ForeverMissed
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This memorial website was created by the International MultiCultural Institute and The FutureWork Institute to honor the nine victims of the shootings at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina on June 17, 2015.

Please light a candle, lay a flower of leave a note to add your voice in solidarity with the families of the victims. We will share your responses with the members of the Church.

NOTE: if you leave a comment, and would like to continue to visit the site, please create your own account.  If not, we would appreciate it if you would  sign your name at the end of your tribute.

If you would like to contribute to the Mother Emanuel Church, go to 
http://www.charleston-sc.gov/index.aspx?NID=1330


 

June 30, 2015
June 30, 2015
The tribute was left by Juan J. Callejas on June 30th 2015

May the peace that "surpasses all understanding" continue to be lit for those who are blinded by hate as well as for the protection of the future generations that walk the earth.

With deepest sympathy.
June 30, 2015
June 30, 2015
My heart continues to grieve for each of you. My sincerest and deepest sympathy to your families and loved ones. May we never forget your sacrifice and grace.
June 29, 2015
June 29, 2015
We are with you from Connecticut. Our experience with Newtown showed us we truely need the presence of God to heal. My prayers to all the family members.
Charlotte Parniawski
June 28, 2015
June 28, 2015
What a message of grace was delivered by the family members and church. God has a witness in Charleston.
Mickey Dansby
June 27, 2015
June 27, 2015
Our sadness is beyond words. I am a stranger, yet profoundly linked to these wonderful saints. Light will overcome the darkness. This young man was ensnsared in the lies of the enemy - caught in a web. May Jesus strengthen the families of all victims and the body of Christ. Together we are one in him. and bring this young man out of the tragic dark, dark darkness and into the love and forgiveness of Jesus. Free him now Lord, Jesus.
June 27, 2015
June 27, 2015
Know that we are all with you in prayer, love and light.
Their souls are watching over us and they have us in their sight.
When you look up to the heavens, with heavy hearts and tears,
The angles will wrap you in love for all your remaining years!

Rest in Peace

Darlene Slaughter
June 27, 2015
June 27, 2015
May God give you all support and comfort in your sorrow. I will pray for everyone touched by this tragedy.
June 26, 2015
June 26, 2015
Prayer and love overcome hate. The courage of your loved ones is a lesson for all of us. God heal and soothe your pain and may the memories of those lost bring you comfort in your time of sorrow.
God Bless
June 26, 2015
June 26, 2015
May you find comfort and peace in God's grace and in the prayers and support of the broader community. We stand by you in your time of sorrow. God bless you.
June 26, 2015
June 26, 2015
Your faith & the forgiveness of your loved ones is a beacon for us all. Rest
June 26, 2015
June 26, 2015
During a time of reflection and study, no one would think their lives would be at risk. We live in an unpredictable world and must cherish every moment. I'm comforted by the power of the prayers this group sent up during their time together. Their longer term belief in fighting for peace, equality and justice truly mattered. Your lives were taken way too soon, but our Lord needs you now. Rest, rejuvenate and Reunite us in your spirit. May you iive a blessed time in heaven. Nancy J. Di Dia
June 26, 2015
June 26, 2015
The strength you & your loved ones have shown is a beacon of hope for the world
June 26, 2015
June 26, 2015
My prayers and condolences to all of the families, friends and communities affected by this senseless violence
June 26, 2015
June 26, 2015
If there is a message in your passing, I pray that we can all grasp it.
Be well, and rest in peace
June 26, 2015
June 26, 2015
Amazing Grace and forgiveness. Hate won't win! We will continue to press on. We must.
June 26, 2015
June 26, 2015
Ignorance and indifference produced harm and sorrow, but your collective sacrifice produces reconciliation, forgiveness and compassion.Peace and blessings to your families and the AME Community.
Karyn Trader-Leigh
June 26, 2015
June 26, 2015
Multiethnic Advocates for Cultural Competence (MACC) extends sympathy to the targets of last week’s hateful shooting at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. May the victims, their families, and the members of the congregation and community have some measure of strength and comfort in the support and prayers from the MACC community. Our thoughts are with them today and the days to come.

