streaked his face in the White House Press Room Dec. 14.

“As a nation, we have endured far too many of these tragedies in the last few years,” he continued on his Weekly Radio Address that evening. “An elementary school in Newtown. A shopping mall in Oregon. A house of worship in Wisconsin. A movie theater in Colorado. Countless street corners in places like Chicago and Philadelphia. Any of these neighborhoods could be our own. So we have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this. Regardless of the politics.”

Political observers have described the Sandy Hook massacre as a “tipping point” for President Obama and Congress to finally discuss the gun control issue as well as mental health issues.

It is clear by his words that this incident will be the impetus to action. Speaking at an Inter-faith Prayer Vigil in Newtown Sunday night, he promised to take swift action.

“In the coming weeks, I will use whatever power this office holds to engage my fellow citizens - from law enforcement to mental health professionals to parents and educators - in an effort aimed at preventing more tragedies like this. Because what choice do we have? We can’t accept events like this as routine. Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard? Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?”

Gun lobbies, including the politically powerful National Rifle Association, will no doubt oppose new gun laws, giving their usual argument for the Second Amendment and that it is people – not guns – that kill people. Still others will argue that the key is keeping the guns out of the hands of the mentally ill. It is not clear what affect new gun laws could have on the homicides in city streets that's killed hundreds of thousands since the FBI started counting homicides in the early 1970s.

Early this week, authorities said they were finding “very good evidence” in their search for a motive in the Sandy Hook killings, according to widespread reports. The questions are why Adam Lanza shot and killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, a former teacher at Sandy Hook; then took multiple weapons that legally belonged to her and shot his way into the locked elementary school. He then killed the school principal, Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung, five other teachers and administrators and 20 children. By the time the killing spree was over, 28 were dead, including Adam Lanza.

He was widely described as “troubled” by friends and acquaintances interviewed by the news media. Multiple sources told the New York Daily News that he had Asperger’s syndrome or a personality disorder; that he had a tortured mind, was subject to outbursts and had a condition that caused him not to be able to feel physical pain. A former babysitter told CNN that his mother once warned him never to turn his back on the young Adam. At that time, he was about 10.

The Sandy Hook massacre comes at the end of a year with multiple mass killings. In fact, Friday’s news eclipsed reports on a random shooting in an Oregon mall in which a 22-year-old killer shot and killed two people before killing himself.  Police said his gun jammed, preventing more deaths. And then there was the Aurora, Col. movie theatre massacre on July 20 that killed 12 people.

President Obama pointed out that this is the fourth time during his administration that he has had to comfort grieving loved ones after mass shootings. That also includes the Jan. 8, 2011 shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford by Jared Loughner, who remains incarcerated.  Six people died and 13 were injured in that shooting at a Tucson political gathering in a grocery store parking lot. On August 5, White supremacist Wade Michael Page killed six people at the Sikh Temple of Oak Creek, Wis. before killing himself.

President Obama has become known for his compassion amidst crisis – not only following mass shootings, but in disasters such as his recent visit to New Jersey in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

Seeking to comfort the families gathered at Sunday evening’s prayer vigil he spoke these words: “…Do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away…inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.”

Closing his speech by calling the names of each of the children, he continued to focus on the responsibilities of those people left behind: "God has called them all home. For those of us who remain, let us find the strength to carry on, and make our country worthy of their memory. May God bless and keep those we’ve lost in His heavenly place. May He grace those we still have with His holy comfort. And may He bless and watch over this community, and the United States of America.”




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