500 Missing — Why You Should Pay Attention to DC’s Missing Girls if You Attended the Women’s March
Though months have passed since the Women’s March united women around the nation in January, its mission to stand up for the rights of those who are most vulnerable cannot afford to slip into the background. And this applies especially to women in Washington, D.C. right now. In particular, you should be helping to find D.C.’s missing girls if you participated in the Women’s March in our nation’s capital, because these girls need women like you to look out for them when no one else will. And there’s no reason why women shouldn’t unite around this issue as they did around the march in D.C. months ago.
According to the Associated Press, over 500 D.C. children went missing in the first three months of 2017. However, according to D.C. Metropolitan Police spokeswoman Rachel Reid, there hasn’t necessarily been an increase in missing persons in the district. Instead, the public is simply noticing more because the police department is posting missing girls’ photos on social media. In other words, these missing persons are finally being realized.
The problem is that when those children are African-American or Latinx, their disappearances don’t gain adequate media coverage. Congressional Black Caucus chairman Cedric Richmond sent a letter to the Justice Department pleading that it helps to investigate these cases, writing:
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