With Deep Regret,

Paul D. Dorn M.Ed. LSW
Executive Director

Multiethnic Advocates for Cultural Competence
2323 W. Fifth Avenue, Suite 160
Columbus, Ohio 43204
Phone (614) 221-7841
Fax: (614) 487-9320
June 26, 2015
June 26, 2015
Let your sacrifice and the sacrifice of your loved ones light a flame in the heart of our culture and the world and remind us that love surrounds hate and forces it to surrender!
June 26, 2015
June 26, 2015
Your spirits will be missed and will live on in the efforts to bring change to this country.
June 26, 2015
June 26, 2015
Prayers and thoughts for all the victims, families and communities devastated by this tragedy. It touches us all, no matter where we are.
June 24, 2015
June 24, 2015
My prayers and condolences go out to all of the victims and their families. May God's peace be with you all.

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Recent Tributes
June 30, 2015
June 30, 2015
The tribute was left by Juan J. Callejas on June 30th 2015

May the peace that "surpasses all understanding" continue to be lit for those who are blinded by hate as well as for the protection of the future generations that walk the earth.

With deepest sympathy.
June 30, 2015
June 30, 2015
My heart continues to grieve for each of you. My sincerest and deepest sympathy to your families and loved ones. May we never forget your sacrifice and grace.
Recent stories

A Point of View: Hate Won't Win

June 28, 2015

POSTED BY MARY-FRANCES WINTERS, PRESIDENT OF THE WINTERS GROUP, AN AFFILIATE PARTNER OF THE FUTUREWORK INSTITUTE

I have been totally immersed in watching and listening to the accounts of the mass murders of nine innocent church goers in Charleston, South Carolina last Wednesday night. They were at bible study. I literally broke down and cried when I first heard the news. I could hardly believe it. This cannot be true. Not in 2015. Somebody could actually harbor so much hate for a group of people that he would slaughter them? Gun them down in cold blood?

The alleged shooter (who has confessed to the heinous crime) is only 21 years old. Where does a 21 year old learn these ideologies? Why would he study the history of this particular church and target these particular people on that particular day? So many questions are going through my mind and a roller coaster of emotions. At first I was just so profoundly sad for the victims and their families…then came the anger that this could really happen in 2015; that no place is safe if you are black in America. Next I felt frustration. I wanted to do something. Take some action. Show my support. I was not able to go to Charleston but it was gratifying to see that thousands of people did go from all over the world to show their support and to send a strong message that hate will not win.

The alleged shooter said that he wanted to start a race war with his actions. It appears that the opposite reaction happened. It seems that more than Ferguson, more than Baltimore and the other race-related incidents over the past few years, this may be the one that gets a meaningful response that is not forgotten when the next big news story hits.

There are so many complex and interrelated issues that Charleston brings up for our country again from gun control to White Supremacist groups. In the immediate aftermath it is heartening to see that we are at least addressing symbols like the Confederate flag. There seems to be a groundswell of support to finally admit that it perpetuates a racist message and has no place in modern day America. As a matter of fact, the Confederate flag was resurrected in the 60’s as a way to protest the Civil Rights Movement.

However for me the major lesson was the response of the families of the deceased. At the arraignment proceedings last week, one after another, even in their profound grief, offered a message of forgiveness and love. At first I was shocked to hear these heartfelt words uttered from people who had just experienced such tragedy. After thinking about it for a bit, I realized that this is what I was taught in the AME Church where I worshipped as a child. If we profess to be Christians (Christ-like), we would indeed forgive.

I have to admit that forgiveness was not foremost in my mind. When I heard one of the family members say: “Hate won’t win”, I knew that I had to get myself together, to get my thinking right. The best way that I could help, is to deal with myself…to realize that if I continued to be angry, I would not be able to support my friends, family and clients in having meaningfulconversations about race.

