Nov. 7, 2016

Dear Future President,

My name is Jaqueline and my goal here in this letter is to convince you to make change happen in our communities dealing with authorities and justice for the people. I have been wanting to talk about an issue that has become a pretty popular topic nowadays because as we all know, it has been occurring repeatedly throughout various locations. Police brutality and racism has been roaming around for many years and it doesn’t seem to get any better. I chose to write about this specifically because injustice and inequality angers me and it just seems to create a huge effect in many people’s lives. There has also been many riots and outbreaks which impacts the community in which I live in, making it not a safe environment. I will proceed to discuss why I would like for there to be change in the injustice of authority to prevent more conflicts for others in the future.

I especially took interest in this subject once I heard the usual story about police men attacking black men for no good reason back in a city I used to visit a lot, which is Charlotte. I used to live in North Carolina and I have never heard of such an event occurring in a city so united and spread with peace. It really shows how much authority has changed. There seemed to be a chain reaction of officers attacking African-American men and then the public finding out which resulted in violent riots. It demonstrates the effect it has in our society and it isn’t positive.

I did some research and stumbled upon a pie chart which shows the races of people who had been shot by police in Chicago between the years  of 2009 and 2013. With no surprise I learned that the majority were black with a percentage of 79% and that was only statistics in one city! It’s not just happening out in public though, it has been appearing in schools too. As said in an article by Shante Wooten on www.countercurrentnews.com, “Zero-tolerance policies and heavy-handed efforts to increase security in schools have led to excessive penalization and harassment of African-American children through racial profiling… This phenomenon has been sadly described as ‘the school-to-prison pipeline.'”

On the other hand, I know there are many people that disagree with the fact that police authorities are racist and will attack an unarmed black man. I don’t believe that ALL police officers are racist though, that’s what most are mistaken for. Others say that police attack for a reason, either they felt threatened or they were attacked, yet in some cases with proof videos, it’s obvious that that’s not the case.

Sincerely, 

Jaqueline O.