Silence

On Sunday, June 17th, 2012, Liz and I, and five other people from St. Mary's joined thousands of others in a silent march to protest Stop and Frisk, Several other members of St. Mary's marched with other groups -- I don't know how many from St. Mary;s there were in total.

 Earlier Sunday, at the end of church, Ben Jealous came in and sat at the back. Ben ran a youth program at St. Mary's when he was a student at Columbia and has remained a friend of the parish. During the announcements, he spoke about the march. If you don't know, Ben is the President and CEO of the NAACP. During the announcements, Ben told us a little about the plans for the silent march.

At the silent march, our little group from At. Mary's was joined by a neighbor from Morningside Gardens who happened to see us. Marching near us were Ethan and Rima Vesely-Flad and their son. Ethan works for the Fellowship of Reconciliation and has asked us all to "like" the the Felowship on Facebook, as a birthday present for him. Ethan and Rima are not members of St. Mary's, but they have attended from time to time, especially when they lived nearby a few years ago.

I also saw briefly Ted Auerbach my old friend and former colleague at Seward Park High School. We promised each other to try to get in touch.