Hate won’t win.

DENIAL

June 28, 2015

By Howard Ross, Founder and Chief Learning Officer, Cook Ross  (A Strategic Alliance with The FutureWork Institute)

Once again the news interrupts our momentary peace. The murder of nine African Americans in the Emanuel AME Church in Charlestown South Carolina has delivered a punch to the nation’s gut that harkens back to the savage killing of Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Carol Denise McNair in the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham Alabama. As always we are devastated by the inhumanity of the act and by the suffering of those directly impacted. And, as always, we seem to struggle to make sense of the tragedy. But is that what most of us are really doing? As I watch our collective reaction to the events of June 17th, I can’t help but think that there is a force at work that almost always tends to supersede our honest exploration into finding out “What happened?”

Denial.

In the case of this crime, it couldn’t be clearer. The perpetrator came into the church and shouted racial epithets as he murdered the nine victims. He is seen in pictures waving the Confederate flag and wearing clothing emblazoned with apartheid stickers. He had written a “manifesto” ranting against African Americans, Latinos, Jews and others. Everything about this young man’s act is clearly associated with racist motivations, including his own statements.

And yet, the Wall Street Journal posts an editorial column in which it states, “Today the system and philosophy of institutionalized racism identified by Dr. King no longer exists. What causes young men such as Dylann Roof to erupt in homicidal rage, whatever their motivation, is a problem that defies explanation beyond the reality that evil still stalks humanity. It is no small solace that in committing such an act today, he stands alone.” Alone with the more than 3,000 race-based hate crimes that are committed every year in the United States. News broadcasters insist that this was not a racial incident, but an “attack on Christianity.” Presidential candidates insist that the incident wouldn’t have happened if the people praying in the church had more guns. And as protests mount to stop flying the confederate flag, many insist that the civil war wasn’t really fought over race and slavery, even though the Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander Hamilton said, “Our new government is founded upon . . . the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition,” and the South Carolina Declaration of Secession from the Union stated, “they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.”

Of course this phenomenon is not the exclusive bastion of the right. When the Ferguson and Baltimore civil actions were at their peak, how many liberals, in the interest of explaining the historical and systemic roots of the experience of oppression by African Americans in those communities, refused to acknowledge the obvious truth: despite the fact that most of the protesters were responding out of their rage and pain, some were taking advantage of the situation to play out their own sociopathic tendencies to hurt, to steal, and to destroy.

Have we lost our sanity? No.

Denial.

What is it that has us dig in so deeply to deny that which is obvious? Why is it that even in the face of mounting evidence, we stubbornly hold on to our existing point of view? We know that, as Sherlock Holmes said in A Scandal in Bohemia, “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit the facts.” And yes, there are some who cynically attempt to rewrite the narrative for their own purpose…to prove a point. And, far more often, we actually see what we want to see, hear what we want to hear, and think what we want to think, all the while convinced that we are right, discarding the evidence to the contrary. In his book A Separate Reality, anthropologist Carlos Castenada described this reaffirming phenomenon in this way:

“We talk to ourselves incessantly about our world. In fact we maintain our world with our internal talk. And whenever we finish talking to ourselves about ourselves and our world, the world is always as it should be. We renew it, we rekindle it with life, and we uphold it with our internal talk. Not only that, but we also choose our paths as we talk to ourselves. Thus we repeat the same choices over and over until the day we die, because we keep on repeating the same internal talk over and over until the day we die.”

Some of this comes from our own personal sense of simply wanting to be right. Our ego structures get strongly attached to our positions about issues to the point where we become identified with our point of view. Being “wrong” about the issue threatens our very identity. And so while most people would agree that a wise, thinking person should be willing to listen, learn, and, if appropriate, change their mind, the reality is that we hold on to our points of view, especially the important ones, like a dog and a bone.

