Former Fellow Blake Strode (‘15), executive director of ArchCity Defenders, was quoted in a New York Times article on how black drivers continue to be stopped at much higher rates than white drivers in Missouri five years after a police officer killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager (“Stopped, Ticketed, Fined: The Pitfalls of Driving While Black in Ferguson,” Aug.6). “I can’t say things have gotten better,” Blake said. “I understand the status quo to be one of structural racism, poverty, overinvestment in the carceral system, and policing and prosecution. That is as real today in 2019 as it was five years ago in 2014.”