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Showing posts with label Cambodia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cambodia. Show all posts

17 October 2013

COKE & PEPSI SUPPORTING ILLEGAL LAND SIEZURES IN THIRD WORLD 16OKT13

I seldom drink pop (soda), but now when having to choose I know it will not be coke or pepsi until they end their dealings with those companies who committing illegal land grabs to supply coke and pepsi and their affiliates with sugar for their products. Please consider boycotting these products and sign the petition from SumOfUs.....
Coke and Pepsi are buying sugar from companies that have been caught driving small farmers and indigenous communities off their land.
Tell the beverage giants they need a zero-tolerance policy for land-grabs now.
Sign the Petition

We’ve just found out that Coca-Cola and PepsiCo are supplied by companies that have been caught driving indigenous people and small farmers from their ancestral land all around the world.
Our partners at Oxfam have discovered that a sugar company in Brazil has forced a small community from its land and sent a gang of thugs to burn down 53 families' homes -- all to supply sugar to companies like Coke and Pepsi. In Cambodia, a major sugar company drove hundreds of families from their land -- because they no longer had documentation they lost during the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge.
These horror stories are only the tip of the iceberg. Coca-Cola and Pepsi have been alerted, but they’ve failed to implement policies to stop their suppliers from grabbing land. Now we need to show them that consumers are ready to hold them accountable.
Tell Coca-Cola and Pepsi: ensure that your suppliers aren’t stealing land.
For the last decade, the price of sugar and other agricultural commodities has skyrocketed, and investors have gobbled up more than 33 million hectares (81,544,449 acres) of land in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, frequently displacing people who lived and worked on the land for generations.
As food prices skyrocket, small farmers are losing their livelihoods along with their homes. Indigenous communities are having their traditional ways of life destroyed as their ancestral hunting and farming land is seized to make way for sugar production. And sugar producers frequently resort to violence and intimidation to drive people off their land when they can’t evict them legally.
Coca-Cola and PepsiCo are some of the world’s largest purchasers of sugar, and they have the power to hold sugar growers accountable for grabbing land and displacing small farmers. By adopting zero-tolerance policies for land grabs, the beverage giants could ensure that sugar producers can’t afford to drive poor farmers off their land. But right now, Coke and Pepsi don’t even bother to monitor their suppliers’ behavior.
The only way these companies will change their ways is if consumers stand up and make them. We know that the SumOfUs community can convince beverage companies to take a stand for human rights -- just last year we got Pepsi to speak out against Uganda’s “kill the gays” law. Now we need to come together again to ensure that the beverage industry doesn’t profit by robbing impoverished farmers.
Click here to sign the petition demanding that Coca-Cola and Pepsi stand up to land grabbers.
Thanks for all you do,
Rob, Angus, Paul and the rest of us

***********
More Information:
Oxfam accuses Coke and Pepsi of taking land from the poor, The Independent, 02 October 2013.

15 June 2013

Archaeologists use revolutionary laser technology to find lost medieval city in Cambodia 15JUN13

