Dear Friend,

Our country has reached a moment of reckoning. The tragic death of George Floyd has lit a nationwide flame to end intolerable acts of police brutality and has put a spotlight on the systemic racism that has plagued our nation since its inception. A police officer pressed his knee into George Floyd’s neck for over eight minutes while other police officers did nothing to stop this barbaric treatment. In those gruesome final eight minutes of George Floyd’s life, humanitarianism was nowhere to be found. The country has raised its collective voice against this unconscionable behavior, with millions marching in protest – NO JUSTICE. NO PEACE. JoyGuru Humanitarian Services (JHS) joins that call.

JHS strongly condemns all acts of police brutality, abuse of power and racism. We walk together with all peaceful protesters because BLACK LIVES MATTER. We understand that the crushing knee on George Floyd’s neck is just another example of a system that leaves many in our community afraid to call the police when a crime is being committed against them because they fear that the actions by the police will be worse than the crime itself. That feeling of hopeless and helpless resonates with JHS. We are an organization founded on the principle of “restoring hope and providing humanitarian needs to those who feel hopeless and helpless.”

Several of JHS’s past projects – from sponsoring an eye camp in Ongata-Rongai, a village near Nairobi, Kenya, where approximately 2,000 people came for free vision treatments and cataract surgeries, to purchasing supplies for the African Community Education (ACE) in Worcester, where children of refugees from Africa are educated and taught English – have sought to aid those who suffer indignities rooted in historical racism. These projects have been global and local, but the theme is universal: bring balance in power for those that society has treated unequally. This current movement underscores how starkly that imbalance exists along racial lines, and we pledge to intensify our efforts to erase this inequality by supporting projects in the community that combat systemic racism and police brutality.

We have a responsibility to answer our children and grandchildren when they ask in the future what we did after George Floyd died suffocating with the knee of a police officer on his neck, begging for his mother and saying, “I CAN’T BREATHE.” The death of George Floyd, and so many other black Americans who were victims of police brutality, must not go in vain. This inhumanity must stop! Now is the time for all of us to come together and raise our voices! BRING JUSTICE! BRING PEACE!

JoyGuru Humanitarian Services joins the march till the end.

Sincerely,
Satya Mitra
President and Founder

June 26th. 2020