Speaking at a Martin Luther King Jr. event in Manchester, Governor Chris Sununu urged New Hampshire residents to add their voice to community forums in the coming months.
He pointed to his administration’s new council on diversity and inclusion, as well asa new Civil Rights Unit established within the Attorney General’s Office.
"We’re very fortunate,” he said. “ We don’t have a racial crisis in this state right now, but we know that incidents can happen, issues can happen.”
But that term - crisis - was exactly the word used by the event’s keynote speaker to describe the current political moment.
Boston-based Rev. Mariama White-Hammon urged people to engage politically.
University of New Hampshire student Gabby Greaves was also recognized at the event for her activism around racial discrimination and race-based attacks on campus.
Sununu says now is the time to address equity issues across the board.
Several race-based incidents have surfaced in the past year across the New Hampshire, including the alleged attempted lynching of a young boy in Claremont and racially driven bullying of a 7-year-old student in Durham.