HERE is a really interesting piece on new archaeological discoveries in Cambodia, from Agence France-Press & Raw Story....
By Agence France-Presse
Saturday, June 15, 2013 7:57 EDT
Screenshot Cambodian Ancient CityA lost medieval city that thrived on a mist-shrouded Cambodian mountain 1,200 years ago has been discovered by archaeologists using revolutionary airborne laser technology, a report said.
In what it called a world exclusive, the Sydney Morning Herald said the city, Mahendraparvata, included temples hidden by jungle for centuries, many of which have not been looted.
A journalist and photographer from the newspaper accompanied the “Indiana Jones-style” expedition, led by a French-born archaeologist, through landmine-strewn jungle in the Siem Reap region where Angkor Wat, the largest Hindi temple complex in the world, is located.
The expedition used an instrument called Lidar — light detection and ranging data — which was strapped to a helicopter that criss-crossed a mountain north of Angkor Wat for seven days, providing data that matched years of ground research by archaeologists.
It effectively peeled away the jungle canopy using billions of laser pulses, allowing archaeologists to see structures that were in perfect squares, completing a map of the city which years of painstaking ground research had been unable to achieve, the report said.
It helped reveal the city that reportedly founded the Angkor Empire in 802 AD, uncovering more than two dozen previously unrecorded temples and evidence of ancient canals, dykes and roads using satellite navigation coordinates gathered from the instrument’s data.
Jean-Baptiste Chevance, director of the Archaeology and Development Foundation in London who led the expedition, told the newspaper it was known from ancient scriptures that a great warrior, Jayavarman II, had a mountain capital, “but we didn’t know how all the dots fitted, exactly how it all came together”.
“We now know from the new data the city was for sure connected by roads, canals and dykes,” he said.
The discovery is set to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States.
Damian Evans, director of the University of Sydney’s archaeological research centre in Cambodia, which played a key part in developing the Lidar technology, said there might be important implications for today’s society.
“We see from the imagery that the landscape was completely devoid of vegetation,” Evans, a co-expedition leader, said.
“One theory we are looking at is that the severe environmental impact of deforestation and the dependence on water management led to the demise of the civilisation … perhaps it became too successful to the point of becoming unmanageable.”
The Herald said the trek to the ruins involved traversing rutted goat tracks and knee-deep bogs after travelling high into the mountains on motorbikes.
Everyone involved was sworn to secrecy until the findings were peer-reviewed.
Evans said it was not known how large Mahendraparvata was because the search had so far only covered a limited area, with more funds needed to broaden it out.
“Maybe what we see was not the central part of the city, so there is a lot of work to be done to discover the extent of this civilisation,” he said.
“We need to preserve the area because it’s the origin of our culture,” secretary of state at Cambodia’s Ministry of Culture, Chuch Phoeun, told AFP.


Angkor Wat was at one time the largest pre-industrial city in the world, and is considered one of the ancient wonders of the world.
It was constructed from the early to mid 1100s by King Suryavarman II at the height of the Khmer Empire’s political and military power.

18 November 2011

Attacks Target Palestinians In Israeli Towns 18NOV11 & Genocide Survivor To Sit On Holocaust Museum Board 17NOV11

Pres Obama just appointed Rwandan refugee, now a naturalized American, Clemantine Wamariya to the board of the U.S. Holocaust Museum (see the story after the story on Israeli attacks on Palestinians). She is a 23 year old survivor of the genocide in Rwanda. A genocide that happened after the world said "never again" after the holocaust of WWII. The Rwandan genocide happened after the Cambodian (Khmer) genocide, after the Bosnian genocide. Never again. And now, many of the very people who lost the most from their community in the genocide of WWII, are exhibiting the same behavior, or at least tolerating the behavior symptomatic of those who are considering committing genocide. The dehumanization of a people, violations of their human rights, increasing attacks on their homes, communities, businesses, places of worship are all warning signs that were seen in Germany and occupied Europe, in Cambodia and in Bosnia. Yes, there have been massive and brutal attacks against Israelis by Palestinians, and Hamas and Hezbollah remain committed to the destruction of Israel. But the history of Israel and the holocaust should be enough for Israelis to recognize their behavior is becoming alarmingly similar to that of the brown shirts and Nazi troops and complacent citizens who allowed the holocaust to happen.

