“The police provide a convenient shield for the rest of the community to kind of hide behind when addressing issues of race, discrimination, racism, bias,” said David Patrick, co-founder of Bangor-based Racial Equity and Justice, which offers diversity consultations and trainings and organized a racial inequity protest June 1 in downtown Bangor.
“We want to be able to have community education. We want to have more resources distributed to communities that are marginalized,” said Desiree Vargas, who co-founded Racial Equity and Justice in Bangor. As an Indigenous woman, she and her family members have experienced the trauma of both racial slurs and physical violence in Maine, she said.