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Two friends met for the first time when one was freed after being wrongfully convicted

They've been pen pals for over two decades and finally got to see each other face to face.

CBS Evening News|YouTube

Wrongfully convicted man meets long-time penpal.

Having a pen pal can be really rewarding. In the early 90s, when letter writing was still a required learning objective and classes got to have penpals from another school, it was exciting to build a connection with someone through writing letters. But for most of us, that practice died off as we started making those lasting connections through social media.

But when Ginny Schrappen got word from her church's deacon that a prisoner wanted a pen pal more than two decades ago, before social media was a thing, she stepped up to volunteer. According to CBS Evening News, Lamar Johnson wrote to Schrappen's church hoping that one of the parishioners would write to him while he was in prison.

Others may have been turned off due to the crime for which Johnson was imprisoned, which was murder. But Schrappen figured, "He's not going to come and get me."

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acts of kindness
Heroes

After their BLM flag was torn in two, an anonymous neighbor left them the perfect note

This article originally appeared on 06.28.21


After Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed Black man, was pursued and shot by three white residents while jogging through a Georgia suburb, Ellen and Patrick Miller* of San Diego hung a Black Lives Matter flag in front of their house. It was a small gesture, but something tangible they could do.

Like many people, they wanted to both support the BLM movement and bring awareness about racism to members of their community. Despite residing in a part of the county notoriously rumored to be marred by white supremacists and their beliefs, their neighbors didn't say much about it—at first.

Recently, though, during a short window when both Ellen and Patrick were out of the house, someone sliced the flag in two and left the remains in their yard.

via Paula Fitzgibbons

They were upset, but not surprised.

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racial justice
Democracy

The officers who killed Elijah McClain have been indicted and now face criminal charges

Padma Lakshmi/Twitter

Nearly two years after his death, three Aurora, Colorado police officers and two paramedics have been indicted by a grand jury and will face criminal charges for the killing of 23-year-old Elijah McClain. According to The Denver Post, the five individuals face charges of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide for their roles in violently detaining McClain and injecting him with the sedative ketamine, leading to his death.

McClain's killing rocked the nation in the midst of the biggest racial justice movement the U.S. has seen since the Civil Rights era. His life mattered, and his death was a tragic example of the injustice of police brutality. The officers were originally cleared of all wrongdoing, so this grand jury indictment is one step toward accountability.

Read our story published on 6.24.20, contrasting Elijah McClain's gentle life with his unnecessarily brutal death, below.

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justice
Democracy

The 4 ex-cops connected to George Floyd's murder have been indicted by a federal grand jury

Photo by munshots on Unsplash

Last May, the whole world reacted to the murder of George Floyd caught on video by a quick-thinking teenage bystander. We watched the minutes tick by as Derek Chauvin pressed his knee into Floyd's neck. We watched Floyd tell the officers he couldn't breathe and then call out for his mother. We watched him stop talking, stop moving, stop breathing while Derek Chauvin kept on kneeling with his hand in his pocket.

While most of the attention has been on Chauvin's actions in that horrifying video, there were three other police officers involved at the scene.

Three other officers who participated in either helping hold Floyd down or watching as it happened. Three officers who witnessed their colleague murder a man in plain sight, with bystanders begging them to intervene, and doing nothing to stop it. Three officers who didn't even try to resuscitate the man who had stopped breathing right in front of them.

The accountability of those officers has been in question since Derek Chauvin was found guilty of second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and manslaughter in the George Floyd case. Now, a federal grand jury has indicted all four officers, including Chauvin, for willfully violating George Floyd's constitutional rights.

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racial justice
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