Attacks Target Palestinians In Israeli Towns

 A woman shouts slogans during a demonstration against the desecration of headstones at a Muslim and Christian cemetery in Jaffa, Israel, last month. A few dozen Israelis and Palestinians turned out in a show of protest against recent attacks.
Enlarge Ammar Awad/Reuters /Landov A woman shouts slogans during a demonstration against the desecration of headstones at a Muslim and Christian cemetery in Jaffa, Israel, last month. A few dozen Israelis and Palestinians turned out in a show of protest against recent attacks.
In Israel, tensions are rising between Jews and Palestinian Arabs, who make up about 20 percent of the population. Over the past few months, several Arab sites have been vandalized by militant Jews who left graffiti such as "Death to Arabs."
Locals blame activists from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
At a recent demonstration on a street corner in the central Israeli town of Jaffa, protesters chant in both Hebrew and Arabic. The crowd is made up of Jews and Palestinians angry over the attacks, which have rocked their community.
Tamar Avia, a 35-year-old Jewish resident of Jaffa, says the neighborhood is being torn apart.
"The problem is national, but it is one that starts on a personal level," she says. "It is a problem that is hitting us in Jaffa hard."
 A man stands near tombstones vandalized in a cemetery in Jaffa, Israel, on Oct. 8. Headstones at the Muslim and Christian cemetery were defaced with messages like "Death to Arabs."
Enlarge Ahmad Gharabli /AFP/Getty Images A man stands near tombstones vandalized in a cemetery in Jaffa, Israel, on Oct. 8. Headstones at the Muslim and Christian cemetery were defaced with messages like "Death to Arabs."
Over the past few months, there has been a series of attacks targeting Palestinians in Israel. In October, a mosque in the northern Arab village of Tuba-Zangariya was torched and a Muslim cemetery in Jaffa was vandalized. At both sites, graffiti were found linking the attacks to Israeli settlers.
Avia says she came to the protest because she was shocked by what is happening. She points out that many right-wing Israelis use different terms for Palestinians who live within Israel.
"They don't call them Palestinians; they call them Israeli Arabs. That's their way to erase their Palestinian identity and kind of contain them within Israel," she says. "The agenda is to have a purely Jewish state and to get rid of all Palestinians, the ones in the West Bank and in Israel."
Avia says these kinds of attacks are new in Jaffa, a coastal community hugging the southern outskirts of Tel Aviv, Israel's largest city.
For years, Jews and Arabs coexisted there in relative peace. That was interrupted in early 2010, says Fatima Helewa, a local Palestinian activist. That's when Bemuna, a construction company that specializes in building subsidized homes for religious Jewish families in West Bank settlements, started building in Jaffa.
Its first project was in the largely Palestinian neighborhood of Ajami. The Israeli Association for Civil Rights petitioned Israel's High Court to stop the building, claiming that Bemuna's openly stated policy of providing apartments only to Jews was racist.
The court ruled against the association, and Bemuna continues to build in Jaffa.
A spokesman for Bemuna insists there are no ethnic tensions here, but he refused to answer questions on tape. Helewa, who lives just minutes away from one of the building projects, disagrees.
"I think it's a development of racism," she says. "I know many Jewish friends, but I think the general society of Israel is developing racism of Arab people inside and in the West Bank."
She feels that groups such as Bemuna are becoming increasingly popular across Israel. She points to a series of attacks that have occurred this year against Palestinian communities in both the north and the south of Israel.
"You can't argue with me that racism is not developing here," she says. "It's a fact."
Helewa stands in front of the once popular restaurant Abu Elabed, set ablaze earlier this month and spray-painted with graffiti calling for death to Arabs.
She says the attack made her feel unwelcome in her own hometown.
"Arab people, they already live with the Jews. We're living with them years by years," she says. "It's just that Zionism made the settlers more and more racist."
For now, she says that all she can do is continue to protest — and hope that more from the community join her.

Genocide Survivor To Sit On Holocaust Museum Board


President Obama has appointed Rwandan refugee Clemantine Wamariya to the board of the U.S. Holocaust Museum. Wamariya, who's an American now, talks to Renee Montagne about surviving the Rwandan genocide.

