Letters to the Editor

Goodwill gives thanks

Morgan Memorial Goodwill Industries thanks Boston residents for their longstanding support through the donation of clothing and household goods. You gave more than 2.5 million pounds of goods to Goodwill in 2012!

We hope you will get a jump on spring cleaning and donate to Goodwill today at the attended donation center at our headquarters at 1010 Harrison Ave. or at another donation site near you. For the locations and hours of Goodwill stores and donation centers, please visit www.goodwillmass.org.

Your donations make a meaningful difference to the community in many different ways. They help individuals with disabilities and other barriers to employment get on-the-job training and paid work experience sorting, shipping and merchandising donated items. They give families with limited means an option to purchase high-quality, low-cost clothing and household items at The Goodwill Stores. And, they allow community organizations like Pine Street Inn that partner with Goodwill to supply gently worn clothing to their guests.

Every donation supports Goodwill’s mission to provide independence and dignity though work to people in our community. Now’s the time to donate!

Joanne K. Hilferty
President and CEO
Morgan Memorial Goodwill Industries

An apology for the wrongs of the past

I was moved by the public contrition of Montgomery, Ala., Police Chief Kevin Murphy for sins committed, not by his own hand, but by his professional brethren some 52 years ago when they were complicit in racist mob violence against John Lewis and other “Freedom Riders.”

Upon accepting their badges, those policemen, like Chief Murphy, swore to protect the person, property and right to due process of all under their jurisdiction. To stand back and let a mob brutally beat the “Freedom Riders,” as they did in the Montgomery bus station in 1961, desecrated those badges (and wearers of same) five decades ago and it still does — to this day!

When Chief Murphy recently gave his badge to Congressman John Lewis, it was his own form of a “sacrament of reconciliation.” His noble deed should be followed by the giving of badges by any living members of the 1961 police force to surviving “Freedom Riders” who bravely accompanied and suffered with John Lewis more than a half century ago.

Such could begin Montgomery’s equivalent to the South African “Truth and Reconciliation” effort that ended apartheid in that benighted land in the early 1990s.

Let us all salute Chief Kevin Murphy!

David
Via email

Editor’s note: Montgomery, Ala., Police Chief Kevin Murphy presented U.S. Rep. John Lewis with his badge and an apology on March 2, 2013, for failing to protect the Freedom Riders during a trip to Montgomery in 1961 in which many were severely beaten by a white mob. Lewis was  taking part in the 13th Congressional Civil Rights Pilgrimage to Alabama, when Murphy made his apology.