Friday digest-open thread 1/25/08

As Martin Luther King Jr. Week winds down, take a few minutes to watch this wonderful video from Delaware-based Hearts and Minds Films. It features clips of Dr. King himself interspersed with children of today speaking his words. It's beautiful stuff ... click on the image above, and pass it along.

In other news:

Nearly 600 people in Lynchburg, Virginia, have signed up to take part in that city's Community Dialogue on Race and Racism. More than 400 of them showed up last Friday for a kickoff celebration. The action-oriented dialogues begin during the first week of February. Lynchburg has been selected as one of eight communities that will partner with the Study Circles Resource Center - soon to be renamed Everyday Democracy - on our Communities Creating Racial Equity initiative.

Also in the Middle Atlantic region, the YWCA of Lancaster (Pennsylvania) also has launched study circles on racism in the nearby community of Lititz, with plans to possibly grow the discussion series throughout Lancaster County. "Study circles are definitely in keeping with the two key missions of the YWCA, as an advocate for women's issues and confronting racism," Dorothy Evans, assistant executive director of the Y, told the Lititz Record.

Lima, Ohio, is a city that pioneered study circles in the early 1990s amid racial tensions after the Rodney King verdict in Los Angeles. Now, Lima residents are on edge again following the January 4 fatal shooting of an African American woman during a drug raid in which police officers arrested the woman's boyfriend.

"The shooting has led to much soul searching about the mistrust between minorities and police and what happens to cities when manufacturing jobs move out and drugs move in," Associated Press reporter John Seewer wrote in an article this week. Read it here. Another recent AP story - this one by Ramit Plushnick-Masti - explores the rise in the drug trade in other Rust Belt cities.

Now, go back and re-watch that video.