Copyright © 2011 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Clemantine Wamariya knows more about death than a young woman should. She's an American now, but hovering always in her memory is one of the horrors of the 20th century, the genocide in Rwanda, where she was born. President Obama has now named her to the board of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, at 23 the youngest person ever appointed and the first from Africa. Clemantine Wamariya was still a child when she and her sister ran for their lives. She didn't see her parents until 12 years later, when she won an essay contest sponsored by Oprah Winfrey. Today, she's a student at Yale and her early memories of Rwanda are not without joy.
CLEMANTINE WAMARIYA: We had this huge mango tree in my backyard. Every afternoon we'll have literally just tons of kids climb that tree and play and make as much noise as we want. And that tree became sort of a world where we could travel. You know, it was a train. It was a plane. It was a car. My memory of childhood is so rich, and I think that's why I was able to just sort of live and overcome things that had happened, 'cause I remember how beautiful it was growing up in Rwanda.
MONTAGNE: Everything changed in the spring of 1994 when, over the course of just three months, one ethnic group, the Hutus, killed hundreds of thousands of people from mostly another ethnic group, the Tutsis. You were just six and alone in the house with your sister when the killers came for you.
WAMARIYA: Well, I just remember being in a room and being so scared because I did not know who or what was going to happen. I never knew what death meant. To me, whatever was happening outside, I called it noise. I didn't know it was genocide until I started studying about it. But no one is telling you what's going on because everyone is busy trying to find a way to hide and where to pray and how to pray and how to kneel and how to, you know, raise their hand up high so that they can pray more.
MONTAGNE: Do you remember running with your 16-year-old sister when you were six out of the house into a field? I gather you walked and walked and walked for days to get to the first of many places that you spent as a refugee for the next six years in Africa.
WAMARIYA: Yeah. I mean, how can anyone forget waking up and you know that someone's going to come and get you. You do not know where they're going to come - if they're going to come from the front door, the back door, the window. You're in a panic, absolutely panic, and jump out and go and run and crawl so much that, you know, your knees are completely bleeding but you can't stand up. And all you could think about is your stomach. You know, from morning you think of what you're going to eat to a night where what food, what water can you drink?
MONTAGNE: Your life changed so dramatically when you came to the United States, as a sixth grader.
WAMARIYA: Well, a sixth grader who hadn't been in school until sixth grade.
MONTAGNE: Well, you did pretty well because you ended up at Yale. So how do you do well and still hold this other part of your life in your mind? I mean, how is it even possible?
WAMARIYA: Well, I have had so many incredible people in my life. You know, my first role model being my mother and then my sister, nothing can gander(ph) away. And so when I'm place in a challenge to finish the sixth grade, I will ask for any help I could get so I could get through. But then, you know, to realize that being in school is not only, like, oh, I have received an education, but it's more to learn about others. You know, why we do things to each other as the way we do, such as killing a whole race. What does that really mean? You know, slowly, yes, that it - sort of learning about it, especially in eighth grade, that's that question. And since then I've been hunting it down, trying to understand psychologically why do humans do such terrible things to each other.
MONTAGNE: Do you see your work in the future, your appointment to the board of the U.S. Holocaust Museum, helping you find an answer?
WAMARIYA: I think just sitting with incredible leaders who are making decision of others – they might never have an input of what it means to grow up in a refugee camp as a little girl. You have no mother, you have no father. Am I going to give them an input what it means to live in seven countries where people look at you and they think, oh, you are nobody.
MONTAGNE: Is there a particular person who didn't survive that you think about or that you want especially to be remembered?
WAMARIYA: There are too many. And it's not only people that I lost in the genocide. I am most talking about people that I lost along the way, you know, living in refugee camp and dying with diseases that can strike you in a second. Those people had become my family. What I want to remember is the joy that filled my house every Sunday when we had visitors and the joy that I had playing in the mango tree.
MONTAGNE: Clemantine Wamariya, thank you for taking the time to speak with us.
WAMARIYA: Thank you so much.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MONTAGNE: Clemantine Wamariya is the newest and youngest person to join the board of the U.S. Holocaust Museum. This is NPR News.
http://www.npr.org/2011/11/17/142437686/rwanda-genocide-survivor-to-sit-on-holocaust-museum-board

21 May 2010

KENT STATE 4MAI1970 & JACKSON STATE 14MAI1970 from NPR

May 3, 2010
 

Audio Slideshow: A Kent State Retrospective

Mary Ann 
Vecchio screams as she kneels over the body of Jeffrey Miller at Kent 
State on May 4, 1970.
Courtesy of John Filo via WKSU Mary Ann Vecchio screams as she kneels over the body of Jeffrey Miller after he was shot during an anti-war demonstration at Kent State University in Ohio on May 4, 1970. Four students were killed when Ohio National Guard troops fired at some 600 anti-war demonstrators. This photo, taken by John Filo, won the Pulitzer Prize.

May 3, 2010
Out in the world, when people talk about the shootings at Kent State University on May 4, 1970, they call it "Kent State." But in the small town of Kent, 35 miles south of Cleveland, and on the university campus, they call it "May 4th."
It was 40 years ago Tuesday that the shootings — which killed four people and wounded nine others — stunned the nation. Even at the height of the Vietnam War protests, no one imagined that government soldiers would fire real bullets at unarmed college students.
"I saw the smoke come out of the weapons, and light is faster than sound, and so I knew immediately [they] were not firing blanks. So it was almost instinctive to dive for cover," remembers Jerry Lewis, who was 33 and teaching sociology at Kent State in 1970.
Often, at tense times, Lewis served as a faculty marshal. He had some Army training and was worried about bayonet attacks and butt strokes with M-1 rifles. He hadn't thought about live fire.
Lewis says that when he takes people to the scene of the shooting on the Kent Commons, he likes to point out a particular mark — a perfectly round bullet hole in a steel sculpture.

