The Ghouse Diary: Peaceful protests at McKinney Police headquarters

Peaceful protests at McKinney Police headquarters on Monday, June 8, 2015 - 6:50 PM - 8:20 PM - this is a developing story.

This will be continually updated until Thursday - hope to receive emails from all the 26 speakers to include their speech and I welcome any pictures any one has taken.

Nearly 150 People had gathered in front of the McKinney Police Headquarters at 2200 Taylor Burl Dr. The event was organized by Olinka Green Defense committee and was posted on facebook; 955 People RSVPD, with a 150 Maybes and 4200 people were invited.
https://www.facebook.com/events/1401015223561412/1401605123502422/ -

I was there at 5:45 and people started coming, and about 6:30 PM we had about 100 people, the organizers were apparently in another event, where they had originally intended to hold, that left me to get organized and moderate the event.

Someone came with banner, and another one with a hand held public address system, I started the program 6:50 with our National Anthem followed by Pluralism prayers that included people of all faiths and no-faiths ( will post later tomorrow). Then gave a talk about the need to gather, much of the talk is drawn from the Petition at Avaz and Press release at: AmericansTogether.org

A total of 26 People spoke to the point and within two to three minutes. I made sure no one goes home with a feeling that they did not get the chance to speak, every one who wanted to speak was asked to come up and speak, and they did. I wish, some one had recorded the powerful statements from the people. we were represented by people of many faiths, races and ethnicity. We were all in this together. However, I have asked every one to send his or her speech notes in the email to me at MikeGhouse@gmail.com, the represented complete diversity of expression.

Thanks to the speakers for listening to me to keep it non-political, and I had to stop two of them from going on over either the Republicans or Democrats, we were gathered there as Americans and the issue is American and we are going to find solutions as Americans.

A few of the speakers were pounding on police force as if all of them were bad, and I am glad to speak up right after their speech, not to negate them, but to assert the difference. We cannot stereotype any one. Police is good and they are here to protect and give us the sense of security, even though a few of them violate their own ethics. However, none of us would have been able to speak freely if police were brutal, they are not a different species, they are from among us and we have a few bad apples and we need to treat them. We need to investigate where the flaw in the system was, were they trained wrongly? If the flaw is in the training we need to tear that apart and rebuild the training manual.

I will compile all parts of my speech, meanwhile I request you to share your pictures and your notes to compile them together and get it all published. Most of the TV channels were there, and whatever they report, we will share it here. They have to allocated a few seconds in the 5 or 10 minutes they have available in the news program.

Here is the first link someone sent me

Press Release at: AmericansTogether.org
Petition at: Avaz

VIDEOS:

NBC5 - Dallas:http://www.nbcdfw.com/video/#!/home/top-videos/QuestionsRemainAfterMcKinneyViralVideo/306576421

Thanks to Kimberly Diggs for sharing this video about Pluralism -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whBdhtzjOrg

FULL REPORTS