Mr. Baker – Don’t Let the Cops Kill My Sons

source:  www.rushernbaker.com

July 8, 2016

Rushern Baker
County Executive, Prince George’s County
14741 Governor Oden Bowie Drive
Upper Marlboro, MD 20772

Dear Mr. Baker,

My name is Melissa Andrews. I live in the Perrywood community in Upper Marlboro. I have two sons, ages 8 and 5. The recent shooting of Alton Sterling has prompted me to write you.

My family has no plans to move from Prince George’s County. That means that my sons will grow up here. They will learn to drive here. Their first encounter with the police will most likely be in this county – a county that is still trying to overcome a reputation that includes a brutal police force. I have to tell you that I am terrified that my sons could be shot and killed during a stop with the police.

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Operation #GetMelissaHome

Original image courtesy derekkuryliw.com

Today, I tried to beat winter storm Jonas home – and won!  🙂  I left on a work trip on Wednesday, knowing that the storm was coming and that it was likely I’d get stuck some place that wasn’t Maryland.  Wanted to share some things I learned during the trip.

Extracurricular Activities

Today, I started the boys back in extracurricular activities. We’ve had them in various activities off and on, but I decided that I was not being a focused mom and needed to get my act together. Lol.  So Joshua went to swimming this evening and Jalen was supposed to start martial arts – however when he heard that Joshua was going swimming, he all of a sudden wanted to swim! I haven’t yet decided how I’m going to solve that. I really think the martial arts will help him to start concentrating more, but if he really wants to swim, why should I not let him do that? I’m not going to introduce two new activities yet though until I see how he handles having this new one added to his schedule. So we will decide tomorrow.

Both boys did swimming early. We went to “Mommy & Me” swim classes at Kids First Swim School. However, both boys “dropped out” of swimming school before their second birthday! :-(.

Delayed!

[Image courtesy of artur84 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net]

It finally hit.  Day 7 of the #My500Words challenge.  I have nothing to write about.  I’m also extremely sleepy, but I have to get 500 words in before midnight.  Earlier in the week, I joked with a friend who is also doing the challenge that writers must be very competitive people.  That was probably an over-generalization.  The people who’ve signed up for this challenge are probably very competitive!  Lol.

So here I am, trying to figure out what I’m going to say for the next 400 words or so.  Nothing interesting happened to me today.  I spent the day doing a lot of driving – taking my aunt on a couple of errands and then picking up a friend from the airport.  My friend had an interesting story – she was supposed to get back here to Maryland last Thursday, but she got caught up in the whirlwind of cancelled flights that swept the country.