STF na MÃdia - MyClipp
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USA Today/ - News, Seg, 02 de Abril de 2012<br />
CLIPPING INTERNACIONAL (Civil Rights)<br />
'Sanford is not a racist town'<br />
SANFORD, Fla. – Thao Boyd, a Viet<strong>na</strong>mese immigrant<br />
in this small city at the center of a <strong>na</strong>tio<strong>na</strong>l uproar over<br />
racial profiling, wants people to know one thing about<br />
her adopted community:<br />
"Everybody knows Sanford now, but don't be scared<br />
about Sanford," says Boyd, 37, who owns a <strong>na</strong>il salon<br />
downtown. "Come visit us whenever you are ready."<br />
In the 15 years that Boyd has lived here, she says, she<br />
has never felt discrimi<strong>na</strong>ted against. What's more, she<br />
says, she can drive the 15 minutes from her house to<br />
the salon and know a family on almost every block<br />
where she could stop and ask for help if she ever<br />
needed it.<br />
PHOTOS: Thousands rally for Trayvon Martin<br />
"We are good people here," she says.<br />
Over the past two weeks, this city of 54,000, once<br />
known for its vast celery fields, is now known as the<br />
place where an u<strong>na</strong>rmed 17-year-old black teen<br />
walking home from the store with a bag of candy in his<br />
pocket was shot and killed by a neighborhood watch<br />
volunteer.<br />
Trayvon Martin died on Feb. 26. Police did not arrest<br />
the shooter, George Zimmerman, 28. Zimmerman is<br />
white and Hispanic.<br />
The Orlando Sentinel reported Sunday that two voice<br />
identification experts it contacted said the person<br />
overheard on a 911 call that night was not<br />
Zimmerman, who told police he was the one<br />
screaming for help. Martin's mother says it was her<br />
son's voice.<br />
As Trayvon's family, activists, celebrities and ordi<strong>na</strong>ry<br />
folks across the country call for Zimmerman's arrest,<br />
the community has been overwhelmed with news<br />
trucks, reporters, high-profile civil rights leaders<br />
including Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, and<br />
thousands of protesters. Another rally was held<br />
Sunday in Miami.<br />
At a meeting with city commissioners March 26,<br />
Sharpton warned that Sanford risks becoming the 21st<br />
century's Selma or Birmingham, two Southern cities<br />
that became synonymous with racial hate during the<br />
1960s civil rights movement.<br />
But residents here say the comparison is unfair.<br />
"Sanford is not a racist town, it's just not," says Nancy<br />
Kruckemyer, 57, who is white. "Everybody wants<br />
justice."<br />
As the investigation continues into the shooting, "I feel<br />
there is a heaviness in town," Kruckemyer says.<br />
Some black residents, too, say Sanford is no longer a<br />
community with flagrant racial tension between black<br />
and white residents. About a third of the city's<br />
residents are black.<br />
Pastor Valarie Houston agrees that the races generally<br />
get along fine in Sanford. She says the tension that<br />
exists sits squarely with the police department and<br />
how it treats members of the black community.<br />
"The police department is not fair to the<br />
African-American community," she says. She says<br />
police investigations are weak or non-existent when<br />
black people are killed.<br />
The Trayvon Martin case, she says, "is just one of<br />
many."<br />
At a community meeting with the NAACP last week,<br />
more than a dozen families complained of unfair<br />
treatment by the police. Their allegations ranged from<br />
an officer hitting a 10-year-old boy to what they see as<br />
a poor investigation and failure to arrest Zimmerman.<br />
Those are the frustrations the Trayvon Martin case has<br />
tapped, Houston says.<br />
Thousands of protesters chanting "Justice for Trayvon"<br />
marched to the police department Saturday in the<br />
latest of several rallies here. The department did not<br />
return phone calls requesting comment.<br />
"It's a beautiful city and we have a lot of good qualities,<br />
but if this is the publicity the city needs to straighten<br />
things up as far as the law, then so be it," says<br />
Lazarus Mitchell, 30, who coaches youngsters in a<br />
football athletic league at Fort Mellon Park, the site of<br />
one of the largest rallies for Trayvon. Mitchell, who is<br />
black, has white and black children on his teams.<br />
City ma<strong>na</strong>ger Norton Bo<strong>na</strong>parte, Sanford's first black<br />
ma<strong>na</strong>ger, says he understands the anger of the black<br />
community and wants the city to repair its trust.<br />
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