Jackson State: A Tragedy Widely Forgotten

Just 10 days after the deaths at Kent State, shots rang out at a predominantly black college in the South. Two youths were killed and a dozen wounded in the shooting by police at Jackson State in Mississippi.

Little-known off Jackson State's campus, the tragedy came amid increasing racial tensions among students, local youths and law enforcement.

Read More

"This is what an M-1 bullet, .30-caliber bullet, does to steel," he says. "And the artist, to his credit, has refused to fix this. So, ironically, the [National] Guard created their own memorial."
A Lingering Question
Shots rang out for 13 seconds that day, killing Jeffrey Glenn Miller, Allison Krause, William Knox Schroeder and Sandra Lee Scheuer. More than 60 shots came from 28 guardsmen. Some fired into the ground; some fired high on purpose.
The students had gathered for an anti-war rally, and the Guard command had wanted them to go away. Tear gas was fired, and then the canisters flung back. The youths gathered were screaming insults, giving the guardsmen the finger. Rocks were thrown.
Then a group of guardsmen moved in formation to the top of a small hill. Some of them turned in unison, aimed and fired. They could have just kept going over the hill. Most of the students were in a parking lot downhill, more than 100 yards away.
A scene from May 4, 1970, at Kent State University.
Enlarge Courtesy of Kent State University via WKSU A scene from May 4, 1970, at Kent State University. It was 40 years ago Tuesday that the shootings stunned the nation.
A 
scene from May 4, 1970, at Kent State University.
Courtesy of Kent State University via WKSU
A scene from May 4, 1970, at Kent State University. It was 40 years ago Tuesday that the shootings stunned the nation.
For Lewis, after 40 years, that is still the question: Why did the Guard start shooting?
'The Worst Type Of People'
"Obviously, if you turn together in close quarters with bayonet, there must be some coordination, but I've always interpreted as that they planned to fire but fire high — because they were angry ... they were poorly led ... their tear gas masks didn't work properly," Lewis says. "But many people have used the turning together — and there were lots of eyewitnesses to that — as [a sign] that there was a rough agreement to do that, or that there was an order. But I haven't seen any evidence yet that there was an order."
The issue for the students that day became soldiers on their campus.
The noontime rally had been scheduled to protest President Nixon's plan to expand the Vietnam War into Cambodia. That news came the previous Thursday. On Friday night, there was trouble, spilling out of the downtown bars. By Saturday night, when the campus ROTC building was set on fire, the National Guard was already on the way.
Ohio's governor, James Rhodes, a Republican running a law-and-order campaign for the U.S. Senate, was in town on Sunday morning. He was critical of the radicals traveling the country causing trouble.
"They're worse than the brownshirts and the communist element and also the night riders and vigilantes," Rhodes said. "They're the worst type of people that we harbor in America. And I want to say this: They're not going to take over a campus."
Teaching History
The first card that I opened up in the intensive care unit was a very nice-looking card ... but the note in it said, 'Dear communist hippie radical, I hope by the time you read this, you are dead.'
"The first card that I opened up in the intensive care unit was a very nice-looking card," recalls Dean Kahler, who was paralyzed during the shooting. "But the note in it said, 'Dear communist hippie radical, I hope by the time you read this, you are dead.' "
Kahler was a freshman at Kent State in 1970. He was from a farm family and wanted to be a coach. He was against the war, but on that day, he was mostly curious — about the Guard, about his rights.
When Kahler heard the shots, he lay on the ground. Then he was hit in the back. He has been in a wheelchair for the past 40 years.
After he graduated and became a history teacher, he would tell his high school students, "Go home and ask your parents about Kent State."
Many of the reactions were positive and supportive. Sometimes, a youngster would tell Kahler it was a bad idea: "They told me not to talk to you about it," the students would say.
Dean Kahler, who was paralyzed during the 
Kent State shootings
Enlarge Noah Adams/NPR Dean Kahler, who was paralyzed during the shootings, went on to become a high school teacher and covered the events of May 4 in his classes.
Dean Kahler, who was paralyzed during the Kent State shootings
Noah Adams/NPR
Dean Kahler, who was paralyzed during the shootings, went on to become a high school teacher and covered the events of May 4 in his classes.
"I said, 'Well, you know, I'm teaching American history, so we're going to touch on it,' " Kahler recalls. " 'If you need to be removed from my room and go to another teacher to talk about it, go see the principal and the guidance counselor immediately.' "
Moving On
As the 40th anniversary of the shootings approaches, the Kent student TV station has had stories to cover all over campus.
For Heather VacLav and Eric Snitil, two students who work at the station, the events of May 4, 1970, meant "not much" when it came to choosing a school. They were impressed with Kent State's academic reputation.
Snitil says he came for the broadcast journalism program — "it's one of the best in the country."
And VacLav believes the university has turned around what is kind of "Kent State's claim to fame" by being open and creating a memorial.
"The original May 4 was very sad and tragic," she says. "I think now, looking back at it, the university's kind of just taken something that was negative and tried to turn it into something positive."
On Monday night, students, faculty, family and friends will honor the four who were slain and the nine who were wounded four decades ago with a candlelight march and a silent vigil.