If this were conscious it would be hard enough to fight, but we know that our unconscious beliefs often dominate our thinking and dominate our ability to reason. Evidence suggests that our firmly held political views might even impact our ability to do the things we consider the most rational. Yale University law professor Daniel Kahan, along with psychologists Ellen Peters from Ohio State University, Erica Dawson from Cornell University, and Paul Slovic from the University of Oregon gave a difficult math problem to over 1000 people. In one version the problem was poised as determining the results of a pretty benign skin cream test. Participants in the study were generally likely to solve the problem accurately. In another version, however, the same math equations were posed in the context of a more emotional charged issue: a question about the effectiveness of handgun laws. Both liberals and conservatives erred in their math scores in the favor of the point of view they were supporting. In fact, the people who were normally the best at mathematical reasoning were the most likely to get the problem wrong when the politics were introduced. Their skill at math stopped being a tool for discovering the truth, and started to be used as a tool for proving themselves right!

And it becomes even more rigid when the issue is one that groups of people have mobilized around. Our tendency to want to belong supersedes almost any human need. And when we become part of a group with a “moral” purpose, this is truer than ever. We get caught up in the conversation we are surrounded by. We are no longer searching for the truth, but rather for a justification of our already point of view. And our antipathy towards “the other side” actually becomes a binding force in our group so much so that compromise is a threat to belonging.

The flood of information available to us makes it remarkably easy to get “evidence” for the point of view that we have already decided is “Truth.” We watch the same TV news stations. We listen to the same commentators. We read the same blogs. We get the constant feed from the same people on our Facebook pages and twitter accounts.   And those coming from another point of view become less and less worthy of our time and our consideration.

As Mark Twain said, “Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.” It is a psychological protection strategy that we have to fight if we want to find the truth. Of course we have to be sure that we protect ourselves against extremists who use hate and righteousness to harm others. But they do not exist in a vacuum. The mainstream justifiers and apologists for their behaviors feed their sociopathy. The real question is, do we want to be right, or do we want to have a civil society? If the answer is the latter, it starts with each of us. We have to be willing to try to understand before condemning the other point of view. We have to watch more than just “our” news station and read more than just “our” bloggers and Facebook pages. And we have to look for ways to connect rather than divide. We have to be willing to truly dialogue, rather than convince.

As the 13th Century Sufi poet Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī wrote, “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”

After the Day of Mourning, Charleston Still Matters

June 28, 2015

TANYA ODOM, THE FUTUREWORK INSTITUTE'S  DIRECTOR OF INNOVATION POSTED THIS ON THE HUFFINGTON POST ON 6-24-15

Last week on this day, we watched the stories and details about the shooting at Emanuel AME Church emerge from Charleston, South Carolina and many found themselves grappling with understanding this disturbing and terrorizing level of hate.

And yet, as I traveled through several airports recently, I was saddened to not hear people talking more about Charleston, hate, bigotry, or hope for change.

Hate crimes are crimes motivated by bias and prejudice

Hate crimes by their nature impact more than those immediately involved. The FBI website notes that "hate crimes add an element of bias to traditional crimes -- and the mixture is toxic to our communities."

The "toxic mixture" does not just disappear. What we have learned in our work in hate crime education is that we have to acknowledge the "public injury" that impacts people at physical and psychological levels.

A key focus in the education and understanding of hate crimes is the powerful impact these crimes have on the lives of people who are similar to the targeted community. There is understandable fear and concern about safety, and often a fear about potentially being targeted in the future.

In the case of the brutal killing of nine people at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Church, it seems apparent that race was the central motivator of this hate crime.

The blogs and posts about this frightening act of violence are plentiful. The posts touch on the important topics of mental illness, gun control, and religious freedom, symbols of hate, the media coverage of the event, and more.

We need to be talking about all of these issues.

It is also important that we talk about this hate crime and the slayings in Charleston and accept and address the role that race/racism has played.

