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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina s congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Myorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Pastor Calls for Peace, Justice in Wake of Freddie Gray Case Acquittal

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Friday, June 24, 2016   

BALTIMORE – As the nation reacts to the acquittal in the Freddie Gray case, there are calls for justice and for peace.

Rev. Tom Harris at Govans Presbyterian Church in Baltimore says you can't have one without the other.

He's disappointed a Baltimore judge acquitted Officer Caesar Goodson Jr. of second-degree depraved-heart murder in the case, and says voices need to be heard so change can happen.

"We are all racist and we have to be aware when our biases are clouding our judgments,” Harris says. “It's not that anybody can just take that out of their soul, because I think it's all part of our brokenness as people, but we can try to be aware of it and be conscious of it and how it's affecting our judgments and our decisions. "

Gray died in police custody in April 2015. After being arrested, he was shackled and put into a van driven by Goodson but was not secured in a seat belt, and suffered a severe spinal injury on the way to the police station. He died a week later.

Harris says as public servants, police need to make sure they don't abuse power.

"The police are the ones with the power,” he stresses. “They are the ones that are armed, and they represent the government which has the power, and so we need to work to limit the powerful so everyone has a chance."

Harris says conflict is part of living together, and a church's role isn't to quash that, but instead to bring people together to have a dialogue. He says protesters have a right to voice their opinions.

"I think that we often look at the protesters and say, 'Don't be violent,' and we often forget that these are the people who have had violence done against them for a very long time,” he states. “Nobody's stood up and tried to stop that violence, so I think we have to be careful of being hypocritical."





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