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Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John DeLin and it is July 8th, 2016.

We are here to talk about a very important subject, something that in some sense has happened this week but in some sense has been happening for decades or centuries.

It is an ongoing, important discussion to have and we have three really important and interesting people here to talk about it.

So for those of you who have been paying attention to the news media, over the past several months and years we have seen an increase in coverage around incidents where police officers end up shooting people of color in ways that are recorded with cell phones or otherwise they get significant media exposure.

And lots of discussion and of course in the past year or two we have seen the ascent of a movement called the Black Lives Matter movement.

And even here on Mormon Stories just a little while ago we had our own episode to try and begin discussing these matters and we call the Black Mormon Lives Matter.

But this week things really seemed to escalate and it began I believe in Louisiana where Tuesday morning of this week two police officers fatally shot a Black man, Alton Sterling.

As I understand it he was a father it was captured on video and it drew widespread attention the Justice Department the U.S. Justice Department opened a civil rights investigation.

There have been protests and a vigil but then to follow that up on Wednesday evening in Minnesota Falcon Heights Minnesota a police officer fatally shot a Black man, Philando Castile is how all pronounces name 32 years old it was during a traffic stop in a suburb of St. Paul.

The aftermath was streamed on Facebook live by his girlfriend a passenger with her young daughter and again it sparked outrage and demonstrations and responses to President Obama weighed in and it escalated again the attention around this issue and then last night around 9 p.m. in Dallas, Texas.

There was a peaceful event with some demonstrators in downtown Dallas and shots began to be fired at apparently at police officers five police officers were killed seven others were shot two civilians were wounded and and the escalations and the discussions just continue.

I should note that just because we're talking about this doesn't mean that this is new.

We've been we've been seeing these things in American history for decades if not centuries in various ways what's different now perhaps is that we have social media that's able to broadcast and capture these events and stream them.

And I think so many people are asking what's going on what can we do and then within the Mormon and post Mormon communities I think there's a lot of people who want to try and make a difference who want to understand what's going on and then act accordingly.

And in some ways there are ways to help and make it better there's some ways to act that may not help at all and there may even ways to act in well attended ways that cause damage.

And so I've asked I've asked three people that I really respect to come on and and to discuss this with us.

So what I'd like to do now is introduce our three guests to begin Misha McGregs was the first person that I reached out to.

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