A Black Lives Matter protest more accessible to those in the disabled community is being organized for next Friday in Portsmouth.
Julian Jefferson, a staff attorney in the New Hampshire Public Defender’s office, has represented victims of racism and experienced it firsthand.
“I am a black man,” he said in his testimony before the Commission on Law Enforcement Accountability, Community and Transparency. “I have lived in New Hampshire since 2008. I have been working in the criminal justice system since 2011. I can tell you that racism exists in this state and in our criminal justice system.”
The Commission on Law Enforcement Accountability, Community and Transparency has been quietly at work since June. Although its meetings over the summer were public, they received little attention amid the noise of a national election, a public health crisis and a struggling economy.
That’s about to change with the new year, as legislation to implement the commission’s findings begins to work its way through the State House and the reality of what is being proposed becomes more apparent to the many stakeholders.
Officials with The Salvation Army are anticipating totals nowhere near last year’s mark. At the Salvation Army office in Concord, Major Richard Sharkey said they have four or five kettles this year instead of the usual nine. Sharkey said typically they have seven locations, (two at some locations) and with nine kettles received about $100,000 last year. But this year Sharkey said he trimmed the anticipated revenue to about $75,000, though it could be less, because he expected some difficulty finding volunteers. While the Concord location hires seasonal staff, they also rely on volunteer groups and charitable organizations during the Red Kettle Campaign.
As Jeremiah and Kathryn Eisley fight to keep their red kettles out this year, COVID-19 is fighting back.
The Eisleys, who run the local Salvation Army in Rochester, NH, are determined to keep this year’s red kettle campaign — long an icon of holiday giving — alive during the pandemic.
They came prepared: the Salvation Army established guidelines to keep volunteers and donors safe, as well as options for contactless giving.
November’s COVID-19 surge in New Hampshire saw the first outbreak of cases among inmates of the state prison system, including 10 cases in a Concord unit that treats mental illness and substance use disorders.
Although multiple prison employees had tested positive for COVID-19 before then, no evidence had surfaced indicating that the virus was present and circulating in the prison population.
Soon after, the state Corrections Department’s tweaked its testing policy. During much of the pandemic, the policy has been to test “residents who are symptomatic and any resident identified during contact-tracing to have had close, prolonged contact with an infected person.”