We cannot ignore or mute the importance of race and the history of race and racism in our country because we find it to be an uncomfortable topic, "divisive," or do not feel we have the correct "language."

As someone who has been working in the area of diversity and inclusion and civil rights globally for more than more than two decades, I can attest to the presence of prejudice, intolerance, bigotry and unconscious and blatantly conscious bias. It is here, it is all around us, and we need to name it.

The topic of race in communities, on campuses, and in organizations is often stifled or is disconnected from a global understanding of race and racism.

It can be difficult to talk about race/racism. But it is not impossible.

The incident at Emanuel AME church last week reminds us that talking about race/racism is essential.

Steve Wessler is a lawyer and hate crimes expert who has collaborated with communities around the world. He has worked to investigate and bring to court the perpetrators of hate crimes, and he was the Executive Director of the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence in Portland, Maine. He reminds us about the expansive impact of this hate crime:

The hate crime in Charleston is disturbing and tragic at many levels. But sadly, the impact of hate crimes extends much further: the trauma that everyone present in the Church that evening will experience, and the anxiety and fear that this awful event will create for black people not only in Charleston but across the country.

I worry most about black young people and also other children of color and white children who try to understand these awful murders of hate.

The time after hate crimes have been committed is not a time to be silent. In fact, as we have worked in situations where hate crimes have occurred (and none have been at this serious level) we focused on making sure people feel heard, and safe. This was as important as the work that looked at the details of the incidents.

Part of the healing surrounding the events in Charleston can be strengthened by a commitment to compassion, concern and education.

Compassion - for the families of those killed, for the Emanuel AME church community in Charleston, and for all of those impacted by the shootings;

Concern -for our society, and for young people growing up in a world that is not always safe, and that can be even less safe for young people of color. How are we addressing this in our schools, churches, synagogues, mosques and other shared communities?

Education - Unfortunately, history HAS repeated itself numerous times. Our rich cultural, social, and political history has racially motivated violence woven throughout it. There is a history of young people committing hate crimes. We need education for ourselves, and especially for young people; Education about diversity and inclusion and social and emotional learning is essential for healthy personal and professional relationships. An honest review of history should not be seen as "extra" to our formal education system. How can we learn and acknowledge what has happened in our tumultuous racial and cultural past, as part of an effort to understand how we can do better? How can we ensure that young people are learning how to counter stereotypes and bigoted ideology?

Our continued and consistent actions can help us as collective human community to remember and address the atrocities that happened in Charleston.

Norvel Goff presided over the services at Emanuel AME church yesterday, and along with his words of encouragement and healing, he also noted that he and others would

"pursue justice and we're going to be vigilant and we are going to hold our elected officials accountable to do the right thing."

We need to do the same.

What can we do today, this, and moving forward?

• Express our support, compassion, and outrage to/for the people and communities in Charleston, South Carolina

• Acknowledge the presence and importance of race/racism; understand the scourge of racism and racially motivated bias in the history of the U.S.

• Focus on the targeted group(s), not just the perpetrator of the violence. Cynthia Hurd, Clementa Pinckney, Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Tywanza Sanders, Ethel Lance, Depayne Middleton-Doctor, Susie Jackson, Daniel Simmons Sr, Myra Thompson were people with full lives, families, and futures ahead of them.

• Long term, we need to continue to examine and challenge policies, practices, and people in all aspects of our society that limit the full engagement and inclusion of different groups. Racist and xenophobic rhetoric, stereotyping in the media, and divisive politics, contribute to exclusion, and to pernicious strengthening of systems of power, privilege, and hate.

At 10 a.m. this past Sunday (the Day of Mourning), bells all over the city of Charleston rang out in memory and mourning of the nine people murdered last week. The bells may not be ringing today, but we have an opportunity to continue the commemorative spirit of unity by our actions, and not letting Charleston fall away as a topic of importance in the media or in our lives.

Follow Tanya M. Odom, Ed.M. on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TMODOM

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