Jackson State: A Tragedy Widely Forgotten

Two 
students at Jackson State College peer from a window that was shot out 
by police on campus.
Enlarge Jack Thornell/AP Two students at Jackson State peer from a window that was shot out by police on campus in May 1970.
Two students at Jackson State 
College peer from a window that was shot out by police on campus.
Jack Thornell/AP
Two students at Jackson State peer from a window that was shot out by police on campus in May 1970.
May 3, 2010
A group of angry students. A burst of gunfire from authorities. Young lives cut short.
It sounds a lot like the Kent State shootings on May 4, 1970, but it happened 10 days later at a predominantly black college in the South.
Police fired for about 30 seconds on a group of students at Jackson State in Mississippi, killing two and wounding 12 others.
The tragedy was the culmination of increasing friction among students, local youths and law enforcement. On the evening of May 14, African-American youths were reportedly pelting rocks at white motorists driving down the main road through campus — frequently the site of confrontations between white and black Jackson residents.
Tensions rose higher when a rumor spread around campus that Charles Evers — a local politician, civil rights leader and the brother of slain activist Medgar Evers — and his wife had been killed, according to Lynch Street: The May 1970 Slayings at Jackson State College. The situation escalated when a non-Jackson State student set a dump truck on fire.
Police responded to the call. A group of students and non-students threw rocks and bricks at the officers. Police advanced to Alexander Hall, a large dorm for women.
According to a 1970 report from the President's Commission on Campus Unrest, police fired more than 150 rounds. And an FBI investigation revealed that about 400 bullets or pieces of buckshot had been fired into Alexander Hall. The shooters claimed that there was a sniper in the dorm, but investigators found "insufficient evidence" of that claim.
The two young men who were gunned down in the melee were Phillip L. Gibbs, a junior at Jackson State and the father of an 18-month-old; and James Earl Green, a high school senior.
Jackson State Today
The event continues to leave a mark on the university. Even today, passers-by can see the bullet holes in the women's dorm. A plaza on campus commemorates the victims of the shooting.
All Jackson State students learn about the shooting in a mandatory orientation class, and professors evoke the event as a teaching tool.
C. Liegh McInnis, who teaches creative writing and world literature at Jackson State, says the story of the shooting is integrated into the curriculum of several liberal arts departments.
In McInnis' own freshman composition class, students are required to see the bullet holes in the women's dorm themselves while researching a critical analysis paper about the shooting.
On Thursday, Jackson State held a 40th anniversary memorial to pay tribute to the victims of the shooting. The event brought back 24 alumni who attended Jackson State in 1970, some of whom had been injured that night.
"The tragedy showed the resolve of the students," McInnis said.
McInnis said all of the alumni — who had traveled from places like Houston and Detroit — ended up being leaders in their fields and their communities.
"What the shooting did is that it showed, even through this heinous act, black intellect could not be stopped," McInnis said.