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Cedar Rapids NAACP President: “If any child is in danger in our community, everybody is at risk"

Pete Zarria
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Flickr

Last weekend in Cedar Rapids, two people died of gunshot wounds in separate incidents. Community leaders gathered for a press conference Monday to discuss possible solutions. Among them was Dedric Doolin, Cedar Rapids Branch President of the NAACP and Director of the Area Substance Abuse Council. He says the problem of gun violence isn’t new and neither are attempts to solve it—from law enforcement, individuals, religious organizations, and non-profits.

“We’re hoping that we can connect those things and that the right hand and the left hand know what they’re doing and we don’t have a lot of duplication, but we also know that no one individual, no one group, no one business, no one agency can reach everybody.”

He says the “lackadaisical message that guns are okay” is part of the problem.

“The message that, I think, people in the community receive is ‘Guns is the way to go.’ I think that there’s a strong backing for supporting guns and people having guns, but we really have to look at gun laws and not have guns so easily accessible.”

In this news buzz edition of River to River, host Ben Kieffer talks with Doolin about the recent violence and efforts to curb it. Also on the program, IPR and HPM agriculture reporter Amy Mayer discusses pork production; Shweta Chopra, assistant professor of Agriculture and Biosystems Engineering at Iowa State University, talks about the intersection of food security and technology; Robert Mutel, professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Iowa, talks about the fight between energy efficiency and light pollution when it comes to LEDs; Alan Czarnetski, Professor of Meteorology at the University of Northern Iowa, discusses Severe Weather Awareness Week; and Katie Roche, singer with The Awful Purdies discusses the Ecopolis movement.

Ben Kieffer is the host of IPR's River to River