Wednesday on First Coast Connect we heard about a new location to assist survivors of sexual assault in Jacksonville with Executive Director Teresa Miles of the Women’s Center of Jacksonville and Marcus Pollard, who is Director of Player Development and Youth Football with the Jacksonville Jaguars (01:11).
Blogger Stacey Goldring from our our monthly First Coast Connect Book Club gave us the story behind “Killers of the Flower Moon” (33:10).
Friday is White Cane Safety Day. We spoke with Jacksonville resident Doug Hansard on what it’s like to be a blind pedestrian in Jacksonville (43:56).
S.A.F.E Center
It’s called the S.A.F.E. or Sexual Assault Forensic Exam Center. It’s a refuge for local victims of sexual assault in Jacksonville. Former Jacksonville Jaguars owners Wayne and Delores Weaver made a $500,000 donation to help renovate the new space on Emerson and they’re challenging the community to help match those funds. The center opened Tuesday night with a slew of dignitaries on hand, including Sheriff Mike Williams and State Attorney Melissa Nelson. One in six women in Florida has been raped, according to the Florida Council Against Sexual Violence.
First Coast Connect Book Club- ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’
In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were the members of the Osage Indian Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.Then, one by one, they began to be killed off.
Virtually anyone who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered. The F.B.I. took up the case, in what became one of the organization’s first major homicide investigations. . Eventually the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including one of the only Native American agents in the bureau. They infiltrated the region, struggling to adopt the latest modern techniques of detection. Together with the Osage they began to expose one of the most sinister conspiracies in American history.
In “Killers of the Flower Moon,” David Grann revisits a series of crimes in which dozens of people were murdered. The book is narrative nonfiction, as each step in the investigation reveals a series of secrets and reversals. The books paints an indictment of callousness and prejudice toward Native Americans that allowed the murderers to operate with impunity for so long.
White Cane Safety Day
It’s called White Cane Safety Day. A way to celebrate blind and visually impaired people's achievements in the United States, and it happens every year on October 15th.
White Cane Safety Day also reminds people about the how the white cane is an important tool in helping the blind and the visually impaired live with greater independence.
At 10 a.m.Friday, the Jacksonville Council of the Blind will hold a White Cane Safety Walk at the corner of Blanding and Wilson.
Kevin Meerschaert can be reached at kmeerschaert@wjct.org, 904-358-6334 or on Twitter at @KMeerschaertJax.
